Asperger’s and the Emotional Cage

Aspergers, Autism, Emotions

aspergers_emotional_cage_small_watermarkedHaving Asperger’s Syndrome can be challenging in a lot of ways.  Many of them involve dealing with the neurotypical world and its strange (to those on the spectrum) ways and rules.  Things that neurotypical individuals take for granted can be mysterious for us Aspies.  A big challenge I’ve recently realized can be the expression of emotions.

Some people will look at those with Asperger’s and mistakenly think that we don’t have emotions or that said emotions are less than our neurotypical counterparts – at least until said emotions explode out.  These people are horribly, horribly wrong.  If anything, people with Asperger’s feel emotions more deeply.  I’ll often find myself hurt about something for days while the other person has forgotten about the incident ten minutes later.  The trouble is that Aspies often find themselves unable to express those emotions.

Think of an Aspie’s emotions as being hidden behind a big sheet of tinted, sound-proof glass.  You stand on one side and the Aspie’s emotions are on the other side.  Through the tinted glass, you might be able to make out some shapes on the other side, but you won’t see it clearly.  Meanwhile, the Aspie on the other side is trying desperately to communicate how he or she feels.  Talking doesn’t seem to work and small movements seem to be lost on the other side as well.  Big movements might work, but lack any form of subtly.

An observer on the other side of the glass might mistake the lack of small movements/sounds for a lack of emotions – until the Aspie makes big movements or big sounds that get through the sound-proof glass.  The neurotypical observers are surprised but the Aspie is frustrated.  It’s like living in an emotional cage.

Personally, I’ve recognized this tendency with me since before I heard about Asperger’s Syndrome.  My go-to method for conflict resolution is keeping quiet.  I’ve always done this because I’m afraid of becoming so upset that I shout something that I don’t really mean.  I’ve found that NHL – who is obviously less adept at expressing his emotions having had less time to practice – is prone to this.  He’ll get upset over an issue (say, being made to go on a family walk when he just wants to play video games) and will shout things like “I hate you” and “I’m going to kick you” instead of calmly discussing his feelings.

Outbursts aside, however, I’ll often plan out arguments in my head.  I’ll lay out reasons why I feel a particular way, what the person did to make me feel this way, and the resolution I’m looking for.  The arguments are all there in my head, but when they come out of my mouth they get garbled and are less than persuasive.  It’s like being able to imagine a perfect drawing in your head but only being able to draw a stick figure – and a poor one at that.

It’s not just my own emotions that I have trouble with but expressing empathy for others’ emotions.  Plenty of times, B will have something going wrong, she’ll look to me for sympathy, and will find none.  That’s not because I have no sympathy for her.  I do, but I just don’t have the words to express it.  I’m standing behind that tinted-glass cage screaming how I feel but all that comes out is a muffled “sorry.”  I’m frustrated because I can’t express how I feel and B’s frustrated that I’m not showing sympathy for her situation.

Interestingly enough, I feel much more at home expressing emotions in writing.  There’s no immediate pressure to put the perfect words to my feelings.  I can write, delete, and rewrite how I feel before sending it on to the recipient.  It’s no wonder that I feel more at home in the online world than in the “real” world and that I feel more social on social media than when face to face.

All in all, having Asperger’s can be frustrating to all involved when it comes to expression of emotions.  Aspies can easily be misunderstood and thought of as having no real emotions when the opposite is true.  We Aspies feel deeply but just can’t find the words to express those feelings.  The next time you find yourself dealing with an Aspie, keep this in mind and be patient as they try to express themselves from behind their emotional cage.

NOTE: The “Asperger’s Emotional Cage” image above is composed of four emoticon images by nicubunu that are available from OpenClipArt.org: “Laughing Face“, “Crying Face“, “Loving Face“, and “Question Face.”

The Intellectual Property of Tweets

Copyright, Internet, Social Media, Twitter

Last week, GaltsGirl tweeted a question to her followers.  She asked "Are tweets entitled the same intellectual property courtesies as blog posts?"  My answer was "If I’m using someone’s tweet for something I usually ask first. That said, I don’t see it as the same as a blog post IP-wise."  Unfortunately, thanks to the limited nature of Twitter comments and my assumption that credit would always be given, this led to a bit of confusion.  While I cleared up that confusion on Twitter (or, at least, I hope I did).  The interaction did inspire me to write about it at length.

Tweets versus Blog Posts

Part of the problem stemmed from my use of the phrase "I don’t see it as the same as a blog post IP-wise."  By this I meant that blog posts can be quoted without using the entire post.  If you quoted this article in a blog post of your own, you could say that I wrote:

Unfortunately, thanks to the limited nature of Twitter comments and my assumption that credit would always be given, this led to a bit of confusion.

However, if you "quoted" me by copying my entire article word-for-word, that would be copyright infringement.  Furthermore, while you should properly credit this quote, there would be no need to compensate me or even ask for my permission to use this quote.  After all, while this entire post is my intellectual property, a quote falls under fair use.  So copying this entire post to your blog could result in DMCA takedown requests, legal threats if those were ignored, and even large fines if the entire affair proceeded to the courts.

A tweet, on the other hand, is usually too small to quote part of effectively.  To quote someone’s tweet, one usually has to use the entire thing.  This begs the question: If using an entire blog post without permission is copyright infringement, is using an entire tweet infringement as well?

RTs and Inviting Infringements

On the Twitter platform itself, I’d say that quoting someone’s tweets isn’t copyright infringement.  After all, Twitter itself gives a method for doing this: Retweets.  What about off of Twitter, though?  Is using someone’s tweet in a blog post, a book, or some other medium copyright infringement if explicit permission isn’t granted?

