Might I ask which pointless social norm prompted this? I'm pretty good at helping my wife who's autistic navigate them.

My ADHD ass understands that I'm breaking the social norm but reaaallly needed to say something lol

mfw I found out that "are you hungry" actually means "will you eat with me" and "what're you doing this weekend" means "would you like to make plans?" 🤦

these are things I learned in the last 12 months – I just turned 42

pretty much all the time, it feels like everyone got a memo that I missed

You should do what I do and assume that everything everyone does has some kind of hidden meaning and spend hours analyzing it.

👍

Here in Burgerland, the most annoyingly common and brief version of this I've seen:

"How're you doing?"

actually describe how I'm doing instead of saying "how're you doing?" back

I just learned this Persian word:

In the rules of hospitality, taarof requires a host to offer anything a guest might want, and a guest is equally obliged to refuse it. This ritual may repeat itself several times (usually three times) before the host and guest finally determine whether the host's offer and the guest's refusal are genuine, or simply a show of politeness.

The host is then expected to say one should not do taarof ("ta'arof nakon" - similar to "don't be polite!") for which the appropriate response would be to say "no" two or three times and then pretend to cave in to the host's insistence and pile on the food.

I suspect every culture has examples of this (we can find it everywhere from The Water Margin to Curb Your Enthusiasm), but it's nice to have a word for one of these neurotypical song-and-dance routines that even the neurotypicals haven't mastered.

I feel like all social norms boil down to "Why do people do this?"

"Because."

And NT people just go along with the norms that are forced on them, never questioning why things are the way they are. I always get hung up on the myriad possible meanings of everything that is said and done. For me, nothing has a set meaning and everything must be thoroughly analysed with the context, tone, events leading up to it, etc. I know NT people don't think this way and just go through the motions but that's how I instinctively approach social situations and it's hard to just follow the unspoken NT rules, even when I know them.

I don't even think NT people like doing most of the normal routine but they're too compliant to rock the boat.

It's a big club, and we ain't in it

Honestly just speaking for myself as an allistic person i treat interactions with NT people as PvP. It's a fundamentally dishonest environment where at best most people don't care at all about you and just want to keep the day going without conflict but at worst people use the oversharing and the failure to follow norms as a way to fuck with people.

If i don't know the person or have a good read on them, I'm worried they might be a narcissist just looking for an angle. This is probably trauma from my momma but hey

Why do people have to say "bless you" when someone sneezes? Surely even people who believe in souls don't still think your soul escapes when you sneeze? Why do people even have to comment on normal bodily functions at all? Why is it rude if I don't respond to people responding to me making an ordinary, involuntary bodily noise??? AHHHHHHHHHH

I gave up on that shit long ago, I just don't care. My mom always gives me flack for it, because I'm either loud, or weird, or "inappropriate". Fuck you. I'm going to be direct as fuck or joke about your NT "politeness". Either open yourself up or I'm going to bully you for being a cowardly fake. Do trauma dump, do tell me how actually are you and not that "fine" shit, be forth and honest with me, don't interrupt a liar with "Um, excuse me good sir. It seems your trousers are alight." but with your favorite edition of animal feces (In Poland we say "Gówno prawda" or "Pierdolisz"). I had enough of these social cues and I'll aggressively fight them and struggle against them. I'm not tolerant of them.

I'm polite in my own ways, ways NTs consider "impolite". Well then they don't fucking know impolite.

Completely destroyed my own sanity by memorising a complex set of rules and over analysing everything to the point of mental exhaustion only to still get it wrong or be left in such an ambiguous state I can never know the true answer.

The same button never does the same thing twice.

I remember years ago wondering why interaction wasn't deterministic and asking over and over "what is wrong with me" practically to the brink of suicide. Didn't actually figure out I was autistic until recently. Honestly the only thing that helped was becoming racist to NT's and masking only enough to basic interactions and work related shit. I only have 1 NT friend but he's built different and genuinely tries his best to understand me in a way that he can be accommodating to my needs.

I also had a friend who would confuse me with subtext i never understood knowing it confused me then would call me an idiot for not understanding and i just let them do this to me for years.

Find yourself some similarly ND friends who you can be yourself with. There's probably clubs around