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Comment by exporectomy | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how some of those things are just relative. I've been in a group at university where everyone else began a meeting by talking about the latest sports updates while I just waited. Nobody gave me any guidance on how to deal with sports fans as teammates. I've also been shouted at and sworn at by otherwise normal classmates. This stuff is usually treated as acceptable when the higher social status people approve of it and not acceptable when they don't.

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That's an interesting point, and I agree. But the difference is, I have experience working with difficult and disrespectful people in group projects who are neurotypical. I know how to deal with them and how to resolve the issues that most commonly arise.

But in this case I have absolutely zero knowledge or experience dealing with a similar situation but with a neurodivergent person. It's a completely new thing that I've never had to deal with. That's why I'm asking for advice.

Sure. You're used to being able to manage people so it's a probably a bit of a shock when you can't. My personal perspective is more of the opposite and your complaint may have touched a bit of a nerve. Your experience is fairly normal to me but I see it as my own lack of ability, not anybody else's responsibility for helping me to manage those angry/selfish/etc. people. I would like it if there was some authority that managed them for me, but that never works in practice because people can outsmart the system.

I've had similar experiences. It's exhausting. Can't treat them the same way they treat us because of power differences. We're okay as long as we're accomodating them, if we try to do things differently we get excluded. Really easy to get frustrated and adversarial in situations like these.

I'm always tempted to get angry when someone gives me shit for not watching sports. Then they act weird when I talk about something I'm into.

Yeah, it sucks. We're supposed to make an effort to like the stuff they like. Not only do they not do the same for us, we're excluded if we don't nurture this common touch.

This is more eloquently expressed here:

https://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-38-think-as...

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