For a while I thought being clear about “hey I don’t think you’re doing this on purpose” was gunna be helpful but it turns out that people will still take everything as a personal attack anyway!

I think they hear that stuff and their PTSD from HR speak and people not saying what they fuckin’ mean kicks in. “Of course this is informal (and also I’ll bring it up to deny you a raise)” or whatever else to that effect in their lives.

And sometimes we do fuck it up and think we’re being nice and honest but could probably dial it back a little.

Fuckk I'm not autistic to my knowledge but I feel this so much in online interactions especially and it's so confusing. I'm usually trying to contribute information or just have a conversation and people often think I'm trying to argue (I guess because presenting new information automatically = dunking or being argumentative somehow) and I've ended up just not wanting to interact much or I preemptively try to phrase things as questions (like "isn't x" or "I thought y") and it's so exhausting trying to do that all the time and it makes me want to crawl in a hole and not interact with anybody.