I want to tell people this sometimes, but I figure they'll just think I'm mansplaining mansplaining.
Not really. When a dude pulls the “sorry, I’m neurodivergent and can talk way too much about this” or “I’m sorry I struggle with getting my thoughts clear to other people so I can overexplain” I’m a lot more sympathetic. I really think it’s best to think of mansplaining as gendered preemptive assumption of lack of knowledge
The key is to never take a clear pause; semicolons only; make them worried if you’re alright with a torrent of Skink facts.
Skink Facts!? Subscribed!
Did you know: there’s a mathematical formula that uses the length of a skinks toes and the length of its tail to determine how arboreal the species is?
Also, skinks wanna be your friend!
Subscribed! More, please!
Skinks are a social reptile! Unlike more solitary species, skinks can and do congregate.
Often for quinceañeras!
I don't know how to subscribe, but I want to! c/skinkfacts incoming?
Regretfully I only have two skink facts. If you’d like, I can start making them up? Or replacing real facts with skinks?
Did you know the Ancient Egyptians worshiped skinks (crocodiles) for the way they protect their young? And the temple in Skinkodopolis, priests would bejewel these skinks, and mummify them along with pets and servants.
I want to believe these are real, because what a world we would live in if they were!
Scientists have not conclusively determined which species of skink is the cutest. But it’s this one.
You forgot about the part of option 2 where you realize midway through explaining that the other person either understood and you misread the situation, or they just don't care, but now you've gotten too far into the explanation and you just have to power through even though literally every fiber of your being is telling you to shut up
... wait
Also the need to include irrelevant context and to overly correct yourself on irrelevant details.
"So I learned this from a coworker who drove a blue car, or was it red? Either way it was definitely a 1993 Honda Civic. Or '94. Definitely from the early 90s. I could tell when they got to work because the brakes sounded like a duck that got hit by a rock, not that I've ever thrown a rock at a duck! I did chase a goose away from my dog with a stick once. That dog was fearless in every situation except against birds. I never found out what breed he was but probably a shepherd mix. I remember the day my parents brought him home..."
Yeah... Explaining things the other person doesn't care about...
My wife called me on that earlier today. "I know you need to ADHD info dump on me, but it's time to wrap it up."
that's a thing, sure, but at least personally most of the time it's neither of these, it's "i have so much knowledge of this topic lodged inside my brain that it's fighting to escape and i have a profound need to talk about it to others, and there is no greater joy in life than having a person ask follow-up questions"
And it would be so much better if that something was something others actually find interesting. Instead its something esoteric like energy storage solutions, or the difference between b550 and x570. I was once asked, "what's the difference between m-ATX and mini-ITX?" And I knew way to much about it to be socially healthy...
This is what I like about the makerspace community. We get a lot of new members who almost reflectively react to the perceived "WTF are they talking about, why won't they shut up?" vibe that most people give off. It's an amazing trainwreck when they realise that they are not only not annoying people with it, but that people have an active interest!
you will fucking love sociology and philosophy then.
the cycle goes something like this:
And this is how we get shit like "incars" philosophy is truly incredible.
Option 3: I work in IT. I see on a daily basis people with bachelor's and PHDs doing some of the stupidest shit. I assume no one knows fuck all.
Them: "My camera for teams isn't working please help!"
Me: Flicks open the webcam cover and smiles trying not to make them feel too bad😅
Having received a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet, embedded into a Word document, I always go option 3.
I'm also old enough to have had to explain why a 27MB Publisher file could not fit on a floppy disk to be sent to the printers.
The older I get the more I kick myself for "knowing" I'm too stupid for a PhD or master's in anything.
I've always had an interest in science, I love watching something like PBS spacetime or fermilab videos (because I'm obviously a layman and won't understand anything actually detailed), but I've always held this belief that I'm "wayyyy too stupid to actually do the work." and then I hear story after story of "very smart people" simply not understanding the simplest of concepts.
Oh well lol
then I hear story after story of "very smart people" simply not understanding the simplest of concepts.
Usually this is because their knowledge and skills go very deep, but not very wide. There is also a big divide between the practical side of things and the theoretical. Another thing I’ve noticed is that if you spend a lot of time working on very complicated problems you tend to forget that most things have simple solutions. So when confronted with a simple issue your mind kind of ‘skips over’ all the simple stuff and immediately assumes it must be something complicated.
As the goto "Tech Support person" in my friend group, this really strikes a nerve. I really hope I haven't come off as a know-it-all. Trying to explain any kind of broad subject feels like playing pinball with all the thoughts in my brain while trying not to let the conversation flow sink into the gutter.
I think if your friends are coming to you and asking for help, then you're in the clear. Part of being a know-it-all/mansplaining, is that nobody asked and they decided they needed to bestow that information onto others.
