If you go somewhere alone, say, a restaurant, that’s an ostensible bad vibe, plus you’re taking up valuable real estate and time, when you could iNvItE your bUdDiEs and make it more worth the restaurant’s while, so ‘fun’-based companies have all been subliminally forcing us for 100+ years to only consume their products with people around us – think the smiling people in those Olive Garden ads.
And I’m not saying it’s not fun to do these things with people, of course it is, I’d agree that it’s even more fun. But it’s not necessarily accessible or practical for everyone all the time. We should be able to enjoy the same pleasures of the world, the same excesses of capitalism, chef-cooked lunch from the Mediterranean for $10 in iowa at 10am, roller coasters, beach resorts, etc, without feeling shitty and weird for not having someone by our side. Same thing with the pressure to start a family as well. Sure, it’s a natural impulse, but it’s been hijacked by the ever-growing greed of capital.
It’s so insidious it’s insane. Marketing is scumwork for scumlords. They create empty spaces of desire we’re magnetized to fill. I’m sure there’s a way to think yourself out of this, but it’s hard and I have no idea where to start on that mountain and I think meditation is sort of bullshit (especially if you have autism [hi]).
I tried to buy season tickets for myself for our local baseball team and the guy was like ‘you can invite a friend if you want as well!’ and like yeah no shit, maybe I want to go alone and relax? Can I simply have that freedom without being nudged to constantly perform my own emotional labor to give them more revenue? Please? God?
You feeling shitty or weird doing stuff alone is a you problem. Literally nobody else cares or is even thinking about you at all. Everyone in the restaurant is there to do their own thing, eat food, meet friends or family, or work. Nobody is thinking “look at that weird person sitting alone” because they just don’t even notice.
Mentioning that you can bring a friend with you after buying season tickets is letting you know of a good benefit you might not have known. It wasn’t a secret attack on you or someone doing things by themselves.
Relax. There is no “introvert” persecution. Go do your thing, literally nobody cares you are doing them by yourself.
As someone who has spent years on the road for work and I still spent a lot of time on the road, that feeling is a you thing. Others do not care, and, more importantly, if they do care who gives a fuck. Their opinions are irrelevant. Don’t let their imagined perspective keep you from doing things. I ate almost every meal in restaurants by myself because otherwise I wouldn’t have eaten, or would have had to do like doordash or whatever. It’s none of their business if you are there by yourself, another, or 5 others. Live your life.
If you’re going to be mad because most people going out are doing so to be social you are going to have a very difficult life.
This is a dumb dumb dumb hill to die on and lose your shit over.
Sounds like you’re letting ads get to you and need to reduce that intake. Not always easy, but a pihole, ad blockers, and occasionally paying for a premium version of a service you use a lot can go a long way. What ads tell you to do or think is not what most people expect of you, its just corporate greed personified.
I spent years going out by myself, and never got the impression anyone cared what I was doing. It’s freeing in a way. I’m on my own schedule, doing what I want when I want. If I decide I’m not enjoying myself I just leave. No big deal. It can be an opportunity to meet others sometimes, and other times I might sit at the bar and end up reading a book. If I go to a concert by myself I don’t need to worry about losing or finding my group, and it’s easier to find a spot with a good view. There’s just as many positives to going out alone as going out with a group.
Finally, baseball tickets - what they probably meant is that your season tickets let you bring a friend with you for free. Some places do this because they’ll still get revenue from food and drink sales, but it’s pretty cool. I wish concerts or other venues did that.
Looking at people with their glassy eyes staring at the pretty lights, making small talk. The talk is small and meaningless. The entire point of the conversation is meaningless. The people appear to be performing humanity. They appear to be communicating, but no transfer of information is occurring. It sometimes makes you think that the other people are fundamentally, something. Something seems wrong with it: the ceremony, the pointlessness, the wandering around in circles. The conversations are those of dogs barking through a fence. They carry with them no language and no information. The dogs do bark, though. Why? If there wasn’t any information being transmitted they would be silent. The neurotypical engages in small talk for the same reason that dogs bark. The barking is the noise that carries the emotional state of the barker. People transmit emotional state information through small talk. The rituals are elaborate excuses to convey that state information to others. Emotional state information can be related to danger, food, well-being, whatever. The point is that the information is both very wide band and very dense Therefore, it is very useful. You, as an autistic person, are deaf to this in information and so seem like a color blind person or a stubborn person or a deaf person to allistics. Either way, the information is useless to you. Don’t bother performing. If you want to go alone, you don’t have to explain yourself. There can be pressure, but don’t think about it too much. The information is worthless to you anyways. People might be trying to be helpful, but unless you trust them and can legit unmask, you just have to deal with it. Animals bark, people talk. Whatever. I intentionally take a supremist attitude here to illustrate how engrained allism is in culture.
Restaurants with bar seating feel less weird for me
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