oh damn this gives me flashbacks to my diagnosis 😅
I need these in my life
I have just moved into a new home, and this has given me an excellent idea for some entertainment for guests. I have a very large whiteboard that is magnetic, which I could have some magnetic blocks for people to play with
Half my neurodivergence adores this, while the other half screams in terror at how much focus would need to be maintained to keep it even.
lol “math shape”
I remember playing with these blocks at school when I was a kid!
Where to I get these? Asking for a friend…
Looks like a Rangoli
This is just art, buddy.
You don’t have to be autistic to enjoy making art.
Edited to add that for the 0.1% of people who thought this was “patronizing,” it was intended to be supportive.
“This is just art, man. Everyone can make art, you don’t have to qualify it by saying it’s autistic.”
No one has to be apologetic about making art.
But keep being angry!
Guys, is it autistic to have fun?
But you see, normal adults don’t just do fun things that aren’t on the pre-approved adult appropriate list of activities. /s
Way too many don’t. Most, I’d reckon.
This is how I feel whenever I see a post from autism comms.
It’s just like: [normal ass thing] + teehee autism amirite guys?
Edit: Like this.
I’m happy that OP had a nice day, but yeah, classifying things as autistic activities vs non autistic activities is so incredibly cringey and unhealthy.
I like math, always have. I’ve been told by multiple people that means I’m autistic. This year I literally had someone point at me and say “you’re autistic. You like math, you’re autistic”. They don’t know me near well enough to know something like that, and frankly it’s very belittling to be reduced to “oh, you like this thing, that tells me everything about you as a person”.
I’m glad understanding is up and the stigma is decreasing, but please everyone chill.
I’m autistic and needed 2 hours of tutoring per day to make it through math. I’m great at liberal arts. It’s just people things not autistic things.
Yeah the stereotypes definitely cut both ways.
“You like math; therefore, autistic” is such low brow judgement, if I ever heard one. Next they’re going to say, “if you really like ‘don’t jump on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back,” you’re autistic.
My brother, who got a PhD in pure mathematics at age 27, is someone I suspect of being, if not autistic, at least neurodivergent. Last year, I was being accused by several of being autistic and had relayed that to him; we were discussing each other’s tendencies and trying to decide, among other things, whether they mattered.
Then one morning I woke up to an unprompted text from him containing one of my favorite sentences ever:
It just occurred to me, if I do have some species of autism maybe it doesn’t disturb me too much because I like trying to figure out the rule sets in complicated systems ….
I’m sure the venn diagrams have a large intersection, but they’re not 100%
What’s the harm in this person recognizing that their autism plays a role in their enjoyment of specific activities? If it were more stereotypical (a model train set for example) would you have the same gut reaction to go “you don’t have to be autistic to enjoy making model trains buddy”? Plenty of demographics enjoy a family/neigborhood barbecue, does that remove the cultural significance of the black cookout? Do you patronizingly comment that everybody likes cookouts?
I genuinely don’t get the impetus for neurotypical people to hop in the comments of neurodivergent people posting about the intersections of neurodivergence and joy to just go “well <thing> makes plenty of people happy, what does that have to do with neurodivergence???” Like, do y’all just think if a neurodivergent person isn’t talking about the ways their brain doesn’t work “right”, then they have no right to talk about something and how it relates to their condition? Just kidding, y’all complain about and diminish that too
The fact that you took my comment as “patronizing” says everything I need to know about you.
I hope you continue to have the day you deserve somewhere else.
Genuinely: go be angry at supportive comments somewhere else!
Nevermind the three sentences preceeding it asking questions and reframing the comment in similar situations to demonstrate how/why it can be seen as patronizing. Genuinely, how do you see your original comment supportive? Honing in on the last sentence of my first paragraph and summarily dismissing me as “angry” is also a really convenient way of ignoring the substance of my criticism.
I’m not mad, I’m a bit annoyed at the trend I was commenting on, and pointed out how comments like those are the flip side of people dismissing the struggles of neurodivergent people. Your response here echoes the same dismissive and patronizing tone of your original comment, so I must be missing something. What am I missing?
Giving the impression that something is an autistic trait, or indeed a sign of any condition, when it isn’t, is harmful and wrong.
It’s quite different when it’s an element of culture, because to an extent culture is a matter of self-definition.
You’re hilarious.