I feel for me it’s more like:
A problem is presented to me that I haven’t encountered before but I feel like I’m expected to help. So I start talking while my brain works its way through all possible scenarios leading to me rambling on until I maybe possibly arrive at a conclusion which will hopefully make the whole thing make sense in the end.
Of course later, once the situation has long resolved, my brain will have completed a few other calculations subconsciously and I will know for sure that I was an idiot and you, the person I tried to help, will probably think so too. 😆
Is bolding every other word an ADHD thing or some zoomer thing
I think it's a form of ADHD over-clarifying.
Makes reading it very jittery for me, like if it was 👏 this 👏 sorta 👏 text
I'm an old millennial AuDHD and I have to resist the urge to use bold and italics everywhere for different kinds of emphasis. I'd use even more variations when available (text size, colors).
When I was younger, I used to do the same in analog form with multi colored pens when taking notes.
I don't often bold comments, but i do like using italics and sometimes all caps to EMPHASIZE an important part. I guess the difference for me is whether it's something I get fired up over like bodily autonomy. I use caps to emphasize more than italics.
In a regular discussion or if I'm just overexplaining something, I stick to italics. (and if I feel something needs additional clarification, but also maybe the reader wants to skip because it's not really necessary, I'll use parenthesis to show where you can skip to)
I feel called out.
Oh man this hits hard.
I've been working on a project at work lately and everything I explain to people about it (namely people above my boss), I feel like I have to give like 5 years of backstory first.
Isn't mansplaining just being condescending?
In theory yes, in practice some people use the term very broadly.
My dad does the opposite of mansplaining, he explains things using terminology and concepts that are way above my level of understanding and gets frustrated when I ask too many clarifying questions or when I struggle to catch on.
It fucked with me pretty bad growing up and in an effort not to put other people through that I tend to assume people know little about esoteric subjects I'm talking about and try to explain things in a way the general layperson would understand. If they let on that they seem familiar with the subject then I adjust but I do often worry I'm coming off as being condescending :-\
I tend to assume people know little about esoteric subjects I'm talking about and try to explain things in a way the general layperson would understand. If they let on that they seem familiar with the subject then I adjust but I do often worry I'm coming off as being condescending :-\
I do the same thing. I feel like I suck at explaining things, because I am so deeply into a few things, and shallowly into a ton of things, I have no idea what the average layperson knows. When I'm explaining how I solve a Rubik's cube, do I use the word algorithm? Do people know what algorithm means?
How much does the average person know about space travel? I got into KSP at a relatively young age, so I have no idea if most people are aware that to get to orbit you have to go really fast sideways. I have no idea how many people think that astronauts could drop something off of the ISS onto the planet. Can I use the phrase ∆v? How deeply am I going to have to explain the concept of ∆v?
I think the most complex thing that I can reasonably explain is what a parsec is, but it still takes like 3 paragraphs, and that's assuming I don't have to explain the concept of using degrees to measure how far apart things appear to be in your field of vision. Which I genuinely don't know whether that's general knowledge or not.
To prevent mansplaiming I just assume everyome knows as much about a topic as I do and get annoyed when they ask me questions.
I feel attacked
usually when i'm getting into some really nerdy shit, i tend to explain the ever living hell out of it, because shits complicated as fuck.
I could ask whether the other party knows it, but let's be real, i'm enjoying myself too much to ask lmao. Just tell me to stop and i will.
I am so repetitive when explaining things or telling stories, it is awful.
Hm, I think it is probably a bit more nuanced than that. Sure, insecurity with rejection plays a huge role. So does having having a brain that orders information in a neurodivergent way, be it more jumbled up, associative or more structured.
I often need to know everything about a certain topic until I feel like I understand it. And it has to follow logic. If you only give me single bits, I will be confused. So when explaining stuff to other people, I try to convey as much information as I can because that's what I would need as well. This might easily be confused with mansplaining or with being pedantic. I point out logical fallacies when I spot them because my brain gets confused otherwise. Some people might also misread this as power play. But usually my insecurity speaks for itself I guess because if you are outwardly insecure it will fail as power play (e.g. mansplaining).
Another aspect of neurodivergent oversharing is getting obsessed with a special interest that then everything revolves around and you want to only talk about this topic. I guess it is a state where the brain is so focused on this one thing that the outside world just isn't as relevant. This might also be confused with mansplaining, but is probably more likely to be read as socially awkward? Although both have in common that the other person is seen as somewhat irrelevant and unknowing.
One great habit to get into is when you have something like this that can be mistaken for something rude you can just preemptively apologize for it. “I’m neurodivergent and have a tendency to overexplain” doesn’t make it not frustrating but it does make me not think you’re assuming I know fuck all. I also like using “I don’t know how much you know about x” it makes it very clear I understand you may be more knowledgeable than me on this
I'm autistic and I feel this.
….oh
Third option: Neurotypical comms major
Fourth Option: words are coming out and not sure what I said but just want to leave although I just got here.
The lighter side of ADHD
