I would tell you but I don’t want to appear odd to you weirdos.
I recognize people by the way the walk/move, not by their face.
I use that as part of recognizing people. Mostly from behind or far away.
Do you have aphantasia? This is pretty common among people who do.
Nope.
I’m surprised that anyone is answering anything. If something would seem very normal to me, as in, I think this is something everyone does, I wouldn’t know of it would seem odd to anyone else. By virtue of it seeming very normal to me.
Something being normal is rooted on it being the norm, as in, something typical. If you think something is odd, you can’t feel like it’s normal just for you, that’s not what the norm means. Maybe it seems natural to you? Sure, but not normal.
Sorry for my reading my pedantic rant. In my case, these kind of rationalizations of the language using its roots seem pretty natural and fun but I know most people look at me weird for over analysing stuff.
You can have been informed by other people that things you thought were normal are not and continue to do them though. It’s likely that abnormal behaviour is pointed out at some point if it’s encountered enough
That’s why I specified that the things I like doing, that feel natural to me, aren’t thing i think are very normal, but “natural”. Even though I know that they are not normal, they are in my nature, for whatever reason.
The moment you are told that something is abnormal, you can’t think of it as very normal, by definition, no? 😅 You might still think that you prefer it, that it feels natural to you (it’s in your nature, personal preference), but not normal.
I think the unspoken part here is the frame of reference used when defining what the norm actually is. Something your family does that you also do can be considered normal in that context, but abnormal in your wider community. Something people in your community do (Mennonites driving horse and buggies comes to mind) might be considered normal in that context, but abnormal within the broader society that community exists in relation with.
So someone could be doing something they consider to be normal that, from a broader or different perspective, would be abnormal. And it’s usually exposure to that outside/broader position that characterizes behaviour you’d consider normal as abnormal - it’s exposure to a different frame of reference for normalcy.
Yay semantics!
I have a song in my head, almost all the time. Invariably it’s some 90s jingle from a TV commercial. I habitually repeat certain phrases. Pretty sure I’m autistic in some way, but I mask like a pro. I’m popular at work, socially and adapt to people quickly. I retain eye contact, but I’m actually staring at a point just above their eyes as I find eye contact insanely intimate.
I don’t think I’m a complete psycho - if anything I have an almost paralysing amount of empathy. I even sympathise with people who really don’t deserve it (politicians etc). I’m pretty happy now I’m pushing 50 and have a family, but I still use alcohol in excess most weekends. It just makes the world make more sense to me.
I analyse almost every social interaction I have. I feel a sense of triumph when it goes well, and shame / responsibility when I doesn’t. I’ve been told I’m very agreeable and easy company, but the truth is it’s not easy for me and I feel like I do most of the heavy lifting in conversations.
I envy those who can just sit in their own awkwardness, but I feel like I have to perform and make people like me. It usually works, but when it doesn’t I stew on it endlessly. Anyway, no idea why I unloaded all that. Cheers!
I have a song in my head, almost all the time. Invariably it’s some 90s jingle from a TV commercial.
I swear my brain is a broken jukebox that’s permanently set to shuffle.
And yeah, sometimes it’s the most random shit from a TV commercial from 30 years ago.
Sometimes I’ll hear a single word, and it will remind me of a song and it will immediately get stuck in my head whether I like the song or not lol.
Though I have actually figured out some ways to stop that from happening by immediately starting to hum or think of a different song (I’ve got one or two go-tos) to kind of “reset” it, but I have to act really fast or else it’s too late, and I’m singing the theme song to Doug for 2 days straight.
All very relatable probably autistic traits tbh
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been a people watcher. I can sit and just watch people and observe behaviors. I’ve been out with friends and nudge them to watch out right before fights break out. They tell me it’s creepy. I say not really, those people stand out to me.
Rubbing my legs. Especially the inner adductors.
Stopping midsentence and expecting other people to know what I was about to say.
Impulsively replacing a word with something that could be considered adjacent; “My teammates” could become “my animals”.
Pretty sure I got this habit from my mum, who is ESL and later developed aphasia after having a stroke young. It kinda bled out into how me and my sisters communicated and I carried it into adulthood, although I only do this around people I feel super comfortable with.
