this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Autism
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I've had to fluff up what I say to explicitly say "I don't mean [x], I'm not implying [y]", but I can't cover everything and so I still get hostility, it's very frustrating.
I've noticed that people (including me) try to build a mental model of your beliefs very quickly, so without much context to base it on they usually base it on stereotypes (e.g. nitpicking a science claim is the sort of thing a science denier would do, therefore you're probably that even if you just noticed a tiny incorrect detail and that's it). It doesn't help that over text, if you wanted to get that context and not make assumptions about others, you're going to have to spend a lot of time writing questions and waiting multiple back-and-forths for answers to inform your next questions.
Another thing I've noticed is that most disagreements online are arguments about something where facts are just pawns to be played to win. I'm sure most of us have seen this play out, and usually if someone gets obviously proven wrong they just pull out the next fact and move goalposts, because most people don't like "losing". So if you say something like "I think you're wrong because [x]", you look exactly like the people arguing who have an implicit agenda. And I can't blame people for assuming that, because if you give everyone the benefit of the doubt you lose sooo much time to the ~80% of arguers with a hidden agenda.
Thanks for the tips. I've been working on making things more explicit, but it seems that I still am not being explicit enough! It feels like being stuck between a rock and a hard place - on the one hand some interactions tell me that I have to spell things out incredibly simply and explicitly, as though I'm talking to a child, but on the other when I do that it annoys people and I get told that I'm being patronising or condescending.
I can also understand what you mean about people forming a model of one's behaviour very quickly. In a couple of the conflicts I've had, that much is very obvious and I can understand why they've automatically leapt to thinking I'm being dishonest/disingenious. Yesterday's conflict should not have taken that path, though, as these were established acquaintances and there should have been enough previous interaction to know that I don't intentionally mislead or present bad-faith arguments. Turns out that the reason I got accused of constructing a strawman is because what I thought was a blindingly obvious parallel to the issue we were discussing was viewed as completely irrelevant to the other person. I have no idea how they could not have seen the connection (the whole reason I used the parallel example was because I knew it was something they understood) and it brings me back to the issue of explaining things explicitly/simply enough without the other person then viewing me as being patronising/condescending.