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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2347 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 3, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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"Am I German or Autistic?"

http://german.millermanschool.com/

(I am neither German nor autistic, but it's good to confirm, through a psychometrically validated instrument that I'm a regular dude. Uh, I don't remember my results but I think it was 38% German and like 10% autistic?)

53% German, 40% Autistic. Commenting for my own reference later, documentation is important!

I got 49% German and 24% autistic.

I have a lot of German ancestry on both sides (and I'm Swiss (Basel) on my mom's side which is like luxury German.) I also have a ton of engineers among all my uncles and one of them seems sort of autistic but might just be "German." I don't know. I usually mildly dislike Germans and Austrians who I have met in my life, who I tend to interpret at pedantic in a way that reminds me of my mother. An Irishman I once met in Greece described Germans as "corny" and I have always thought, yes, that's the word for Germans ever since. I prefer the parts of my family who are Scots Irish because they don't tend to ground their nonsense in the self righteous superiority of my more Germanic descended relatives and embrace more openly the messiness of unknowability which the German wants only to stamp out. Of course I am making most of this up from my attempts at picking out cultural traits from my travels and cross matching with my family tree. I am descended from Mayflower pilgrims on one side and the most recent immigration I'm descended from was the Basler in the 1840s on the other so trying to unwind current day traits from my mangy puddle of Americanized Euro genetics is imprecise at best.

I find it fascinating the degree to which "narcissism" and "autism" traits overlap. One of my best friends' ex boyfriends is a programmer and I can't tell if he's autistic or a narcissist. I have never been close or even spent much time with anyone who has openly told me they are autistic or even "on the spectrum." I have met in passing strange loud children whose caretakers have told me these children are "autistic." I suspect autism is a side effect of being raised in bizarre urban or suburban environments which are at once overstimulating in their social excess and understimulating in their artificiality and distance from nature. Was it Tao Lin who claimed that at current rates, everyone in America will be on the autism spectrum in 100 years or something like that? I don't know. Sometimes when I'm in East Asia I believe that everyone around me is autistic. I don't mean that in an offensive way at all as I love East Asia and spend as much time as I can there but the efficiency that even grocery checkout ladies operate frankly reads as autistic to me compared to everybody else.

51% German, 48% Autistic. As someone who is diagnosed with Autism, I thought my other score would be higher.

30/30 for me

I’m normal - which is great, I’m Polish - need a Slavic version

33% German, 47% Autistic. Which is weird, because normally I score weirdly low on Autism tests.

42% German, 44% Autistic, not sure where the rest went. Redneck maybe.

Scores are independent on the test and don't need to add up to 100% (hence why some users scored "58% German, 47% autistic").

58% German, 47% autistic. More German than some actual Germans here scored.

Back in highschool my autistic friend told me that I'm half autistic. Clearly not normal, but not so far as him or my other autistic friend who were formally diagnosed.

I got 36% German and 51% Autistic. So close to half that it made me chuckle. I know this isn't a real diagnosis, and that the 50% wouldn't even necessarily translate properly, but it still made me take notice.

29% German and 69% autistic.

That's... about right.

When I got diagnosed a few years back, the practitioner said that I had "a lot of well developed coping strategies".

When I got diagnosed a few years back, the practitioner said that I had "a lot of well developed coping strategies".

There are only so many sincere compliments we can give without running afoul of the code of conduct. I'd take it.

Is that code for "you don't act autistic"?

There's a small irony in asking him to interpret that

I would guess they were saying you seem pretty well adjusted and capable of gracefully navigating life in a way that many other autistic people struggle with.

My family did the best they could to beat it out of me and I guess it mostly worked.

Probably? It's a reasonably diplomatic way of saying so. I'd also assume they meant that you are functional and successful despite the diagnosis.

31/29. I already knew I'm not German but it's reassuring that I'm not autistic either, even if do open and skim through instruction manuals.

Your Result: Neither; Somehow. German: 38% Autistic: 27%

I'm somewhat surprised by this, considering that I felt distinctly annoyed multiple times during the quiz that there was no back button to let me return to a previous answer to change it. That should have made me Autistic, or at least German.

We are apparently the exact same amount of German @self_made_human, which I guess is one more thing for you to worry about.

Sigh. I guess it's time for me to look at foreskin reconstruction options.

