but that doesn’t preclude these traits from being made fun of in a friendly setting.

And sorry to double reply, but I feel like I missed this. (I have a tendency to ramble, I should probably refine my responses before sending. Eh.)

Why would you make fun of them if you don’t think these traits are bad?

Imagine for a moment that you lived in a world where the vast majority of people were different from you. They liked to eat something that you find disgusting: we’ll say gravel. Their humor relied on advanced knowledge of something that you didn’t have knowledge of, like string theory.

Every day that you turn on your television, you see shows making “fun” of people who don’t understand string theory and who don’t find chewing on gravel to be an ideal meal. Every day when you are at work, people look at your food and ask, “why aren’t you eating gravel? Is something wrong with you?” Every time that you try to make friends, they rapidly shoot lines back and forth about string theory that you don’t understand, and when they notice how lost you are, they shame you for it. When you try to tell them about something you find interesting, they call you “embarrassingly unscientific” or something, and exclude you.

So you’re tired, because it feels like the whole world is against you. And you go home and settle down for the day, and you call up a good friend because you just want to feel seen and understood. And your friend sees your dinner on the camera, and they say “Rockless dinner again? You’re so picky! It’s not hard to just sprinkle a little limestone on top, you know.” They then proceed to tell an elaborate joke about string theory, which they know you won’t understand, and then get angry when you don’t find it funny and tell you to lighten up.

Wouldn’t you feel terrible if this was how your ‘friend’ treated you? Would you really find their treatment “good-natured?”

Sure, some of your friends may actually be able to tolerate this ribbing. But the vast majority of autistic people are just tired of the constant jokes at their expense. They might not say anything about it, because it’s so commonplace that if they pushed back people would say they’re “making a scene.” Other downtrodden groups also face this and are stereotyped as “angry black women” etc when they put up boundaries about how others should treat them. And so many people learn to just grin and bear it, in the name of keeping the peace and avoiding drawing attention.

I’d also like to address this phrase specifically, emphasis mine:

A person’s ability to accept good natured humor at their expense […]

Autism is called a disability, meaning that there is a difference between the ability levels of autistic and non-autistic people for certain things. Some autistic people lack the ability to parse this kind of humor. It is not their fault. It is not a judgement on their character as a person. It’s merely a part of who they are. You don’t tell someone that they’re lesser as a person because they can’t shoot a bullseye, write with their non-dominant hand, do long division in their head, or understand recordings when played backwards. These things are as arbitrary as being able to understand sarcasm, to sit still, or to follow a conversation in a noisy room.

And, frankly, it’s not as funny as you think it is, so I don’t blame people for not thinking that it is. You seem somewhat defensive of your brand of humor — which I understand, because it can feel like some sort of judgement on your skill level or something — but can you not just… make other jokes?

I do believe that is the point of the post; however, it also implies that the kind of person it describes does not understand that they are actually engaging in bullying behaviours.

Ableism is so entrenched in society that “teasing” (thought of as playful, but is actually harmful) people for being a little different is not seen as anything to bat an eye at. Media upholds the normalization of this kind of ableism through shaming these traits in the form of “jokes” — meaning that when people in turn do it to others, they often believe themselves to be engaging in funny banter. When it is actually creating an environment that others autistic and neurodivergent people. Ie, upholding systemic ableism. All without their knowledge.

The point of a post such as this is partially for autistic people to commiserate, but also hopefully for a few people to stop and think about their own behaviour. If they are the kind of person who wishes to be inclusive to autistic people, seeing this might make them realize how they do unconsciously bully autistic people when they denigrate people with these traits. And hopefully they will stop, though it takes time to deconstruct and unlearn this kind of behaviour.

Upholding the hegemony of neurotypicality as the “acceptable” way to be, and the encouraging of neurodiverse people to mask their (fine, unharmful) behaviours. Masking which actively harms them.

All this does is promote ongoing ableism. I beg that you read something about the experiences of autistic people and come to understand how marginalized and harmed they are by this continual shaming of these traits. Traits that are not harmful, or even uncommon. They’re just different, and less normalized.

A fellow long-winded mdash user fighting ableism? Keep doing the good work! :)

If it’s okay for an autistic person to have these traits, why can’t someone else? This kind of mindset is what makes the world so inherently hostile to autistic people. Even if you don’t shame people whom you know to have autism for these traits, you are still communicating to them that you think these traits are bad when you shame others for having them.

And why are these traits “bad?” None of these really affect anyone but the person who has them. Picky eating limits the person’s own choices, not your own. Their lack of understanding of humor or sarcasm isolates them socially from others, not you. It’s not a reflection on the quality of your joke. Their awkwardness hurts themself significantly more than it can possibly hurt you. Not wanting to be touched is a basic personal boundary that should be respected no matter whose boundary it is. Fidgeting is a harmless motion. Most of what we shame for being “cringey” interests are rooted in misogyny anyway, and others’ interests do not harm you in any way. Meltdowns are something that anyone can experience, if pushed to the brink. Autistic people just happen to have more sensitivities, and also to live in a world that is actively hostile to them. Of course they will be pushed to the brink more often.

It can be hard to unlearn ableism. And I hope you’re able to read these words with an open mind and take the time to introspect on why you hold the beliefs that you have expressed here, and try to understand the harm that they cause to autistic people. It’s especially harmful to express them here — as I’m glad that you noticed, and walked back — but I wanted to also address you in a more general way, because I believe that this sentiment would have been harmful even if you had expressed it on 196 (where you stated that you originally thought you were.)

They take a lot longer than 2 weeks to begin rooting, in my experience. But if you leave them in the water they’ll root eventually.

As a side note, the babies will not have yellow leaf edges. This type of sansevieria reverts to an all-green variety when propped this way. If you want to keep the yellow edges, you have to prop them by letting them bud off the main root.

I’d say that removing Nazi-era misinformation is pretty important, actually.

Sure, maybe they’re good at concentrating their attention. Concentrating it into a laser that you can’t aim or turn on or off at will. It’s just a randomly-firing laser of attention that is blasting everywhere you don’t need it to. Great super power. /s

There haven’t been any issues, so I don’t see why development is needed.

SMS/MMS do not count toward data usage here. They are free and unlimited.

You say that as if I don’t already know it. But what am I supposed to do, abandon every friend who prefers it?

Many people do use Discord as a messaging app. I am really only using it for private messages when I am on data.

I only have two Signal contacts, and no group chats. Video is set to download only on WiFi, but I do need to be able to see images.

Photos use a decent amount of data regardless of what app you’re sending them by.

Because SMS is inherently feature-lite. But it’s free and unlimited, which is kind of the whole point of using it over a feature-rich app that uses data.

If I wanted a messaging app with advanced features, I wouldn’t be using the SMS app that came with my phone.

I’m really not. 75% of my data this month has been used by Signal and Discord.

Not everyone has a large data plan. I am very aware of how much messaging taxes my data plan: the entirety of my data is already used by it.

I personally use QKSMS, which isn’t perfect, but it’s all I’ve been able to stand since Signal dropped SMS support.

This RCS stuff scares me a bit, because it sounds like it will function over a data connection and not be nearly as universal of a standard as SMS/MMS is. There are already a million such apps and standards if one wants to use data for messaging. Trying to sneak it on top of SMS is very annoying. If I use my SMS app, I want my messages to be sent as such. Getting a surprise data bill shouldn’t be a fear.

“What do you mean the thermostat clicks when it engages and that wakes you up?”

“How can you not hear it??”