Neither of us consider friends people to ‘love’.
At around ages 3–4 in childcare centres, I did not interact with many people. Friendships were mostly held up by the encouragement of the parents of various children from the childcare centres.
At these ages, my mother stated, ‘You always talked to grown-ups. You did not like being around kids. You always looked for a grown-up and went towards them.’ My mother also stated that the first thing I would do in one childcare centre was run straight for the computer that they had available, ignoring everyone else.
At ages 5–6, I had three main friends, one of whom, who was my best friend at the time, had autistic traits. At these ages, my friend also had three main friends, one of whom he believes also had autism.
At age 6, in a new school, I made a friend who also had autistic traits. A year later at age 7 or 8, I made friends with a new student who had arrived to the school. When the teacher asked someone from the class to show him around the school, I volunteered, which was highly unlike myself at the time.
It would later turn out that this student also had high-functioning autistic traits and high intelligence, and he would end up being the friend who ran websites and servers at age 10 and introduced me to this idea.
By around age 9, I had made a third friend in the new school who also had autistic traits and high intelligence, and he would talk to me about computing tricks such as denial-of-service attacks in the programming language Perl. All three of us would be the people who received detentions in this school after I worked out how to send popup messages to every computer in the local area network at once using cmd at age 10.
At around ages 9–10, my friend had made three friends, two of whom had high-functioning autistic traits.
At age 11, in secondary school, I eventually made friends with my current friend with my condition as well as a second friend who had a milder form of Asperger syndrome. I stopped speaking to this friend when I left secondary school, but he would continue attempting to communicate with my friend until some years later.
My friend also made friends with another student who also had autistic traits and high intelligence, and he occasionally continued to talk to this person until 2020 but on a strict basis of discussion only about computing knowledge, since this person had been offended at the subject matter we discuss.
At around age 13, both my friend and I made friends with a third person in secondary school who had a milder form of Asperger syndrome but high intelligence. We would continue communicating with this friend until 2018, when we stopped communicating with him due to his repeated offence at our discussion matter.
At age 14, I stated how I’d blocked a friend from primary school on Facebook since ‘anything I said to him would upset him, offend him or anger him, so I thought it would be best to just cut contact with him to avoid offending him further.’
At age 15, a group of school peers, some of whom had been bullies in earlier years, attempted to make friends with me. I communicated with them online after I left school, and my friend later joined. This lasted until 2016, when we immediately disassociated with them due to a close call with the police as a result of their readiness to engage in risky or criminal activity.
Our ‘friendship’ takes a form highly unlike any we’ve observed in any person with the social mindset. We have the proximity to meet, but we never do, as we have no reason to. Instead, we communicate everyday online. Our online communication consists mostly of the current research we are engaged in and discussion of the social-mindset features.
Other differences include the fact that we simply never say ‘Hello’, ‘How are you?’ or ‘Goodbye’ to each other. We consider it unnecessary. The chat simply picks up where it left off each day.
None of the people from any of our previous schools, except ourselves, had our condition to our severity, and all of our former friends with autistic traits and high intelligence went on to appropriate typical societal views.
We are not interested in making friends with anyone who does not have our condition to our severity.
At age 19, I stated:
‘It really seems as though [people are] as normal as they seem. I don’t think there’s much, if any at all, hidden secrecy behind most people. It’s starting to become worrying, because of my experience. People have been shocked by the simplest of things I do, and with the people I’ve got really close to, nothing they did was particularly outlandish.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes. I often wonder what people do when they walk along and what are they doing – nothing. It’s like their minds are filled with nothing.‘ I replied, ‘Exactly. It seems we really are much much stranger than everyone else, to a shocking and potentially reputation-destroying degree.’
I continued, ‘If I knew the ins and outs of the practices of any person I’ve been with [that are socially seen as disgusting], I guarantee I wouldn’t be disgusted or shocked, but with 99% certainty, if it were the other way round, everyone would be disgusted, even by people as close as [my girlfriend in 2014]. It’s a shame, a shameful situation.
I never feel I can be 100% myself with anyone; worse, no more than 60%, usually. It’s excruciating sometimes, yet I feel like they’re being well above 90% with me. You are the only person I’m well above 90% with.’ My friend replied, ‘Reputation-destroying, same. If people knew everything about me as a list, I’d be spat on.‘
I continued, ‘Exactly, and the thing is, you see other people’s friends, and they say they know everything about each other and can tell each other anything, and I’m really starting to believe it’s true, that they just can, because they’re not as weird as us. I don’t believe they’re hiding anything of worth.‘
My friend replied, ‘Well, obviously it never reaches any form of complexity. It will all be aligned with what is socially correct.’ I replied, ‘Yes. It looks plastic and fake, but what I’m saying is, I think it’s reality. I think they really are that simple and that not-weird.‘
I continued, ‘Every time I’ve tried to describe my relationship with you, I always get weird reactions. They don’t understand it. Our relationship is nothing like anyone else. It’s clearer by every experience, and it’s sad.’
