#neurodivergence — Public Fediverse posts

@Truth Collector It's really hard to explain to a neurotypical person who absolutely doesn't know this feeling, and who absolutely can't relate to it. It's even harder for me because I, personally, don't know this feeling from first-hand experience myself.

In addition, it isn't just "yes" or "no". Different people experience eye contact differently, and different people may feel uncomfortable about it in different ways.

I've read somewhere (I don't know where, and I don't have a link) that some neurodivergent people, upon seeing a picture with eye contact, feel like the person on that picture is looking through their eyes, right into their brain, their mind, their very soul. In this case, it feels intrusive to them. Even though it's "only" a picture.

But it isn't necessarily that and only that. Here's a quote-post from someone on Mastodon who actually is autistic, and who explains what images with eye contact feel like to them individually.

RE: https://mastodon.moule.world/@MOULE/112839238866393700

Also, there is this comment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/18x1rdm/comment/kg75s54/.

I'm not diagnosed, but have always hated eye contact to the point where people on the cover of magazines would disturb me, specially those in the pile of magazines you'll find in the toilets, I would always turn them over to hide the faces. Now I wouldn't need a CW for that online, but depending on the context it does make me feel uneasy. I've been staying at my sister's over the holidays, she has pictures of family and friends on her fridge, I would sit with my back turned to it and feel like I was being stared at.

Unfortunately, there are no peer-reviewed scientific papers or reports about this. All there is about neurodivergence and eye contact is about how neurodivergent people don't make and maintain eye contact in conversations. And these tend to immediately and only go into the direction of "they don't do that because they can't recognise faces". Neuroscientists seem to only have understood this phenomenon that far (probably also because literally every last neuroscientist is as bog-standard neurotypical as they ever come, so there are none who can analyse their own experiences).

This may also be because this entire phenomenon is so very obscure. It's only an issue in a few select online spaces. It probably originated on pre-Yahoo! Tumblr which was chock-full of neurodivergent young people up and down and and back and forth across the whole spectrum. I guess one reason why they used Tumblr was that it had a dedicated content warning field, much like the one on Mastodon, only that it was invented from scratch for this purpose and not, like on Mastodon, a re-purposed text field that originally had a wholly different use (true story).

But this whole phenomenon only existed on Tumblr and nowhere else on the Web, much less in real life.

When Yahoo! took over Tumblr, they changed the rules in such way that entire communities were driven away, including many neurodivergent users. They often found a new home on Twitter. But Twitter doesn't have a dedicated content warning field, so the entire concept of CW-ing topics that may trigger people or make them feel unbearably uncomfortable lay dormant there.

It only came back when many of those who had been chased away from Tumblr to Twitter when Yahoo! took over Tumblr were chased away from Twitter to Mastodon when Elon Musk toook over Twitter. And Mastodon does have a CW field. So this entire concept was revived.

Unlike Tumblr, however, the greater Fediverse is not a place where enclosed and totally secluded bubbles can exist, at least not at the same degree as on Tumblr. Especially not if Mastodon is involved. So you have young neurodivergent people whom a whole lot of things may turn into quivering nervous wrecks for reasons that even their shrinks would fail to understand if they had any. They demand just about everything be CW'd. And they inevitably encounter much more mentally stable, bog-standard neurotypical people who are like, "Can't relate, don't understand, not gonna comply."

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #EyeContactMeta #CWEyeContactMeta #Autism #Autistic #Neurodivergent #Neurodivergence #Inclusion #Inclusivity #A11y #Accessibility