I had a boss one time legitimately and seriously say "stop listening to what I'm saying and listen to what I'm telling you."
WTF am I supposed to do with that?
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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me_irl
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read their mind.
they feel like your inability to understand their horrible communication is a fault entirely in you and has nothing to do with themselves.
or more accurately, they just want you to emotionally validate them and tell them what they want to hear.
also, even if they did tell you what to do explicitly, and you do it, they will 100% come back at you 'BUT NOT LIKE THAT'.
because now it's not about communicating, it's about abusing/confusing you to feel like they have control over you, to see how how much bullshit they can get away with before you tell them to f off.
They say that because the listener is so focused on exactly what is said, likely adding non-relevant context or missing context, and dragging out things instead of understanding the message that is being conveyed.
For example, when I say pick up trash to mean things to throw away and the kiddo focuses on whether she considers something that should be thrown away to be trash she is focused on what I am saying but not what I am telling her. "It isn't trash, I just don't need it." Then just throw it away!
are you serious? you're blaming your kid for your mistakes?
she's a kid. kids don't know what trash is, tell/teach her what the trash is. stop expecting a child to understand what you mean without giving them instruction.
reminds me of every shitty coach I had as a kid. 'just hit/catch the ball'. and they get pissed off when you made a mistake, and then basically tell you you just suck and should quit.
Then the good coaches would... actually teach you how to hit and catch the ball... and then tell you what you did wrong when you made a mistake... and you'd... get better at playing the game... and you'd go from being crappy to being a lot better...
She is 17, not a young child. We have been going over this for over a decade and it really comes down to her refusing to acknowledge things are not always exactly literal. We have gone over this with a therapist for over 5 years as well, because she gets so worked up about it. I have repeatedly shown her what clean means in various examples but she keeps falling back to specific nit picking every time.
Note thst I am not referring to some kind of spotless perfection. Just not having trash around and things tidy enough to vacuum and dust and other basic cleaning practices.
Guess I should have given every single detail so you wouldn't assume so much to twist it into some kind of blame game for a child not listening to their parent.
she's not a child at 17. the fact you think she is might be why she is so incapable of adult functioning.
She is autistic you judgemental fuck.
cool, guess she can live with you forever then.
I called her my kiddo, you used child because you assumed an age. You assume a lot of shit that isn’t accurate and have painted a completely different situation than what I wrote.
It will take a few more years for her to catch up with everyone else but we are working on it. Lack of success doesn't indicate lack of effort or understanding.
You are clearly a terrible person.
I find it amazing how this person managed to exactly prove your point.
They're actually answering correctly, the question isn't if they're too literal, everyone is literal most of the time, it's finding out if it's to the point that people have to bring it up.
Yes, but also, this assume the respondent's social network hasn't been filtered already
Jesus just how autistic am I?
People don't tell me I'm too literal, they just hint at it and imply it. Strongly disagree.
Ahh yes, finally, good fucking autism
What do mean? I'm NT.
Oh shit.....
One person frequently tells me I'm too literal, and also tells me that most other people we know think I'm too literal.
However only one person actually tells me, and "people" implies multiple, therefore I'm marking this one down as a "strong disagree".
the word literal now means figuratively for a large chunk of the population.
so you're fucked no matter what at this point. pretty hard to take things literally when words literally have contradictory meanings.
People have told me that, but that was only like five people out of hundreds I've talked to. The question is asking generally. I don't think less than one percent of people counts as "in general" so I'm gonna disagree.
If I'd never heard anyone say that before, I'd strongly disagree, but since I've heard it a few times, I'll just disagree instead.
I feel like these test are just designed to tell everyone they’re autistic.
I think it's the other way around actually. I was told once that if you're the type to never enter Strongly agree unless you 100% agree, that gets factored in to the score. I usually take these tests with a bit more nuance but I'm not inclined to believe the test is that well designed unless I see how the score is calculated.
In any event, anyone with a tablespoon full of self-awareness can pretty much score whatever they want on the AQ50. They're just hoping you'll fill it in as honestly as you can but it's essentially 25x the question 'I am autistic' and 25x 'I am not autistic'.
You’ve got my reasoning correct (the questions are too pointed and susceptible to confirmation bias), but I still disagree with you in that these tools are designed to tell most people they have autism even if minor.
Some egregious questions that always pop up are “do sounds annoy you”(paraphrasing) and “do you find that social situations can be overwhelming”, and an especially bad one: “do you get fixated on specific topics or collections of items”. Most people will say yes, because they have hobbies and think they are “quirky” but this is really referring to obsession with stuff to the point it degrades your life.
Because of that susceptibility and the probability that a lot of people taking these tests already subconsciously think they might be autistic leads to basically everyone coming away from those tools with “signs of autism” at the least.
Then we end up in the current society where it’s apparently cool to be autistic and not some life ruining disease it is.
If people don't generally tell you that, then the answer to the question is disagree