I do the first one all the time. I’ll be in the middle of something while talking, or struggle to remember the correct word, and I’ll just kinda trail off. Then maybe 10 seconds later I’ll remember that I just stopped talking mid-sentence and try to pick back up.
I have full on conversations with myself. To the point where I simulate talking with two people. I don’t have any multiple personalities or any mental illness (as far as I know), I just use it as a way to think about what I need to think about.
You might be trying to find bugs in your own thinking system, rubber ducking it all the time lol
Do you use pronouns for yourself during these conversations and if so, are they first or second person (I vs you)?
I imagine I’m talking to someone else so I use ‘you’ mainly
Your left brain and your right brain are communicating externally
I can’t leave the house without a shower even if it’s just a quick 5 minute trip to the gas station. The only exception I’m willing to make for this is if someone else is in some sort of harms way from nature or whatever.
Wake up late to the thing? I just won’t be doing the thing I guess or everyone will have to wait. That said, I’m good about not being in that situation and plan myself well for the sake of others as I recognize it’s a weird thing about me, not them.
What if it’s raining?
That’s not weird. That’s normal.
It’s normal to shower before going to a gas station for 5 minutes?
I can talk myself out of buying anything, and often do. Even when I actually need it.
I match my shirt color to what I’m going to train in the gym.
As an example, let’s say that’s today is leg day: then I will use a gray shirt. Yesterday was chest day, so it was a red shirt.
I bought a few packs of the same shirts just so I could make this matching game. I’m not sure if someone elss at the gym realized that I do this but I’m fairly certain they would find it odd.
You’re like the gym bro reincarnation of Haruhi Suzumiya.
I used to move my mouse at a certain rate to do the Google captchas at a slower pace than I physically could. Not sure why I did it, but it seemed like a reasonable strategy.
i’m so fast that may be confused as a robot
I have my mouse speed maxed. No one else I know can run my pc without frustration.
That’s fine if you have a mouse that isn’t shite. I have a coworker who also does this, in his case via having the cursor speed jacked up as far as it’ll go in Control Panel. But the crap mouse he has on his PC means that the cursor now moves several pixels per sample. It’s impossible to move it one pixel at a time, which means some very small UI elements in inexpertly coded programs (like, just to name one example, our inventory control software) are smaller than the minimum movement distance and you can’t place the cursor on them to click them.
He seems to spend most of his day on reddit, though, so this apparently has not impacted his productivity much. Meanwhile, if I use his machine I just become Captain Keyboard Shortcut in self-defense.
I started doing it when I started getting bad tendonitis with a ball mouse in 1999. I could go all the way across my 19 inch screen in 2 inches either direction and my wrist flare ups went down by 75%.
I got used to it and still love it. I always get decent laser mice with a little indent for my thumb to take pressure off my wrist to move it left to right.
I have a connective tissue disease and have to be careful not to get overuse syndrome from too much KB and Mouse work and the speed setting lets me get my work done. Playing FPS games gets my mom called a lot of things because of my quick reaction times from these mouse settings. ಠ_ಠ
I’ve been told that my pacing is weird. It seems pretty normal to want to move to think. It happens a lot when I’m on phone calls especially, but I’ll pace while making decisions too
If I’m knocking on a door I silently count how many times I knock. I prefer to knock 5 times but it’s not a solid rule lol. Friends have accused me of “cop knocking” so at their houses I knock the mario bros riff
I learned the cop knock early on in my delivery career. People ask why I didn’t use the bell. Because more than half the time the bell doesn’t work, that’s why. I don’t have all night to stand out here looking stupid. Hitting your door with my baton did, though, didn’t it? Plus if you’re going to bust out of here running your mouth with some dumb shit, I’m already holding my baton.
I wouldn’t do it hard enough to leave a dent in the door except with people I really disliked.
I never had the occasion to whack a customer, regardless of how richly some of them may have deserved it. But people lurking around the vicinity who were stupid enough to believe they were the first person to think of jumping the pizza man from behind at the door were a different story.
I only park in one specific aisle at Costco. I will wait for someone to walk back to their car just to get a spot there.
