Since I was young, I've noticed that I do really badly in group settings, but put me one-on-one with anyone in that group and we get on really well.
For example, when I was 13 I went on a French exchange where I stayed with the family of French kid in Lyon. The usual pattern of these things is that the French kid arranges a hangout with one of their own friends who also has an exchange student. Then the two French kids spend the hangout together, while you have a forced lengthy one-on-one hangout with a totally random kid from your own school (I did quite a few exchanges, and this kind of thing always happened at some point).
Anyway, I went to this hangout not knowing who I would have to spend the day with, and when I got there I was horrified to discover that it was one of the group of about 6 people who had been bullying me recently. They had been spreading rumours about me being creepy, harassing and even assaulting me in the corridors, etc etc.
I should probably explain what the "creepy" thing referred to. I had a friend from the schoolbus, we were the only two in our yeargroup on the bus so we became friends although we basically never saw eachother at school. He was much more popular than me. Every Friday he would try to get me to go to the cinema with his friends, it was a weekly thing for them. I normally said no because I knew my mother would be mad if I did something like that without asking her permission, and I didn't have a phone back then. But after several weeks of having to turn down this invite, I finally asked my mother in advance if I could go. She wasn't happy, but I pleaded and she eventually said I could go just this one time.
So on Friday I found my friend and said that I was finally going to join him that evening. It turned out that for once he couldn't go, he had other plans that week, but it was OK because everyone else was still going and I could go with them. So, bearing in mind that my mother had said I could go this week only, I ended up tagging along with this group to the cinema, without my friend. And I didn't have a great time tbh, as I've said I do badly in group settings and I ended up hardly speaking.
The next week, the rumours started going round that I had "stalked" these people to the cinema, that I had "creeped" along behind them uninvited, that they had tried to shake me off but I wouldn't leave them alone. I kept trying to explain how I had actually been invited by someone who wasn't there, but I couldn't get the words out before someone was again calling me a "creep". And one of the guys involved in calling me a "creep" was the guy I would have to spend a whole day alone with in France.
I was really worried that it would just be a long day of intense bullying, but I was surprised when we had a really nice time together. We talked a lot, we had a lot of interests in common, I even explained to him about why I had followed the group to the cinema and he said it made sense and apologised for the bullying. At the end of that day I thought not only had I made a new friend, but also the bullying (or at least this specific bullying) would be over.
So I was surprised when I got back to school that, not only did the bullying continue, but the guy I had spent the day with in France was still one of the ringleaders of it. He was still calling me creepy, and telling people I was a stalker, and I never got any time alone with him to ask why.
In the 20 or so years since, this is a pattern that has cropped up again and again. Someone treats me really awfully and unfairly when there is an audience, but when we're alone it's like they're a completely different person. I am always myself in a group or alone, the only difference is that in a group I find it much harder to find space to speak. The content of my speech, though, is the same: I will not say something about someone in a group that I wouldn't say if we were alone. So I really struggled to accept that, for the vast majority of people, unlike me, they are performing for the group.
Group social activities are a game, but a game where you can win or lose the very real tokens of social power. An effeminate autistic "boy" is a very valuable tool if you want to gain social power, because abusing someone like that is basically a victimless crime. You gain in social status and you risk nothing. But if you are one-on-one with that "boy", it's much easier to treat "him" like a person, because no one who matters will know about it.
Somehow, in group settings, I always end up being the one who is marginalised, the one who rarely speaks and is always spoken over, even by people with whom I've had one-on-one conversations about always being spoken over, conversations that often end with them saying they will try to step in and help next time it happens. No one goes out of their way to let me speak, it is always more socially beneficial for them to not do that.
The only groups where I have ever felt like a true equal are groups that are majority trans women, it's quite rare but so valuable to have groups like that where your marginalisation is shared by so many others, it allows you to be Someone Who Matters at last.
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