You think the point is to convince people they’re autistic when they describe an activity they do.
But that’s not remotely the point. The point is to make people who already know they’re autistic laugh at the thing they do so frequently that other people perceive it as weird.
It’s an “in” joke among autistic people.
It’s not about you, bro. It has nothing to do with you.
You don’t understand it, and you’re not supposed to.
When socializing, autistic people already have to spend literally 100% of our whole waking lives making everything about you, and you just naturally demand that we do that and you spend literally 0% of your lives trying to figure out what we’re about or trying to learn anything about us.
You try to make our communication between each other somehow about you. Well it’s not.
We’re allowed to have our own “in” jokes, and if you don’t understand it, you’re free to not bother trying. It won’t bother us at all.
No, I don’t think that’s the point, and I didn’t say that.
But I do think that is an effect that talk like that has, whether it’s intended or not. And I think it’s a blind-spot that autistic people are more likely to have - the effect talk can have on people outside the intended audience and meaning.
If you think about the joke now, do you think it might have an unintended effect?
It’s not about you
So glad to know that you have determined whether I have autism over the internet in the course of a couple of social media posts.
But no, it’s not about me, it’s about young people who don’t know much about autism and who can be influenced by how you discuss it.
So neurodivergent people should police their speech and monitor how they express themselves, lest they influence the thoughts of the naive, impressionable youth? Does that sound familiar to you?
I only disagree with the dumb tone you’ve given that sentence.
Everyone should refrain from spreading falsehoods, and if you say something that can reasonably lead to a false conclusion and didn’t intend it to, then it’s your responsibility to try and be more precise.
If you want to only focus on the duty that lands on neurodivergent people; if you want to describe that as “policing”, then you can have fun doing that.
You didn’t respond to my first point, which is that wrongly implying that something is an autistic trait is harmful wrong. Do you disagree? Because this focus on what I’m saying people should do is surely secondary to that - if it is harmful or wrong, then people shouldn’t do it, and if it isn’t, then it doesn’t matter and I should shut up about it? Right? So why don’t we refocus on that?
Does that sound familiar to you?
Nope, should it?
spreading falsehoods
What part of the post says “if you like arts and crafts you’re autistic”? Or even remotely hints at that? Nobody was spreading falsehoods. An autistic person said they’re having a good time, and an aspect of their autism had a degree of influence over how they experienced that joy in the moment. How is somebody supposed to avoid saying falsehoods when clowns like you are out here pulling “falsehoods” out of your ass to whinge about how members of marginalized groups express themselves?
If you want to only focus on the duty that lands on neurodivergent people; if you want to describe that as “policing”, then you can have fun doing that.
What other focus were you drawing in your comment? You were just saying that autistic people need to be careful to not spread “falsehoods” about autism (I again invite you to demonstrate how the post does that), which was instigated by an autistic person expressing joy and literally nothing else. Your entire issue is hinged on someone saying they’re happy ina way you don’t personally like.
You ignored my first point
No, you don’t have a point. That’s my point. In the context of this post, you’re just upset at autistic people publicly existing ina way that personally offends you due to prejudice and bigotry. Nobody but you has implied that liking art = autism, and you only made that implication to have a strawman to argue about. In a different context, about a different thing that was demonstrably manipulating someone to equate autism with something that isn’t in line with clinical diagnostics, you might kind of have a point to make. But even then I’d be hesitant to agree with the way you’d approach that because you’re obviously prejudiced against neurodivergent people.
Nope, should it?
Yes, your shitty rhetoric is 1:1 with how racists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, etc. talk about whatever group/s they hate. The spirit of your comment (including your half assed strawman) could easily be applied to so many other marginalized groups
The field is called Tessellation if anyone’s curious.
It shows up a bunch in Islamic art.
You tellin me them there autisms are secretly Islams? Not in MUH MURICA
This renews my desire to make a giant Penrose tiling on my floor.
I noped right out of that link, the thumbnail hurt my eyes. Hope you have fun with your project though
Math shaped blocks.
Made my afternoon 😁
I can imagine nudging an edge and now everything is misaligned
STOP
I can’t imagine adding a piece without it happening
if you like this kind of thing, paper piecing quilting is right up your alley. it’s basically this with fabric then you sew it together
Autistic? Why do you need to be autistic, gimme!
math shapes
This is what I’m calling polygons forevermore.