At age 20, I stated to a third person in our group chat:
‘We were just discussing normal-people friendships and how they’re so superficial, friendships to impress, friendships where it looks like they can’t actually tell each other everything about the other person, even when they claim to, even the best of best friendships. … This is all circling back round to the nightmare I see myself living in, where everyone has superficial relationships.
What I am tired of is never being able to show myself fully to people. I’m tired of settling for people like that, where I’m constantly treading on eggshells, can’t address certain things. It shouldn’t be allowed.
[My friend and I] made the right decision of ditching [one friend] who we’d known for some 6 years for that exact reason. He would keep leaving the chat and getting offended at certain things. In the end, we just had enough. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s no true friendship.’
My friend later elaborated on this former friend, stating, ‘Yes, I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it anymore. I knew it was wrong, what he was saying, and it just dawned on me that it was the right thing to do to stop speaking, because I realised there was no return from it. He was irreversibly incompatible, so any further conversation with him would have to be fake, so there was no point, no point in fake friendships.
To say something like he did and some of the other things he did indicated he was totally and irreversibly on the wrong page, so there was no point trying to cultivate a relationship.
Also, I had to rephrase and constantly reformulate so as not to offend. I spent too much time on wording. I couldn’t properly justify myself, because he didn’t know enough, so I just sounded like a lunatic.’
At age 20, I stated to my friend, ‘I usually know exactly how you’re going to respond to me, and that’s the point; that’s what a real relationship should be like, unlike these superficial friendships.’
At age 19, my friend quoted a news article that stated:
‘Dec considering splitting from his Britain’s Got Talent presenting partner over what he described as an “indefensible” offence [drunk driving] and revealed how his friend’s conviction left him needing therapy.’[1]
My friend remarked, ‘It’s like me getting arrested and you needing therapy and berating me. It’s the fact that’s a nothing crime as well, and yet, it still got that reaction. “Dec said he wanted to ‘punch and hug’ Ant at the same when he heard of his arrest.”[1] Fucking hell. Imagine a “friendship” like that.
When you look at people’s friendships, they’re always a joke and not like ours. They’re all fake, superficial. They know nothing about each other. They have “secrets”. It’s so volatile. It’s violent, untrustworthy, peer pressure and treading on eggshells.’
I replied, ‘But then you wonder why Dec was taken by surprise by this conviction, like he didn’t know his “friend” was a drunk. What a friendship.’
At age 20, I stated:
‘You’re able to cognise the various societal viewpoints outside the [social mindset]. These people aren’t. When we discuss, we have a fruitful back-and-forth productive dialogue if we don’t agree.
When I discuss with [regular people], it’s instant shutting down and offence at the first sign of disagreement. It’s instant silent treatment and wanting to change the subject.
It’s such a bullshit way to deal with disagreement, and the only reason it becomes an issue is because they [have the social mindset] and espouse those views themselves [without being able to objectively rationalise them]. They support makeup; they support alcohol; they support whatever it is, so you can’t challenge it without them taking it personally.
I am able to challenge views of yours without you taking it personally, because they are entirely evidence-based. It’s your observations based on what you’ve seen and what you know. You don’t have any wifty-wafty, fluffy social opinions with no basis.’
At age 19, my friend stated, ‘Imagine the jail of speaking to a normal person, not being able to send anything: “Why did you send me that?” “What the fuck is that?”‘
At age 20, I stated:
‘There’s a lot of mutual obviousness in this friendship that simply doesn’t and cannot exist in others, for some godforsaken reason, even the obviousness of you [not saying anything about me to another person that I didn’t want you to say]. I didn’t have to say a word. I just know you wouldn’t from the start, but I can clearly envision others violating that about their “friend”.
I can’t help but hark back to that argument I had with my sister [in which she told me not to interact online with a friend of hers, on behalf of the friend, without us yet having had any form of interaction]. That level of distrust, it’s just astonishing.
See, I see it as distrust, but she’d see it as sticking up for her friend [or, according to my friend’s theory, being embarrassed of the idea of her brother speaking to her friend and the friend bringing this up to her, which would not cause embarrassment in a friendship as coherent as ours]. It’s because they have the social layer, where it’s an automatic impulse to do that, and part of the relationship is actually propped up by and relies on that layer.
They have to say emotional words to each other and say they’ll “be there for each other” in order to be awarded trust, while we don’t have to; it just comes naturally, due to our shared positions. It’s such a toxic and alien way to see a friendship, totally bonkers and beyond me.’