Result: Both. 53% German, 49% Autistic.

Huh.

40% German, 60% autistic. I'd quibble that I've been specifically tested and found not, but like Corporal Nobby Nobb's "I Am A Human, probably" certificate, that doesn't really help. And given that I've already Wittgenstein'd at other posters here, I can't complain too much about being called Wittgenstein.

I'd quibble that I've been specifically tested and found not

Was it a concern at one point that led to evaluation?

Not strictly.

I'd had a couple traumatic medical experiences in an environment that Strongly Encourage Therapy for them, and the specific office my parents went with had checks through a variety of classically under-diagnosed conditions. Some of them were perfunctory - two or three questions involving a wooden puzzle cube stick in my mind that I've since learned were developmental disability tests, for example - but the autism-adjacent stuff ended up going into more thorough testing. This was back when Asperger's was still a diagnostic option, so not unreasonable, but I was just a standoffish kid that didn't pay attention to social queues cues, rather than being unable to notice them.

I was just a standoffish kid that didn't pay attention to social queues

Not to be a pedant, but I think you mean cues, not queues.

But I did chuckle imagining young gattsuru just cutting in line with such frequency that clinicians decided he should be assessed for autism.

two or three questions involving a wooden puzzle cube stick in my mind that I've since learned were developmental disability tests

Oh, like the IQ test pattern blocks, or something else? The blocks I had to assemble in patterns were what I remember most about when I had to take an IQ test for gifted education when I was young -- I don't think I did so well on that part.

Not to be a pedant, but I think you mean cues, not queues.

Thanks, yeah, that's right.

Oh, like the IQ test pattern blocks, or something else?

The Kohs Blocks (or some descendant) were one, and there was also a simple test involving wood blocks with cubic outlines and a challenge to guess how many cubes the whole contained that I can't the name of.

36% German, 64% autistic. This sounds about right. No actual German ancestry though.

teutonic 'tism is peak coconut culture and kept the ancestors safe from dying in the winters, your peachy genetic framework can likely never comprehend having to prioritize strict discipline

I think 38% German is a very respectable amount: it corresponds to me being punctual (mostly, don't @ me @fttg) and generically responsible. Any higher and I'd lose the sense of humor, and what else do I have going for me?

36% German, 22% autistic.

Like @SubstantialFrivolity and @Southkraut I often found two or three of the answers a reasonable fit. This was somewhat of a whiplash given the last few four-choice tests I've taken were pre-interview screening tests where one of the four was a clear fit for me or the "correct" answer the firm was looking for. For example:

You have an important deliverable due to your boss tomorrow but you're running behind schedule. Do you:
A) Reach out to him proactively and discuss if there can be flexibility around the deadline, evaluating the tradeoffs between punctuality and the quality of the deliverable.  
B) Tell him your grandmother died and go on bereavement leave. 
C) Call in a bomb threat to the office building first thing tomorrow morning. 
D) TOP him and become the new boss.

I'm only exaggerating slightly.

The correct answer would be D, of course.

It's always the longest answer. Always. Except for professional ethics exams. Then it's always the second most ethical answer.

It annoys me that test writers seemingly haven't figured out how to get around this hack. Followed it from high school through the bar and it's never failed me.

The correct answer would be D, of course

I did not know that you graduated from casual competitive misogyny to homosexuality, but that is hardly uncommon either. Ah, the things I've heard catty gay men say about women... if I said half as much, I'd be in the lockup (not that I want to, I think women are pretty and caring and smell nice, and I constantly fraternize with the enemy).

I did not know that you graduated from casual competitive misogyny to homosexuality

Excuse me, this is a lazy, uncharitable characterization and disrespectful to my professionalism.

It's not competitive homosexuality; it's creative, strategic networking for accelerated career growth opportunities.

53% German, 47% autistic. Like @Southkraut I agreed with three of the answers to most questions. Genetically I am 1/8 German (7/8 Polish), so I guess the one great-grandparent's genes are working real hard in me.

36% German, 13% Autistic.

I’m very slightly surprised I scored this high on the German scale. I will also interpret the autism score as indisputable proof that ADHD should not be placed anywhere near the autism spectrum.

Funnily enough, a good friend of mine once described me as the most engineery person he knows (and being an engineer himself, he knows plenty).

