#taking things literally

[inconsistentformalcat]

make friends, you say? but human transmutation is illegal

[twopunksexitapoolhall]

[threegoblinsandarobot]

Warforged: You say my arms are sexy? ...But my arms do not have genitals on them. Goblin: Oof. We need to teach you about aesthetic.

[mymangamemes]

Them: Wow, you can read me like a book!

Me:

From Lady Blue Bird of the White Lion Family by AHPUH, Bam2, and Roni Kim

[wowbright]

was telling my spouse the other day about the time a college girlfriend got mad at me because:

she forwarded me an email from her dad in which he informed her of two bits of sad news: one of his uncles who had been sick had passed away, and her recently born niece had a genetic condition (which I had heard of but didn't know much about other than that it was something that sucked and was life shortening but that most people live to at least middle adulthood with it).

her only comment when she forwarded this to me was something like "I'm so glad I got this email from my dad. I just loved getting the news this way."

and I of course (because I'm me) took that at face value -- i.e., she was glad she had heard the news from him and not from somebody else, or she thought he had written it in a kind and thoughtful way that made getting the news less upsetting than it might have otherwise been, or something of that sort.

and so I responded to that sentiment. I really have no idea what I said. but whatever I said, it was the Wrong Thing and I received back a screed about how insensitive I was and how I should show more concern about her family and her niece and didn't I have a heart, and later this turned into an in-person conversation about what a horrible person I was because girlfriend's uncle had died and her niece was going to die* and I wasn't taking it personally**.

Spouse just chuckled and thought it was very me of me to not have realized that someone saying "I loved getting this terrible news" was being sarcastic, and that is one of the many things that makes me adorable.

Love wins!

* the genetic condition is sometimes linked to childhood mortality but this is rare in the United States so I think it's fair to say my girlfriend was being fatalistic

** if anyone ever tells you that you are a bad person for not taking on the suffering of others, and that if you really loved the person (or the person's relative or friend or whatever) you would feel as bad as if you were the one going through the situation yourself, (1) they are wrong and (2) if everyone did that, there would be no one left to help the people suffering because we would all be in too much pain to do anything about it

[revyn-moonfox]

Neurotypical say "autistic people take things to literally" just to then turn around and say "You can't be autistic because you are able to make eye contact!"

[fuzzynecromancer]

XKCD Comic 883

The hover text is "If it were a two or above I wouldn't be able to answer because it would mean a pause in the screaming".

I feel like "rate your pain" is a problem, not just for people with chronic pain, but for people with autism.

[katherinakaina]

I can’t stand the way people communicate sometimes. Why do they always ask vague questions where the literal answer is one thing but you are supposed to answer differently anyway or you are a monster? My autistic taking things literally ass can’t compute.

As a charged example, ‘Is it ever okay to kill a child?’

Provided you already think there are critical situations where it’s okay to kill, the answer is yes. First, who’s a child? If anyone under 18 then it’s definitely yes. Second, there are all sorts of trolley problem situations I can imagine that are very rare but still sometimes happen. And the question says ‘ever’. Third, killing a child can be a byproduct of another action or an inaction and people tend to dismiss those as a natural cost of doing things in most cases.

But you can’t just answer ‘yes’ and not look like a child murderer.

Why not ask: ‘Should you always take an alternative to killing a child when it’s available?’

The answer to this is very clear, most people will agree and it will make them actually discuss alternative solutions instead of stupid semantics and edge cases.

But people very rarely ask questions phrased in such a way. Because they feel dirty for the exact same reason the positive answer to the first question feels dirty. And people hate feeling dirty way more than being inconsistent. They’ll say ‘it’s never okay to kill’ and then half of them will cheer for war and another for an assassination. They’ll read a ‘thou shalt not kill’ book full of people murdering each other and see no problem in that.

I just wish we could talk about things precisely…