"Autistic"...the new "retard"?

[Deleted]

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder, refers to a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.

Sounds to me like "autistic" is the new "normal".

[Zython]

oh, a personal attack.
Ive mustve hit a weakspot.

Who said anything about what I say to people? Im just observing what is happening. Shooting the messenger isnt going to change reality.

Where did I attack you? I was just making a suggestion. No need to be rude.

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What?
/10chars

Melanin

Genitalia is NSFW, unfortunately.

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What are you suggesting, that we should skip calling people autistic and go straight to the racial slurs? I mean, I'm on board with this, but I'm not sure if that's what you have in mind.

No, my point is that persecuting people for being assholes wouldn't be the worst reason we've come up with to persecute people.

[Deleted]

and back before retard when someone did something weird they got called gay.

Wonder what the next term that people massively overuse will be.

[Techno-Druid]

I always thought the use of the term autistic as an insult never really made that much sense. As someone who is on the spectrum and knows at least a little bit about the autism, it's strange that people link a neurodevelopmental disorder which has ties to genes linking to higher intelligence in some individuals as being the new "retard".

Of course that's not to say there aren't autistic people who do stupid shit, but for every Christian Weston Chandler there's a Tim Burton .

[Bapestar]

I don't know anyone in rl that calls others autistic. People like to use words like autistic, aids, cancer, etc. when many people suffer from these things. You would feel like shit, if you called everything cancer and someone in your family was diagnosed with it.

[Mister Cheese]

Offense is never given, retard. Get over it. I can use whatever word I want to insult someone. There's literally no reason other than people choosing to get offended is why word meanings change.

Gay, faggot, whatever. Words hold no meaning anymore because everyone throws them around like salad.

[Sastank]

Blame Twitch chat.

[Lady Dragonheart]

I don't think so, they have two completely different insinuations when used as insults.

[Immitis]

I dont care what anyone says, im not gonna stop saying retarded. if being called retarded offends you then you clearly arent retarded

[ItachiZaku]

This. Someone says something dumb, retarded.
Someone completely glosses over obvious sarcasm, misses a social queue, spergs out way more than necessary, autistic.

Same thing with calling your buddy a faggot for acting dumb or calling him a nigga cuz he's your buddy. Like, Who Steve? Nah, Steve my nigga. There's nothing racist or homophoby about any of it. If you take offense to being called a retard or what the fuck ever, that's on you. Sure, there are technical definitions for these things, but we've always had multiple meanings to quite a few words. If autistic is now to be the new "spaz" mocking, so be it.

Just randomly quoting you, btw. /shrug

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everyone throws them around like salad.

What you did there. I see it.

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Words only have the power people give them. Like the South Park episode about calling people Fags. When I was a Teenager I called people Fags all the time yet never associated it with being Gay. It was always basically synonymous with dipshit or moron. It was a versatile word back then.

Now you can't even call your best friend a "Fag" in public without offending some dipshit moron 10m away. So now I use other words

Being Australian though, the Word Cunt is versatile enough to fill the space.

Stop being a fag and just go back to using the word fag. I enjoy using the word cunt.

[zenkai]

Back in the day when someone did something stupid you could call them retarded, however nowadays that is seen as a major faux pas, and it's heavily fallen out of favor. For a while there was no real replacement, but lately I've noticed more and more that "autistic" is stepping up to take its place. I mean I think the *autistic screeching* meme is the biggest example of this. Whoever made this meme couldn't say "retarded screeching" so they had to go with autistic.

My problem with this is that using autism as a substitute for retard is just factually wrong. Autism is a spectrum...and most of the people who have it aren't at the level of "autistic screeching", not even close. For a lot of people autism basically means #1 You have trouble interpreting social cues and #2 you have extremely specific and intense interests. Most people you meet who have autism you wouldn't know they have it.

But I think more to the point is this...if you are using the word to reference severely autistic people then there is literally no difference between using the word "autistic" and "retarded"...people have just basically found a new way to say the same thing, but it doesn't have the social stigma around it yet so they feel fine saying it. My advice? Just don't use it...because if you're uncomfortable calling someone "retarded" then logically you should have the same moral qualms about calling someone "autistic".

It's all about Context, nothing is wrong with the word Retard, it's jus another word for slow, hence "mentally retarded". But since so many people used it as an insult it's now taboo to use it, even if its proper term. It's only a matter of time that other proper words get used as insults and then in time they will be found offensive.

[Gib Lover]

Just go with sperg or sperglord. Those haven't been tainted yet.

[Sliske]

No, I don't think so.

People have always used exaggeration. Instead of calling you stupid for dying to fire, they exaggerate it to 'you're a retard'.

Since practically everyone knows what autism is these days, everyone knows that one of the main identifiers of autism is inability to grasp simple social interactions and deal with shit like basic emotions without going mental.

Once people know the traits of a disease or illness or mentall illness or any disability, the exaggerations write themselves

Having a tantrum - autist
Doing something stupid - retard
Having a cold - swine flu / aids / ebola

Its an easy insult, i wouldn't put too much thought into it

In fact, if you think about it, pretty much all buzzwords are just massive exaggerations of reality. For example - if you are against immigration, you're not merely a conservative, you're a nazi , hitler lover. If you like things such as public healthcare, you're not merely a liberal, you're a communist indistinguishable with Stalin.

If you think people shouldn't be total cunts for no reason at all, you're a SJW libtard cuck.

If you think women shouldn't be pampered simply for being women, you're a sexist patriarchy monster.

I blame Twitter, personally. This shit was pretty isolated (with few big examples, such as the whole COMMIE thing in America in the 50s) but twitter practically shoehorns you into shouting buzzwords with its 140 character limit.