#anyway. i will be blaming it on my lack of imagination (autism) and the fact that this course sucks =w=bb im coping leave me alonee

[autism-corner]

coding exams suck if you. dont know how to code.

[captainthief]

Michael Jones, Fidget Cubes, Serial Killers, and the movie ‘Split’

Let me start this out by saying that Michael Jones is one of my favorite people to ever exist. Ask any of my friends, and they’ll tell you how I’m constantly raving about how funny he is and how cool he is and what a good person he is. If I didn’t believe in that last bit so completely, I wouldn’t even be writing this post—I’ve seen personalities like him react badly, or completely ignore, issues like this, but I’m writing this because I firmly believe that if Michael does read it, he would accept what I have to say and take it to heart.

For those who don’t know who Michael Jones is--he’s a good guy, who happened to say something careless. Please read anyway.

So, today, the newest episode of my favorite podcast, OffTopic, was released on Youtube. The boys got on the topic of the Fidget Cube that’s been a huge trend lately. I was ecstatic to hear them talk about it and how much money it raised on kickstarter! But then Michael said that they’re something serial killers would definitely have, and my heart sank.

For background: I am Autistic. All of this information is what I have learned from participating in Autistic communities—I’m not a psychologist, though I do often discuss these things with several trained professionals. Anyway, among Autistic people and other similarly neurodiverse people (conditions like OCD, ADHD, and Dissociative Disorders, for example) ‘fidget toys’ have been a thing for a while—rings that have spinning parts, or necklaces that you can chew on, or puzzle toys like Rubix Cubes, ect. That’s because people of these neurotypes are often either ‘overstimulated’ or ‘understimulated’—either there’s too much going on for their brains to process, or there’s too little going on and the person has excess energy. At these times, neurodiverse people will do what is known as “stimming”—repetitive physical movements or actions. For the understimulated, this gives them a task to do, and for the overstimulated, it becomes a grounding action to focus on. Stimming takes many forms, often just seeming like the person is an especially energetic or fidgety person—things like tapping, or clicking your tongue, or shaking your leg. However, some people are compulsively drawn to less socially acceptable “stims”, like rocking back and forth or flapping your hands. That’s why fidget toys were developed—to help people like this stim without being socially inappropriate.

So when I heard the boys talk about the Fidget Cube, I got excited, because it’s rare that ND (neurodiverse) related things hit the mainstream, especially things that are actually good for ND people and not abusive (more on that in a bit). It didn’t matter to me that the boys seemed to think it was kind of silly—even the fact that they were talking about it meant that maybe some ND behaviors can start to be more normalized in public.

And then we get to the Serial Killers. Michael said something along the lines of “I’m not saying that everyone who has a Fidget Cube is a Serial Killer, but probably every Serial Killer has a Fidget Cube”. I can understand perfectly why he said something like this—for a brief second my mind turned towards agreement, before I realized the implications of Michael’s words. Here’s the thing: Michael phrased his words that way intending to be non-offensive to people who use the Fidget Cubes, and that’s why I think he may listen to me about this, but frankly, it wasn’t good enough and is still a harmful statement.

Here’s why: even with their recent popularity among the general population, fidget toys are for Neurodiverse people. They have proven significant psychological benefits for us. Whether neurotypical people find them fun or comforting, they were developed for the neurodiverse. When you think of a fidget toy being used, you’re probably imagining a person with noticable symptoms of neurodiversity (cue Trevor with the Adderall joke, both funny and accurate). So even if you say not all people with Fidget Cubes are Serial Killers, when you say All Serial Killers have Fidget Cubes, you’re probably associating Serial Killers with noticeable symptoms of neurodiversity. You’re saying all Serial Killers have symptoms, and so probably a large percentage of Serial Killers are neurodiverse.

Again, I can’t really blame Michael for having that unconscious association. Most people would. That’s because most people have a very disproportional idea of how Serial Killers and mental illness/disability relate. Most of it’s media related—just look at that new movie Split, which completely twists Dissociative Identity Disorder into something it’s not, to scare people. The fact is, ‘scary’ mental disorders—Autism, Schizophrenia, ect—do scare neurotypical people, and so they are associated with other scary things, like Serial Killers. That’s not to say no Serial Killers are mentally ill—many are—but it’s not nearly as high a percentage as common perception would have you believe.

To many people, this all probably seems like something small to make a fuss over. Why does one little joke matter? Well, here’s why: because neurodiversity is almost never acknowledged by the general population, except as something scary. Let’s use Split as an example again—most people would probably call it ‘multiple personalities’. Try to think of every instance where you’ve heard those words—I can guarantee that for most people, it will only have been in Jekyll/Hyde-esque scenarios, where the “other personality” is mean or evil or socially unacceptable. So what? Well, there’s probably more than one child from the age of 7-17, when most people develop more definitive personalities, that feels like they’re two or more people. There’s probably more than one child from the age of 7-17 who feels like they are more than one person living in one body. There’s probably more than one child from the age of 7-17 who feels like this and sees an ad for Split. There’s probably more than one child from the age of 7-17 who sees that ad, maybe several times, and thinks that’s scary and that’s evil. There’s probably more than one child who actively tells themselves “I don’t want to be that”, and try to convince themselves that they’re a ‘normal’ person, and ignore what’s going on in their own heads so that they aren’t rejected by others. There are millions of mentally ill people in the world—but because mental illness is scary, there are also millions of mentally ill people in the world that refuse to believe they are mentally ill, and so are unable to get the treatments that could vastly improve their quality of life. There’s also millions of non-mentally ill people in the world, who will avoid the mentally ill as though they’re contagious, or bully them for behaviors they can’t control, or even kill them.

And so I return to Michael. Michael, I’m not going to say “educate yourself on these issues”, because I don’t expect you to do that. I’m not going to say “You need to apologize”, because there’s no way you knew that you were feeding into this issue. If you end up reading this, then saying what you did may even have been a good thing, because this way, I can let you know something you wouldn’t have known. Michael, all I’m going to ask from you, and anyone else who reads this, is to remember 7 words: mentally ill people are not bad people. This little phrase works in reverse, too: bad people are not mentally ill people.

When you said that Serial Killers would have Fidget Cubes, you probably had an image in your head of a character from a movie or story off the news. That person probably had some trait that made you uncomfortable—obsessiveness, or hyperactivity, or lack of eye contact, ect. Michael, when you think “that person is so creepy”, I want you to think, “but there are good people with the same traits”. I want you to think, “Just because there’s ‘something wrong’ with them doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them”. All I want, is for you to be aware that on some level, you do associate mental illness/disability with bad, scary things—if you are aware of your own bias, then you may be able to begin to take a step back from your own thoughts, and think, “There it is. That’s wrong.”

I just want people to realize that we all tend to see “mentally disabled” as “bad”, and that it’s unfair.