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Does this "comunity" include CAELUS ??

I Sperg

We call this a "community" but the turnover of people as noted many times has been quite unacceptably high. 

I'd like to single out "Caelus" in particular, a member that many will have come across on this forum. I got to know him quite well for a while on a discord server that served for a while for people who get "Bullied" on this forum immediatey that they join until they learn to self moderate their "unacceptable" thoughts.

He wrote an awful lot there about his life and challenges, very articulately and as angrily as one might expect an intelligent, hard working, young autisic man to be in this particularly annoying world as it is right now. I even got to speak with him on one occasion using the discord video conferencing feature, (that never worked well for me) He talked a great deal about his Job ad teh challenges and iniquities he faced daily at work, and to be honest I really looked forwards to his walls of text.   

NOW, I am supposed to have in excess of 50 Friends on this forum, and I've been a very prolific poster at some points, as I am sure many will agree.

After the "changeover" I was real slow to connect again to this forum for various reasons, and when I did, I found I had 3 people reach out to me in my PM's box, and one of them wonder where I had gone to on the open forum. To be honest, even cynical me fidns that to be statistically interesting and food for thought. There's a lot of people who report on this forum to be "alone in the world". Caelus would ever be one of those of course, but how many people have asked him how is he doing? I can't help wondering    

There are evidently some people who regularly network and are friends in "real life" and who support each other in little sub-communties on this forum, (hence the need for the discord server which I used to attend, apparently for people who got "mobbed" by one such clique)  but I suspect that there are a VAST majority of people here who really don't really feel like they "belong" at all. 

I'd LIKE to think that Caelus does have a real friend in this community who does know how he is doing ATM, but it has been 3 Months since I last got a P.M. off him, and I think he was railing against his second consecutive sentence of "moderation" so he might have decided to throw in the towel. I didn't really see him get much support from the forum and he patently did not find this to be a "community" as such, where his uniqueness was accepted as a fellow autist MIGHT initially expect until they get the full N.A.S. forum experience. 

May I observe as a faily long term "survivor" on this forum, that the name "Community" is perhaps a gross midescription of whateevr this thing we have actually is.

Perhaps it is more of an online "Collective" really, with all the nuances that word holds these days...

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  • It's great to see you back, I Sperg. I've also quietly wondered how you're doing and whether you'll be back. 

    I Sperg said:
    the turnover of people as noted many times has been quite unacceptably high

    I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure that's the best way to think about it. We can join, lurk, participate, take breaks, leave, or have our accounts deleted whenever we want. I think we need to be kind to each other about how we choose to use (or not use) the forum - particularly given our social and communication difficulties - and I also don’t feel we should worry about needing to explain or justify ourselves to each other.

    Thread title: “Does this community include CAELUS??”, and:

    I Sperg said:
    I'd like to single out "Caelus" in particular

    I’m not personally a fan of singling any of us out like this, regardless of what are undoubtedly your best intentions.

    Among our autistic traits, many of us can feel deeply uncomfortable about "just" being perceived or seen, let alone about being made the subject of online discussions that focus on us and our relationships, interactions, or feelings. We’re all different, of course, but I definitely wouldn't appreciate being singled out and discussed here like that.

    You seem concerned about how few of your 50 friends reached out to ask after you. But I think it's easy to read too much into it. Perhaps people were just being respectful? Again, we're all different, but receiving messages from - and needing to reply to - all 50 of your friends might have felt overwhelming (it would have done for me). 

    The prospect of reaching out might also have felt awkward or stressful for them. I can get myself in a state over the simplest of written communications. Like when my brain locked up and I felt like crying after trying to trying to come up with a simple, personalised message to write in a birthday card! Flushed

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  • It's great to see you back, I Sperg. I've also quietly wondered how you're doing and whether you'll be back. 

    I Sperg said:
    the turnover of people as noted many times has been quite unacceptably high

    I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure that's the best way to think about it. We can join, lurk, participate, take breaks, leave, or have our accounts deleted whenever we want. I think we need to be kind to each other about how we choose to use (or not use) the forum - particularly given our social and communication difficulties - and I also don’t feel we should worry about needing to explain or justify ourselves to each other.

    Thread title: “Does this community include CAELUS??”, and:

    I Sperg said:
    I'd like to single out "Caelus" in particular

    I’m not personally a fan of singling any of us out like this, regardless of what are undoubtedly your best intentions.

    Among our autistic traits, many of us can feel deeply uncomfortable about "just" being perceived or seen, let alone about being made the subject of online discussions that focus on us and our relationships, interactions, or feelings. We’re all different, of course, but I definitely wouldn't appreciate being singled out and discussed here like that.

    You seem concerned about how few of your 50 friends reached out to ask after you. But I think it's easy to read too much into it. Perhaps people were just being respectful? Again, we're all different, but receiving messages from - and needing to reply to - all 50 of your friends might have felt overwhelming (it would have done for me). 

    The prospect of reaching out might also have felt awkward or stressful for them. I can get myself in a state over the simplest of written communications. Like when my brain locked up and I felt like crying after trying to trying to come up with a simple, personalised message to write in a birthday card! Flushed

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