I will also interpret the autism score as indisputable proof that ADHD should not be placed anywhere near the autism spectrum.

I mean, that's the standard psychiatric consensus. And an opinion I share. They are very distinct clinical entities, though there definitely exist large numbers of people who are "AuDHD" in the sense they have both conditions. But that isn't special or worthy of a distinct diagnosis, anymore than someone with ADHD and depression has ADepressionHD.

But that isn't special

Well, try telling them that.

Even worse are the people who apparently have diagnosed (or suspected?) BPD, and then openly brag about it. Even on dating profiles.

Well, try telling them that.

My time and patience for arguing with people being idiots is, sadly, quite limited. Especially when I'm not getting paid to do it. I don't recall an actual patient who showed up and demanded that something out of the ordinary be done for them because they have both diseases, but it's early days yet.

Even worse are the people who apparently have diagnosed (or suspected?) BPD, and then openly brag about it. Even on dating profiles.

Even worse? My man, that's even better. In the sense that I will selfishly give them points for being honest and waving a red flag at onlookers. I can tell you from experience that you do not want to know what it's like to date a BPD woman, especially one who was undiagnosed and wouldn't accept my suggestion that she get assessed for it. If people express their most obnoxious personality traits and then are proud of it, anyone still lets them into their life is too dumb to deserve much sympathy. Or perhaps they really value passionate hate sex, I can't judge too harshly.

what it's like to date a BPD woman

”Don’t stick your dick in a crazy” was invented for exactly this.

I fucked around and found out. Being charitable to myself, it was a learning experience.

Not even twice.

If you know you know.

Your patterns are cultural, not neurological. You have internalized a set of values — precision, order, directness, the moral weight of punctuality — that the German philosophical tradition worked out with unusual care.

Kant's categorical imperative is basically this: act only according to principles you would want universalized. You live by this, probably without having read Kant, because you have absorbed it through some combination of upbringing, temperament, and the fact that it is simply correct.

You are difficult to work with in the ways all serious people are difficult to work with. This is not a diagnosis. It is a compliment.

German 27%

Autistic 67%

help?

Nah, you’ll be fine. You’d have more reason for concern if you were 67% German instead.

40% German, 60% Autistic (Wittgenstein).

Unreasonably pleased that it adds up to 100.

Very German/autistic of you. I'm glad everything is working as expected.

(I would have enjoyed that too, albeit probably only 1/6th as much)

CategoryRating
German47 %
Autistic58 %
OverallWittgenstein

You have, apparently, both the cultural formation that produces systematic people and the neurological substrate that makes systematic thinking feel like breathing. This is either a significant advantage or an explanation for certain recurring difficulties in your life. Probably both.

Schopenhauer also fits here. So does Ramanujan, though he wasn't German. The category isn't German or autistic—it's people for whom the gap between how things are and how they ought to be is not an abstraction but a constant, low-grade irritation.

My mother tells me that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at some point, but she doesn't have any of the court files to prove it.

I doubt that I have any German heritage, though my mother does hail from a former Danish colony.

Just show me the formatted table post and not the username and I could've guessed it was you.

This website's Markdown implementation does not support the fancy hyphens-and-pipes table syntax that Reddit's implementation supports, so users are forced to type the table HTML manually—and that's a good thing™. More people should learn (X)HTML. Typing HTML in a plaintext editor often is more relaxing than typing in a WYSIWYG text editor.

  • You don't have to mess with Character Map or AutoCorrect in order to type en and em dashes, subtraction, multiplication, and division symbols, directional quotation marks, etc.; and you don't have to guess at what specific character a horizontal line is when you see it long after you typed it. Instead, you can just type a character reference (picked from a default list in HTML or a fully custom list in XHTML)—& ndash; & mdash;, & minus;, & times;, & div;, & ldquo;, & rdquo;, etc. (without the spaces)—and it will remain perfectly legible in the plaintext forever.

  • You don't have to mess with invisible section divisions and style changes, constantly having to guess whether Word has actually done what you wanted it to do. Sections are clearly visible elements, and styles are clearly visible classes. Nothing is ambiguous.

  • I think there was recently a discussion here regarding how learning a second language enables a person to better understand his first language. Likewise, learning HTML enables a person to better understand what Microsoft Word is trying to do behind the scenes while you clumsily interact with its interface.

