Guys, watch this video. It’s extremely good. It’s less than 2 minutes long. And everything depends on it. Alternatively, skip this post, it’s just a brain dump right now. This breaks my heart and makes me want to cry, but like… WTF? Doesn’t everyone do this? This must be a thing that everyone does, because otherwise it wouldn’t have gone viral. Absolutely everybody has to filter themselves all the time. It’s part of being human. It’s what we call “Executive Function.” I refuse to believe this isn’t the norm.
As a software-guy and mostly-neurotypical partner of an ASD woman, a decent analogy for masking is the difference between running a process on a CPU vs a GPU.
For me, my self-censorship and adaptation to the people I’m interacting with seems to run mostly on a dedicated processor, like GPU handles graphics calculations, with conscious oversight taking maybe 5-10% of my CPU.
My partner reports masking can take between 10 and 60% of her computer power, depending on how interactive she has to be. Parties etc take a lot, talking to a friend much less.
The big difference is she doesn’t seem to be able to offload the cognitive work to a specialised module that does most of the work in the background. That brain module just isn’t there. She has to be hyper vigilant to consciously notice things like expression, body language, and tone of voice, in order to intellectually deduce subtext and deliberately react appropriately. It’s exhausting for her, and she will often be totally drained after a social event or work day.
All that being said, it’s always a great experience for me when I can totally be myself, but I think the conscious cognitive workload that I’m dropping when that happens is far less than when someone with ASD de-masks.
Consider that this girl's TikTok handle is "BorderlineAcademic". I suspect autism and masking are the least of her problems.
Also, there are three levels of enlightenment (not using that phrase in any specific religious sense, just analogizing to them in general).
Most normies are masked, but they've worn the mask so long and so studiously that they've forgotten it's a mask. They don't feel constant inner peace or whatever, they have a sense that Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong, but because that wrongness is connected to a mask they don't know they're wearing, they don't know where it comes from. They'll also vociferously deny wearing a mask.
At a certain level of systematizing, with a good enough therapist (hint: most therapists suck at this level of dealing with issues), or by deliberately and seriously reading the works of spiritual seekers like Buddha or Robin Hanson, you eventually realize "holy shit, I'm wearing a mask! I have been my whole life! Get this shit off of me!" This is the "make weepy TikToks" and "be a misanthropic nerd" stage. This is roughly analogous to the Buddhist Arising and Passing Away stage.
Then, you hit the stage you got to at Burning Man, where you finally manage to pry off that mask and breathe freely. Except for humans, masks are like shark's teeth. Lose one and another regrows to replace it. So you go through the cycle again starting at Arising and Passing Away. See Scott Alexander's review of "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" for the more general form of the discussion. Also, be advised, I've been told that there are a lot of major cognitohazards which deliberate pursuit of the practices in MCTB, especially if you try to skip the boring stuff at the beginning and go straight to insight meditation, will expose you to.
I... think it might be a question of scale, or frequency. I know what is meant by masking, and I do it to a greater or lesser extent depending on the situation. The extent to which I do it correlates negatively with how comfortable I am. But I guess there is some baseline of social politeness that comes easily and I wouldn't necessarily count as masking, even though it fits the definition.
I can imagine a hypothetical person (especially a young one!) who never found their niche culture and so never had the opportunity to dial down the amount of masking needed to feel comfortable and accepted. I think it's reasonable for the therapist to point out that this is a possible experience for humans in general, with the goal of trying to find new communities. That said, being able to function socially in non-ideal environments is valuable too, so saying that one should never mask seems silly/harmful.
As a software-guy and mostly-neurotypical partner of an ASD woman, a decent analogy for masking is the difference between running a process on a CPU vs a GPU.
For me, my self-censorship and adaptation to the people I’m interacting with seems to run mostly on a dedicated processor, like GPU handles graphics calculations, with conscious oversight taking maybe 5-10% of my CPU.
My partner reports masking can take between 10 and 60% of her computer power, depending on how interactive she has to be. Parties etc take a lot, talking to a friend much less.
The big difference is she doesn’t seem to be able to offload the cognitive work to a specialised module that does most of the work in the background. That brain module just isn’t there. She has to be hyper vigilant to consciously notice things like expression, body language, and tone of voice, in order to intellectually deduce subtext and deliberately react appropriately. It’s exhausting for her, and she will often be totally drained after a social event or work day.
All that being said, it’s always a great experience for me when I can totally be myself, but I think the conscious cognitive workload that I’m dropping when that happens is far less than when someone with ASD de-masks.
Consider that this girl's TikTok handle is "BorderlineAcademic". I suspect autism and masking are the least of her problems.
Also, there are three levels of enlightenment (not using that phrase in any specific religious sense, just analogizing to them in general).
Most normies are masked, but they've worn the mask so long and so studiously that they've forgotten it's a mask. They don't feel constant inner peace or whatever, they have a sense that Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong, but because that wrongness is connected to a mask they don't know they're wearing, they don't know where it comes from. They'll also vociferously deny wearing a mask.
At a certain level of systematizing, with a good enough therapist (hint: most therapists suck at this level of dealing with issues), or by deliberately and seriously reading the works of spiritual seekers like Buddha or Robin Hanson, you eventually realize "holy shit, I'm wearing a mask! I have been my whole life! Get this shit off of me!" This is the "make weepy TikToks" and "be a misanthropic nerd" stage. This is roughly analogous to the Buddhist Arising and Passing Away stage.
Then, you hit the stage you got to at Burning Man, where you finally manage to pry off that mask and breathe freely. Except for humans, masks are like shark's teeth. Lose one and another regrows to replace it. So you go through the cycle again starting at Arising and Passing Away. See Scott Alexander's review of "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" for the more general form of the discussion. Also, be advised, I've been told that there are a lot of major cognitohazards which deliberate pursuit of the practices in MCTB, especially if you try to skip the boring stuff at the beginning and go straight to insight meditation, will expose you to.
I... think it might be a question of scale, or frequency. I know what is meant by masking, and I do it to a greater or lesser extent depending on the situation. The extent to which I do it correlates negatively with how comfortable I am. But I guess there is some baseline of social politeness that comes easily and I wouldn't necessarily count as masking, even though it fits the definition.
I can imagine a hypothetical person (especially a young one!) who never found their niche culture and so never had the opportunity to dial down the amount of masking needed to feel comfortable and accepted. I think it's reasonable for the therapist to point out that this is a possible experience for humans in general, with the goal of trying to find new communities. That said, being able to function socially in non-ideal environments is valuable too, so saying that one should never mask seems silly/harmful.