My friend replied, ‘That’s what I mean by a mutual knowing who the other person is, or mutual trust, and I don’t have it with [a person my friend was speaking to], because I feel like a psychological condition could take over at any time that is not any of the rational things we have discussed.’
At age 20, I stated, ‘It’s funny; I keep having to reference your record of 982 messages sent at once as an achievable figure in a friendship, because people keep claiming people don’t like when many messages are sent at once or are weirded out by it themselves. It keeps being reminded in my mind, that time you sent all those [rare] words.’
At age 20, I stated, ‘It’s all about emotional tokens for them and “having each other’s back”. I got reminded of a Reddit answer I saw yesterday. … It was the author’s friend telling [a boy] he was the second-most unpopular kid in school, and [the boy] was insinuating that that hurt his feelings but that he “appreciated his honesty”, and I was just dumbstruck, thinking what sort of a friendship is this [in that the boy was offended by these remarks rather than assessing whether they were factually true or not]?’
At age 19, my friend stated:
‘The concept of “going out with a friend” is an alien one. I get it off people all the time. There is no gain. Something is wrong with the friendship if you need to go out with them.
It means the most interesting thing in the friendship is outside attractions. The most significant thing in this friendship are views and knowledge, which [online messaging] facilitates. Speaking face-to-face might have some vague and theoretical advantages, but the disadvantages are move vivid.
It would be an insult if we met to go to [an amusement park], for instance, but people who do do that it suggests the nature of their relationships, and it’s in line with everything else I know about their relationships, and I can see how the advantages for going out would outweigh the disadvantages in their mind.’
At age 20, my friend stated, ‘Nice cerebellum. Hahaha, and then you realise what other people are sending each other: selfies of them in their new clothes.’ I replied, ‘Memes.’ My friend continued, ‘And you’re sending your cerebellum and corpus callosum.’
At age 20, my friend and I experienced an impromptu and unplanned meeting in real life, due to having had a psychiatry appointment at the same place and time. This was the first time we had met outside since secondary school (and the second time overall). The meeting lasted 4 minutes and consisted of my friend’s mother conversing with my father whilst we stood looking away from each other without exchanging a word (for reasons explained below). After the meeting, my friend stated:
‘My mum is extroverted.’ I replied, ‘She acted more or less exactly like my mum, as I predicted.’ My friend replied, ‘Yes. My mum didn’t embarrass me that much. It was mediocre, nothing like some of the stunts she’s pulled in the past.’
My friend continued, ‘I swear, you always look surreal in real life, because of your height. You look tiny online.’ I replied, ‘You [look surreal] too, mainly by how much you look like me, in build and everything.’
I continued, ‘My dad brought up our meeting in my appointment, saying we look like long-lost twin brothers, “same hair and everything”. I almost lost it but held it together. I was almost losing it throughout my meeting with you too, but I realised it would stop when I stopped looking at you, so I did. I was almost losing it multiple times.’
My friend replied, ‘Same. I was looking away in the opposite direction at times, was looking over my shoulder, because I was already smiling. It’s because you’ve just become hilarious. There is this whole world of association.’ I replied, ‘Exactly. Everything just conjures up, a circle around your head.’
My friend replied, ‘Exactly. … My mum said that she noticed we were wearing the same attire.’ I replied, ‘[Your mum]: “And they don’t even look at each other.” Hahaha, you should be so glad it wasn’t my mum taking me there, so fucking glad.’ My friend replied, ‘My mum was pretty bad. Would your mum have been worse?’ I replied, ‘Far worse.’
My friend replied, ‘Would they have entered gossip mode? My mum loves someone like that.’ I replied, ‘Definitely, but she would’ve taken jabs at both of us, because she’s against everything about us.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes. My mum did. She took a jab: “There’s no hope for us, is there?” Your mum would have been straight on that one.’ I replied, ‘Yes. That’s minor to me, though. I brushed that off. Remember how my mum was crying?’
My friend replied, ‘My mum actually said that your father seemed to have autism, that he had something going on.’ I replied, ‘There you go.’ My friend continued, ‘She was expecting massive gossip and jabbing, etc. etc., and she didn’t get it.’
I replied, ‘Hahaha, now that you say that, I picture the regular dad and how overexpressive they are, how jolly and handshaking and rocking their head back and forth as they talk.
Could you tell my dad had half of my condition? My dad was definitely caught off guard by your mum’s talkativeness. He does handle it well, but he doesn’t talk much. He tries to play it down and calm it and make it go away.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes. I noticed that. I knew it wasn’t going to go well. It really would have festered if your mum was there, the gossip and the embarrassment.’