Entirely within my expectations, ngl. I do think Aspergers deserves a place in modern psychiatric taxonomy, when up to 80% of people with autism have learning disabilities, then it at least served as a convenient shorthand for those of normal or above average intelligence. Well, I don't get consulted on either the ICD or the DSM, at least not yet.

When I was younger my friends swore that I was autistic because I was never afraid to say ‘anything’ to anybody. It was made worse by the fact that I spent a lot of time growing up in the hood. My friends were afraid I was going say something that was going to get us shot. I’ve been jumped before a number of times by over a dozen people. But it wasn’t uncommon with most of us, we all got into several fights. Once you’re in hell, only the Devil can help you out. You had to fight to establish yourself in the pecking order among the boys and even if you didn’t gangbang (which I didn’t), you still had to be affiliated with the clique, just to get by and survive. I can remember doing homework in the hospital with bruises all over my body once when people used to come and visit me. One of my friends, she still makes fun of me when we have the opportunity to hang out, because I have this habit of walking I sometimes slip into that she calls my “ghetto strut,” and she grew up in the same area I did and we've known each other for decades, so she could immediately tell where I was from. The influences sometimes still rub off on you.

Socialization was always one of those things that was difficult for me because I had no capability to be fluid with it. I improved enormously as time went on, but things still seem rigid at times as if I’m searching for the appropriate or correct answer that speaks to the moment, and there isn’t a lot of natural flow to it. I tend not to pickup on context very well. If someone comes up to me and restarts a previous conversation we had from the point we last touched upon, I’ll have ‘zero’ idea what they’re talking about unless they clarify things prior to picking it back up (e.g., “so about earlier,” “to answer that question you asked awhile ago,” “remember when you said X earlier today,” etc.).

Never been diagnosed in any way. But my friends were always fascinated by things I could do and gifts they thought I had; and they wanted to know why I was the way I was. Much of it is projection on their part IMO. They’d always have me take these personality tests, and in a couple instances paid for the exams for me to take; and had me do all these really complex mental challenges. I never liked doing them though and always got tired of it, and after awhile I think they finally picked up on it. It’s why I eventually stopped trying so hard in school and only did just enough to get by. I’ve never liked being the center of attention and just wanted to be left alone to pursue the things I liked.

I do not think that being a nerdy (possibly) autistic boy in an actual ghetto is ever a fun time, so I'm sorry you had to go through that but very happy you made it out intact.

I wouldn't even particularly advise you to go get a formal assessment done, at least if you don't see a need for it. Other than closure, for someone like you, all we can really offer is a label and (perhaps) a stronger case for workplace adjustments. If you're already doing fine and feel functional, what's the point?

If you're already doing fine and feel functional, what's the point?

I'm not the person you are responding to, but in my case it was incidental. I went seeking treatment for PTSD and they wanted to sort the tism out first.

Thank you.

Again, I'd never been officially checked or diagnosed with anything, and some people just have general personality quirks. Not everyone connects the same way. If I did have it, I'm pretty high functioning and most people wouldn't suspect it. But even as I've gotten so much better, it's still never one of those things that never comes naturally. Socialization in general is one of those things that always gets easier the more you do it and everyone has bad experiences. How you succeed and in what environment depends very much on whether individuals find 'their people' and group or not. It feels much more natural and at home in the company of close family and friends. I've also strangely never had any problems speaking to large crowds or groups. I’ve gone up against a whole room of people before in debate, and I can do that with ease when others typically run away from the stage or podium.

It feels much more natural and at home in the company of close family and friends. I've also strangely never had any problems speaking to large crowds or groups. I can do that with ease when others typically run away from the stage or podium.

That's fascinating -- me too. I hate smalltalk and I struggle to make connections with a stranger, but I love public speaking even if it makes me nervous. My father is the same way, he is a teaching professor and an extremely animated one, but also extremely introverted and hard to get to know.

I've found, for me at least, it's about feeling in control. I have two ways coping with social anxiety: either curling into a ball and waiting out the clock until I can leave, or making myself the center of attention. Either way, I'm controlling how the rest of the room gets to interact with me.

