Comment by esseph
13 days ago
> The "insufferable genius" stereotype tracks most not for the extremely smart people but the kinda-smart people who are absolute jerks but try to defend their jerkassery on the basis of their intelligence.
Autism plays a lot into this. You'll get people who can seem condescending or unaware of different social norms, and it's genuinely not from a bad place, just a complete inability to understand their own communication style (especially in the moment).
> Autism plays a lot into this. You'll get people who can seem condescending or unaware of different social norms
Recently "autism" is a scapegoat for everything, both claiming to be autist to get a free pass to be a jerk, or calling someone autist because they do something unexpected.
I have been called autist after a meeting just because I said something could not be done in the timeframe proposed. Acording to social norms, the correct thing to do was to lie, say it could be easily done, and deal with expected missed deadlines with even more lies.
Another "autism" trait I have is to say a dry "no" to invitations I don't want to attend, apparently the social norm is to say "yes" and then fake an excuse a couple of hours ahead, or even worse, just don't go.
The point is the word "autism" (or even jerk) is being used as a synonym of "direct", "sincere" or "no bullshit" too often. And I am not talking about calling people fat or ugly out of the blue (that's a real jerk), but saying "no" when it is enough.