I replied, ‘Yes, but knowing my mum, she could even have got emotional at the topic at hand, seeing someone else exactly like me, or indeed angry, depressed, visible defeat in her voice and face. She wouldn’t have been happy to see you, looking as you do and acting as you do, like me.‘
My friend replied, ‘Hahaha. Would she have gone up to me and cried?’ I replied, ‘No; she would’ve done it while talking to your mum: “There’s no hope for these boys”, etc.’ My friend replied, ‘Yes. They would have related. She would have found a long-lost friend, someone struggling with the same issue.’
I replied, ‘I now don’t want to bring my mum and your mum together if I can help it, which is funny, seeing as that was the plan in June. It would be fire and fire.’ My friend replied, ‘Yes, wouldn’t be good. I can see that now.’
At age 20, my friend stated:
‘The fact [a person my friend was speaking to] thought someone like me would be looking for a friend on [a social-media app]; the fact she thought I’d have a job. She is a little naive to people like me. I think she can only compute and has only had experience of lower-layer people, where those questions apply, has never experienced people like us, ever.’
I replied, ‘I am kind of sick of that, in fact, people not getting to know us, not knowing what to expect even when it’s in plain sight – the most basic things, let alone the complex intricacies.
My parents, my sister, any girl, any psychologist; even when I tell them, even when my behaviour is blatantly clear, all put up for show, even when they have years of experience with me and how I behave, they never get to know me. They always assume the most blatantly wrong things about me.
But you know it’s not about [people having never experienced someone like us]; people never get to know us, even when we’re put in front of them. They never know what to expect, even when we’ve been with them for years, and yet, we know what to expect from them before even knowing them. It’s this absurd dichotomy.’
My friend replied, ‘Because they can’t compute it. They only know people and can only perceive people in terms of the [social mindset].‘
I replied, ‘Lol, those last messages [in which the person expressed confusion at our concept of “red flags”, i.e. social-mindset features], every time. When a regular person becomes faced with the concept of the social mindset, it’s a foreign logic they don’t understand, like a foreign language.’
At age 20, my friend stated:
‘I would say no friendships exist other than ours. All other ones are fake.’ I replied, ‘Yes.’
My friend continued, ‘[Being] best friends with animals: it’s a very good point, because it highlights what people consider to be friendship, the quality of it. It’s such a caricature.’
At age 20, my friend stated:
‘We are interacting with people who do not get to know people. They have superficial excuses of friendships. They don’t know them at all.
The people we are speaking to people don’t know anyone and have never got to know anyone and don’t know how to. They don’t know it’s possible. They don’t know what type of relationship is possible.’
At age 20, my friend stated:
‘That’s exactly the reason why I can’t be friends with people, that dreaded call-out feeling, that attack feeling, the guilt-tripping, the friendships that contain “banter”, any form of teasing, any form of detrimental behaviour to the friend, any sort of joking about fundamental matters. That’s what will happen.
Social-mindset friendships aren’t real, calling out their friends, jeopardising their friends.’
At age 21, my friend stated in a voice message:
‘I just made a discovery, actually: the way people answer these questions is almost like a speaking exam. It’s almost like they’re trying to say a set phrase in a foreign language in these interviews or when people just talk in general in supposed “friendships”.
I’ve noticed that the questions people ask are almost like these sort of politically correct questions that require the expected-code answers, answers that display the expected emotional and moral code. It’s almost like there’s this extreme pressure to not step out of line, just the stuff that they say; it’s like it’s pre-prepared.
Let me think of an example. It’s like they come out with just the standard phrases. … They’re asked a question, and it’s like they’re struggling for things to say, and they just come out with this emotion.
They’re asked about the positives of someone else or what they’ve got in common with someone else, and it just reminds me of a speaking-exam question, just the way they answer, “I think we both enjoy what we do…”; it’s like they’re scraping the barrel for a response, the questions they’re asked, how they respond. It’s like they’re responding to try and say something nice and politically correct.’
I replied, ‘Yes. I said that about college [how students respond to questions from teachers]; mantras, but you’re right. It applies to all situations. In all situations, people speak like in a speaking exam. No, you’re right. I’ve said it before. It really pisses me off.’
At age 21, I stated:
‘[The disagreements we have] on knowledge are a) fairly rare, b) carry an assumption of self-lack of knowledge in an area and c) lead to the pursuits to find the real answers.
Basically, when we disagree on a convention or point of knowledge, the first thing either of us do is google it up and send a screenshot of the prevailing thought, the history and origin. We immediately de-subjectify it and make it objective.’
References
- ^ a b Small, Nicola (2019-03-30). "Declan Donnelly reveals he's been 'having therapy' since Ant's crash". mirror. (Archive version from 30 March 2019.)