Should there be such a thing as an autistic union?

It may be tangental but I want to talk about the Japanese education system and nerd culture. There is a theory that nerd culture in Japan owes its existence to be incorporation of clubs into the Japanese education system. You see when they reformed the Japanese education system they introduced clubs into schools and universities. Clubs that are typically run and organised by students.

Prior to this if you had a social support group at school a clique for want of a better word it probably formed around the conversations you had at lunchtime and other various points of the school day around Smalltalk. The social world of school was Smalltalk driven. And a lot of students didn’t have much of a social life at school particularly the nerdy ones. For them school was turn up in the morning, put your head down, do your work, go home.

The introduction of clubs changed that. It was socially expected that you join clubs. And schools were pretty wide and liberal about what you could make a club about or how many people could make them. In many schools 4 or five people would be enough to start a club.

So people started making all kinds of clubs. Anime and manga club, my personal favourite. Photography enthusiast clubs, School newspaper club for journalist enthusiasts, The music club for people who wanted to be in a band. Occult and paranormal/UFO research society. Almost any interest no matter how fringe could be a club.

This was a system that was great for picking up nerds and putting them in social groups. Suddenly nerds had social lives and realised that they could have interactions with people who shared their interests. You didn’t need to be good at Smalltalk. Didn’t need to pretend that they were interested in the latest fashion trend or popular TV show. Didn’t need to conceal the fact that they were extremely weird and nerdy.

and the great thing about this system is it continued into university. So if you were in the anime and manga club in high school you would just go straight into the anime and manga club in University and easily develop a whole new group of friends again without having to do Smalltalk or pretending to be normal.

And so you get all of these young adults leaving university Who are used to having their own little worlds and who have a network of close friends. And they go on being nerdy in a social context. They’re not nerds quietly doing their hobbies at home. insread they're meeting their friends at a maid café in Akihabara and then wandering around the dojinshi store.

And of course they spend money on their hobbies, not just indoors but outdoors, which means hotspots develop and services and businesses develop around these hobbies.

So different aspects of nerd culture become embedded in Japan because the school system nurtures them at a very young age. Amazingly it turns out that not all nerds are introverts. actually quite a lot of them are extroverts. And that if you raise them in an environment where they’re allowed to socially share their nerdiness they grow up to be the kind of nerdy adults that are comfortable in social groups.

now we don’t really have school clubs in the UK in the same way. Not in high schools. My understanding is most of these activities are adult run and directed, and usually based around something fairly mainstream with wide appeal, often something with educational overtones.

however in UK universities the system is very similar to the Japanese system. Students make clubs, run clubs, and clubs can be about basically anything. At my old university there was a goth club, A metal club, video game clubs, Chess clubs, assassins clubs, DJing clubs, video game clubs, sci-fi clubs, larp clubs, and of course the Anime club. And so many more on top of that.

But unlike Japan we don’t have any real hotspots where that nerdy culture persists into adult hood. There is no Akihabara in the UK. No street in your local town where you can go up and down and see shops and Cafes and entertainment venues catering to your nerdy interest all together.

I know there are a lot of introverts in this thread. People whose response to people is ‘eww people.’ But I invite you to consider the possibility that you might not feel that way if you had been raised in an environment where you could connect with nerdy friends without having to feel weird or do the small talk. And even if that’s not the case for you I invite you to consider what benefit nerdy adults Who are extroverted  might get from finding that sort of environment.

So my question is why does the club system ever have to end? For autistic people Who have some special interest they are absolutely fascinated with, in other words someone who is nerdy, why can’t we continue to build our social worlds around that interest after university. Well the answer is simple because nowhere caters for it. And so my argument is very simply this why isn’t there somewhere that caters for it?

It may be tangental but I want to talk about the Japanese education system and nerd culture. There is a theory that nerd culture in Japan owes its existence to be incorporation of clubs into the Japanese education system. You see when they reformed the Japanese education system they introduced clubs into schools and universities. Clubs that are typically run and organised by students.

Prior to this if you had a social support group at school a clique for want of a better word it probably formed around the conversations you had at lunchtime and other various points of the school day around Smalltalk. The social world of school was Smalltalk driven. And a lot of students didn’t have much of a social life at school particularly the nerdy ones. For them school was turn up in the morning, put your head down, do your work, go home.

The introduction of clubs changed that. It was socially expected that you join clubs. And schools were pretty wide and liberal about what you could make a club about or how many people could make them. In many schools 4 or five people would be enough to start a club.

So people started making all kinds of clubs. Anime and manga club, my personal favourite. Photography enthusiast clubs, School newspaper club for journalist enthusiasts, The music club for people who wanted to be in a band. Occult and paranormal/UFO research society. Almost any interest no matter how fringe could be a club.

This was a system that was great for picking up nerds and putting them in social groups. Suddenly nerds had social lives and realised that they could have interactions with people who shared their interests. You didn’t need to be good at Smalltalk. Didn’t need to pretend that they were interested in the latest fashion trend or popular TV show. Didn’t need to conceal the fact that they were extremely weird and nerdy.

and the great thing about this system is it continued into university. So if you were in the anime and manga club in high school you would just go straight into the anime and manga club in University and easily develop a whole new group of friends again without having to do Smalltalk or pretending to be normal.

And so you get all of these young adults leaving university Who are used to having their own little worlds and who have a network of close friends. And they go on being nerdy in a social context. They’re not nerds quietly doing their hobbies at home. insread they're meeting their friends at a maid café in Akihabara and then wandering around the dojinshi store.

And of course they spend money on their hobbies, not just indoors but outdoors, which means hotspots develop and services and businesses develop around these hobbies.

So different aspects of nerd culture become embedded in Japan because the school system nurtures them at a very young age. Amazingly it turns out that not all nerds are introverts. actually quite a lot of them are extroverts. And that if you raise them in an environment where they’re allowed to socially share their nerdiness they grow up to be the kind of nerdy adults that are comfortable in social groups.

now we don’t really have school clubs in the UK in the same way. Not in high schools. My understanding is most of these activities are adult run and directed, and usually based around something fairly mainstream with wide appeal, often something with educational overtones.

however in UK universities the system is very similar to the Japanese system. Students make clubs, run clubs, and clubs can be about basically anything. At my old university there was a goth club, A metal club, video game clubs, Chess clubs, assassins clubs, DJing clubs, video game clubs, sci-fi clubs, larp clubs, and of course the Anime club. And so many more on top of that.

But unlike Japan we don’t have any real hotspots where that nerdy culture persists into adult hood. There is no Akihabara in the UK. No street in your local town where you can go up and down and see shops and Cafes and entertainment venues catering to your nerdy interest all together.

I know there are a lot of introverts in this thread. People whose response to people is ‘eww people.’ But I invite you to consider the possibility that you might not feel that way if you had been raised in an environment where you could connect with nerdy friends without having to feel weird or do the small talk. And even if that’s not the case for you I invite you to consider what benefit nerdy adults Who are extroverted  might get from finding that sort of environment.

So my question is why does the club system ever have to end? For autistic people Who have some special interest they are absolutely fascinated with, in other words someone who is nerdy, why can’t we continue to build our social worlds around that interest after university. Well the answer is simple because nowhere caters for it. And so my argument is very simply this why isn’t there somewhere that caters for it?