I agree with the “don’t use your autism as an excuse” side, but as a middle-aged AuDHD woman who can no longer hold any kind of paid work due to burnout caused by years of faking it in a high pressure career that I loved dearly and would have done for life if burnout hadn’t disabled me- I’m really repulsed the idea that all of us should just try harder to fit in. I did that, and it eventually destroyed me. It is not something that I’d advocate anyone else doing.

Yes, it’s so important to listen to your body. A HSP should not just ignore what they’re feeling or fight to endure discomfort, especially long-term discomfort like unsafe housing…if you are able to move, I hope you will, because constant negative overstimulation can lead to burnout, which can have a really severe mental health toll over a lifetime. I was rendered pretty much non-functional for much of my 40s because of it. Now I know I have to put self-care first or i will pay for it.

I identified as HSP for many years prior to my ASD/ADHD diagnosis, but for my entire adult life I've done the same: first, I've made my bedroom a haven, with a weighted blanket, blackout curtains, fairy lights, etc. and I feel free to retreat to my room when the world is too much. My room is my space, designed for my comfort. (I have a house, but naturally it's family space and when I'm overwhelmed I really need to be alone).

I don't force myself to stay on overstimulating situations because I "should"- if there's a pressing reason I have to stay a bit longer but I just can't, a five minute breather outside can make a huge difference.

I already mentioned the weighted blanket, but if you don't already have one, you should get one- and make sure you get one that's around 10% of your body weight for best effect. I bought mine at the start of the Pandemic and I swear it saved my life, it allowed me to feel safe when absolutely nothing felt safe. Another tool in my box that I would never trade is good noise-cancelling headphones. I'm so glad it's acceptable to wear them in public nowadays, they have been a lifesaver.

As an autistic who has been online since the early 90s, this article didn't speak to me at all. My autistic internet comprised IRC and USENET, and it died when LiveJournal died. I still have close friends from those days, when I have no close friends "IRL"- I can't say that for anyone I met on Twitter or Facebook, in fact I found both of those platforms to begin enshittifying looong before any of the NTs began to notice it.

I don't think it's just because I'm an older AuDHD woman, I think the existence of Facebook and Twitter from the mid to late 00s killed the autistic internet.

I know I’ll die with student loan debt, because I dropped out of college after four and a half years, never have had a decent job, and finally moved to another country without leaving a forwarding address. They found me once after I filed an absentee ballot, then I moved again. Welp, guess I can’t vote in the US anymore.

However, I refuse to be held back for life because of contracts I signed when I was 18 and too stupid to know what I was getting into. I didn’t even want to go to college but my mom made me.

The whole thing is ridiculous and stupid and it sucks that the way I took is the only way out, as most don’t have the option to leave the country and never come back.

Even back in the 80s we didn’t excuse bigotry, no matter the age or the history of the person. We maybe didn’t feel as safe calling it out publicly back in the day, but it was certainly discussed. A bigot is a bigot, end of story. There was no excuse for it in 1983- when the ones “from a different time” were young!- and there’s still no excuse for it forty years later.

In 1981, I won a goldfish at the fair. My parents were annoyed about having to buy a bowl for it. It died within days (no living creature should be kept in a half gallon bowl), but I pestered my mom into buying a ten gallon tank for the replacement. This was the beginning of a lifelong hobby- I now have nine aquariums in my living room, and in the past forty-some years have spent many thousands on tanks, fish, plants, fish food, and so on. My most expensive tank cost me €5000 to set up.

And all this began because I spent a quarter and managed to get a ping-pong ball into a cup.

So someone stole some stolen items.

Don’t get me wrong, of course it’s important that items are kept safely and nobody gets to walk off with shiny things. But it’s a bit hypocritical, because the British Museum is full of things stolen from all over the world, they even have a page about it.

The jokey post is true. The difference is whether a user sees this as a bug or a feature. Many of us see it as a feature. If you see it as a bug, maybe Lemmy isn’t for you.

I also don’t want to see the Fediverse “succeed”. Both Reddit and Facebook were great for a while, then they “succeeded” and enshittification began. The Fediverse is fine how it is, it doesn’t need to become the most popular thing on the internet in order to keep my interest.

I think the issue is that your are expecting a perfectly seamless, Reddit-like experience, with all the admin work done for you but also always done to your satisfaction. That isn’t what the Fediverse is about. It’s more of a DIY ethic than a “The admins suck but this is all we have” like on Reddit.

I’m also not sure what you’d need to “migrate” to a new instance other than yourself. Karma isn’t super relevant here.

My main account is on Beehaw, which has very rightfully defederated with some other instances. When I log in using accounts on other instances, I don’t see a massive amount of missed content. In fact I’ve seen so little of interest that I’ve stopped looking, it’s not worth my time.

You can always set up your own instance if you are disturbed by the actions of admins on instances that you have joined.

Alternatively, if the instance you are on changes direction, you can easily find a new one. It literally took me about half an hour after I learned about the Fediverse to get myself set up on several instances, then later on I decided which I preferred. But I didn’t delete the other accounts- they’re still there in case I want them someday.

The thing is, the dress went viral, not the people in the wedding. I have never seen a photo of the bride and groom, nor even a photo of the face of the woman who wore the dress. I don’t see how the dress itself going viral could be a nightmare for the people in the wedding.

Absolutely, I already was over “sticking to a platform no matter what” when LIveJournal was bought by Russians in 2007. At one time LJ was practically my life, but I took a “scorched earth policy” with my blog there just as I did with all my Reddit content.

Of course it is, and also in memoriam of…lots of people, I suppose. If you like “Wish You Were Here” you probably get it.

This is what made the decision for me. All the enshittification aside- in 15 years on Reddit, I did not make one lasting relationship with another human being as a result, even though I tried very hard at times (via everything ranging from Secret Santa to local meetup subs, to niche interest subs, and more). I have friends online that I have only known online since the 1990s, so it’s not that I’m “un-befriendable”. Reddit allows people to form mobs, not true communities, which almost always have many subsets of friends and acquaintances, rather than a bunch of strangers who actually don’t care at all if one of their members disappears.

Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt when I left Facebook, too. When my brother eventually also left it was so hard not to say “I told you so”- but I didn’t, and of course he never admitted that I was right all along. It’s good that I’ve matured enough that simply knowing it is enough.

He’s two years older than I am, and I’m here on Lemmy with a deleted 15 year old Reddit account. He’s always been like this, age has nothing to do with it.

I don’t know, my brother has been a Redditor for as long as I was (15 years) and he became angry and hostile when I told him about Lemmy. We’re both in our 50s.

He’s been using the official Reddit app for years and claims it “works perfectly for him”. He seems utterly blind to Reddit’s enshittificaton. He’s always been kind of an asshole- he behaved the same when I quit Facebook, though he eventually did the same- and he also fears new tech (he didn’t have a smartphone until 2020). I wonder if people like him- of which I’m sure there are plenty- will ever wake up.

Yeah, I’ve played that game to death at this point, I’m afraid.

OMG, this reminds me of when I shared my paper diagnosis with my new therapist…the diagnosis that had been so freeing, so life-changing…she read through it, said it was “dark and tragic” and that “it made her so sad.”

She wasn’t my therapist for very long.