Hm, interesting. I think for me, maybe for my dad, it's that the situation is structured and in public speaking you're given 'the floor' and people are socially expected to pay attention to you, or at least pretend. So it's an environment where you don't have to fight for airtime. I guess I also like it because it's a situation where you're permitted to monologue without interruption about a topic, which I always find enjoyable. Even if I have to improvise -- I enjoy improvising more than most people enjoy reading a prepared speech. It's like jazz.

But it's the back-and-forth and the fighting for airtime and the having to engage in real-time with ambiguous social dynamics that I find hard to deal with. It's difficult trying to figure out how to say something that's bland enough to not offend but interesting enough to achieve rapport, and then follow up, in real time, with a useful reply that continues that pace, with someone I don't know well.

That’s awesome. You and I are identical in this way. I wonder what explains people like us.

For me, it's about being able to control how others are interacting with me. Whether I'm in the spotlight or on my phone in the corner, it's better than trying to react to small talk. Small groups is just chaos and I hate them.

I obviously am not an illustrious doctor, but it appears to me that the ICD has more or less retained Asperger's syndrome in its table of diagnoses.

6A02 = autism spectrum disorderFunctional language
Mildly impaired or not impairedImpairedCompletely absent or almost completely absent
Disorder of intellectual developmentAbsent6A02.0 ≈ Asperger's syndrome6A02.2—
Present6A02.16A02.3 ≈ childhood disintegrative disorder6A02.5

In the sense that that it recognizes {no intellectual deficit plus some generic autism traits} as a sub-category? Yes. But Aspergers was handy. We got rid of it without a handy epithet to replace it.

It would be like replacing "mild depression" with "depression without suicidality, severe anhedonia, psychomotor retardation..." You have replaced a convenient and pragmatically helpful diagnosis with a more unwieldy one, with no clear benefit.

I am obviously am not an illustrious doctor

Don't worry, neither am I. At least the illustrious part.

psychomotor retardation

Sir, we do not say this anymore lest the cancellation gremlins come for us.

Seriously? Because in the UK, it's still the most common term (with only a minority opting for psychomotor slowdown). I don't think I've ever seen anyone get PC over it so far IRL.

Retard was never quite ubiquitously PC-banned, but there was a lot of spikiness. I grew up in the 90s and 00s in an area with such a spike, such that calling someone a retard or something retarded was probably about equivalent to calling a gay man a faggot. I was quite surprised when I grew up and encountered people in my professional life calling things retarded in the office.

I think it's probably retreated a bit such that it's not considered quite as offensive here anymore, but certainly almost no one ever says it in casual conversation. The last time I heard it in a social situation was a friend's gf who had recently moved into the area, which prompted the friend to stare daggers at her and compel her to shut up.

I've noticed a bit of hubbub in the PC circles due to the distress at this word becoming more common again. Ironically, I feel like this is an example of moral progress: in the 90s, we naively thought that it was morally correct to discourage the use of that word. 30 years later, we've realized that, like slavery or human sacrifice, such a notion was just a primitive belief by a less moral culture that we've outgrown.

Retard was never quite ubiquitously PC-banned, but there was a lot of spikiness.

I'd say it was. Perhaps not will-get-you-fired-banned, but will-get-you-banned-from-fora-and/or-unfriended-banned for sure.

Retard was a highly banned term for half a decade although it is slightly coming back now. PSR got caught in that (with PSR being the way to maintain the term).

Unhoused and undomiciled are still in a fight for supremacy over replacing homeless, although "person of" language may yet sweep in.

… psychomotor retardation...

That almost sounds like a term for road rage.

Good example of specific popular words obscuring the meaning of widespread technical terms.

Retardation is used in a lot of science contexts to refer to slowing or obstructing "retard the motion of..." The most popular usage the slowing of brain referred to as "retarded" as become primary.

Psycho refers to mental stuff in general, but "psycho" (thanks Hitchcock!) now means the one thing...

Quite the opposite. It's most commonly seen in depression, though anabolic steroid abuse does lead to depression, sometimes.

Basically, you know the intuition that depressed people seem to move and speak slower? It's quite true, at least when the depression is severe enough.

42% German, 24% autistic. The fact that the two figures are mirror images of one another is pleasing to me, which probably means I should be awarded an additional 5 autistic points.

51% and 49%. Sounds about right.

I was thinking of tagging you, but the bit works best when you show up of your own volition.

Yeah, that test was made for me. I could agree with easily 3 out of 4 possible answers for each question.

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