Autistic Communication Isn’t Broken—It’s a Neurotypical Compatibility Issue
Spoiler: The "social deficit" might just be your outdated firmware.

THE GREAT MISMATCH MYTH

Neurotypicals love to pathologize autistic communication like it’s faulty wiring. But here’s the kicker: when two autistic people talk, it’s not a breakdown—it’s a high-efficiency protocol that skips the bloated small-talk middleware.

The real issue isn’t us—it’s the insistence that everyone must run NT.exe to be "functional."

• Directness > Implication: Why waste time decoding "Would you maybe…?" when "Please do X" is clear?
• Content > Performance: Autistic convos prioritize information over vocal modulation or forced facial expressions.
• Parallel Processing: We bond through info-dumping and shared hyperfocus—no NT-style "social grooming" required.

If autistic communication were truly broken, why do so many of us thrive in STEM, coding, and engineering—fields where precision beats performative social games?

SMALL TALK IS JUST BUFFERING TIME

Research (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018) shows autistic groups solve complex tasks faster because we skip NT rituals.

Translation: While NTs are stuck in "How was your weekend?" limbo, we’ve already debugged the problem and moved on.

If "social skills" means wasting 15 minutes discussing weather patterns before getting to the point, then yeah—we’re gladly "deficient."

(Fun fact: An autistic person’s flat tone is "rude," but an NT’s passive aggression is "polite.")

‍THE COST OF FORCING NT MODE

Masking (aka "running NT social software on autistic hardware") drains cognitive resources and spikes meltdown risk (Livingston et al., 2019).

NTs call us "inefficient" while demanding we operate their bloated, ad-ridden social OS instead of our streamlined, open-source code.

The real "social deficit"? Expecting neurodivergent people to bear 100% of the cross-neurotype translation burden.

DROP THE PROXY, DIRECT CONNECT

The verdict is in: autistic communication isn’t broken—it’s optimized for different parameters. The problem isn’t that we "fail" at NT socializing; it’s that NT socializing fails us by prioritizing arbitrary politeness scripts over actual data transfer.

So next time someone calls you "too direct" or "awkward," hit ‘em with:

"Sorry, I don’t run on small-talk bloatware. Want to try a direct connection?"

And if they refuse? That’s a them problem.

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P.S. Your ‘polite’ ambiguity costs the global economy $37B annually in miscommunication (Harvard, 2022). Maybe we’re not the ones who need "social skills training."

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