Let’ remove two obvious "fair use" cases immediately.  If the quote is used for news reporting purposes ("Lady Gaga tweeted to her followers…") or parody, then permission isn’t required.  It is good form to ask permission, of course, but it isn’t a requirement.

Let’s also assume that credit is given.  If credit isn’t given, then I might be willing call it as infringement.  If someone tweeted something so interesting, insightful, foolish, or otherwise useful to your larger project, it’s only fair that they should get credit for your words.  You wouldn’t quote a passage in a book without stating what book that passage came from.  Similarly, one should never quote a tweet without naming the user who tweeted it.

Beyond those cases, I have to admit that I’m torn.  I’ve blogged about how you just can’t take an image off of Google Images and use it however you like.  Grabbing someone’s tweet and sticking it in your post, at first glance, appears to be like grabbing a picture from Google Images and putting it in your post.  However, the effort invested in a single tweet hardly seems to compare to the effort invested in making an image.

More Flexible Copyright Law

I think this example highlights the need to reform copyright law (something I’ve written about before).  If copying a five hundred page book leads to a $750 fine, why would copying a one hundred forty character tweet hold the same potential fine?  If copying an MP3 – which has a market value of $0.99 – leads to a $80,000 per song verdict, why would copying a tweet (market value of $0) lead to a similar fine?

In addition, profit motive should be considered when potential fines are calculated.  If the quoted tweet is used in a non-profit manner (say, in a blog post such as this one), then any "infringement" fees should be minimal.  If the quoted tweet was used in a for profit manner (say, a book titled "250 Great Tweets"), then infringement fees would be higher.

Protection of Public Statements

In the end, I consider tweets to be short public statements.  One can’t stand in front of a big crowd of people, say something, and assume that *NOBODY* is going to quote them.  Taking words out of context or not crediting them is unacceptable as is making money off of the tweet (in a non-news reporting, non-parody manner) without compensating the person.  However, on the scale of copyright infringement, using someone’s tweet without permission isn’t anywhere near as bad as taking an entire blog post without permission.

PostScript

During my Googling for this blog post, I ran into an article about a similar issue.  In this case, there was a lawsuit not over a tweet, but over a short quote from WIlliam Faulkner’s Requiem For A Nun.  Sony Pictures used a nine word (97 character) quote from it ("The past is never dead. It’s not even past.") in the movie Midnight in Paris.  The Faulkner estate worried that the use of the quote in the movie might confuse people into thinking there was a relationship between the estate and Sony Pictures.  Sony Pictures, meanwhile, decried the lawsuit as frivolous.   On the day that GaltsGirl posed her question, July 19th 2013, a ruling was handed down stating that such a short quote didn’t constitute copyright infringement.

A little closer to the topic at hand, I found a TechDirt story about a journalist who claimed her tweets were "off the record" and thus weren’t allowed to be repeated by anyone.  When someone questioned her on this, she threatened a lawsuit.  It doesn’t look like she ever went through with it, but she did see the inside of a courtroom when she was convicted of harassing a former boyfriend’s daughter by posting her private journals online.  (Apparently she thought "off the record" tweets couldn’t be reposted, but private journals could be.)

This, in turn, led to more articles, including a 2009 blog post by Mark Cuban, all questioning just how copyrightable tweets are.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Memories, Photos

When you are visiting your childhood home, you may encounter many things that spur memories from when you were young.  For example:

old_friends 
growingup1 
growingup2 growingup3 wholefamily wallpaper 
gumball-machine 
fireplace

Explanation for that final image: When my parents were looking to move out of their apartment and into a house, I was about two years old.  They walked into this house to look at it.  I took off my coat, sat down on that fireplace, and made myself comfortable.  That’s how my parents knew this was the house for us.

Expanding My Skillset

Computers, Internet, Reading, Technology, Web Development

wordpress_bookIf there’s one thing that working in IT has taught me, it’s that learning is never over.  The minute you stop learning, your value to potential employers drops dramatically.  Instead, one must constantly expand one’s horizons and learn new things.

Recently, my company bought me some books on WordPress and web development.  Though I know how to work in WordPress, these covered areas I had never gotten involved in but meant to such as developing themes and plugins from scratch.

One day, during a very rare end-of-day lull, I decided to crack open "WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook."  Within minutes, I had the basics down and was developing my own plugin.  No, it wasn’t fully functional, but the path to that was laid before me and it looked like it was a short path indeed.

Now my head is buzzing with WordPress plugin ideas (both for work and as side projects).  I can’t wait to apply the knowledge I’ve already gained and I can"t wait to finish the book and gain even more knowledge.

Do you often make it a point to learn new things?  If so, what have you learned recently?

Attack of the Night Ninja

JSL, Parenting

night_ninjaWhen the boys were younger, they were quite vocal if they wanted to come into bed with us (for example, if they had a bad dreams).  They would stay in their bed and yell for us until we came and either brought them to our bed or cuddled into their bed with them.  As they got older, they would get out of bed on their own, come to our room, and wake us up if they had a bad dream or needed something.

NHL now sleeps through most nights without a problem, but lately JSL has displayed a special skill.  Under the cover of darkness, he becomes a Night Ninja: able to sneak into our room and slip undetected into bed with us.  On more than one occasion, B and I have woken up to find an invader in our bed and no clue how he got there.

It would be bad enough if he just snuck in, but he also pushes us away from him and towards the edges of the bed.  We’ll often wake up aching from being kicked and pushed off of our own bed.

Have you ever had to deal with a night ninja?

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