Published on 12, July, 2020
In the few months I've been on here, I've tried to discern how people use it. While I'm reassured by some people seeming to be long-term regulars, others who pop up and have really interesting things to ask or share, or put things in a really thought-provoking way, burn brightly for a while and then vanish overnight, seldom or never returning. I suppose a certain amount of transience is inevitable, so I'm not really sure what my point is. Maybe just that I'm confused as to why more don't stick around, continue to benefit from shared expereinces and so on.
To those who have been around more consistently over a long while, or intend to be 'lifers' (as I tend to be when I latch onto a supportive online community), do you find it sometimes disconcerting or demoralising to put thought and care into connecting/sharing things with interesting and sympatico people, only to have them vanish in a sudden puff of apparent disinterest and never return.
I suppose one hard lesson I have to keep re-learning in life is that other's moods and inclinations can be very mercurial. You have to take them as you find them I suppose for as long as they stick around. Fleeting interactions can still be meaningful ones I guess. The confusion and melancholy I feel about such things doesn't seem to predominate in many others - I suppose I find lack of continuity in others' patterns of behaviour more disconcerting than most NTs would. But I'm also a little surprised that that NT-like behaviour is just as prevalent in this neurodivergent forum as it is 'out there'.
Or maybe I haven't been around long enough to fairly assess that. Not sure.
I tend to think that the more transient population are more likely to be people asking questions and wanting answers, and once they get answers or find that they will not get simple answers, they go away. The ones who stick around longer tend to be people who are more interested in helping others and indulging in debate.
That makes sense. And I can understand that desire for a simple holy grail answer that will smooth out all complexity but which also doesn't exist. I suppose I'm just surprised that a lifetime of challenge could produce such an expectation. Except,... it's probably more of a hope. So no big mystery after all I suppose.
Though I've also seen people come on here who seem keenly aware of their inner complexity, the irreducibility of that, etc. and express recognition of the forum as a safe space to vent, as well as gratitude for the potential in it to discuss or try to express many things (hopefully finding solace in others' experiences aligning somewhat to their own), and even writing some incredibly profound and poetic stuff.... only to vanish without ceremony and never return. They seem to be envisaging a long-term stay when they arrive, but then without warning are gone without any sense of why. Perhaps it was too dispiriting to realise that even among a found tribe, the people with whom they have most in common, their unique autistic experience will remain exactly that - something that obliquely connects or overlaps in a way that consoles a little, but not as much as hoped. And that can feel pretty lonely, overall. It's an uneven and shifting trade-off, and on the wrong day, might repel more than it attracts. Returning then becomes all the harder, and so some - many? - therefore never do. Just guessing.
In general most people here are keen to understand what others are trying to explain. I was really highlighting that some people come to the forum with unrealistic expectations that there will be no differences of opinion and no arguments. I think that it stems from many autistics being misunderstood and verbally abused in society at large. They then come to an autistic space like this and wrongly think that everyone will have exactly the same viewpoint as they do.
I hope that when I can't quite think how to explain something that others will understand how hard it is sometimes to think of the right word.
I know that some people have come here expecting an autistic forum to be all 'angel delight', and gone away disillusioned that autistic people are people.