This thread was a lovely, positive place for people with autism to share their difficulties and offer suggestions to each other, and make each other not feel alone, until the bumbling “stop being so sensitive” jerks came along. Kindly buzz off.
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Seconded. Seriously, Betol, you’re just trolling. Take yourself elsewhere. Thanks.
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You both beat me too it! Everyone else had managed to engage in this discussion respectfully, even when disagreeing. There’s always one who has to spoil it.
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People are under no personal or collective obligation to change their choice of words. Society and various cultures as a whole change collectively over time as information becomes more and more readily available. Insults or derogatory comments are more akin to cultural fads in this regard.
You and I who know about autism are more aware than others. I encounter people IRL on a daily basis who misunderstand or don’t fully comprehend autism/aspergers/etc or refuse to take it seriously as they’ve not been exposed to it or do not have to live with it, or with someone who is on the spectrum.
Autism or is a very convenient insult to use online, as misunderstandings or misconceptions via text are very easy for people to make and so commonplace, that they come off as being similar to the types of frequent misunderstandings that someone actually on the spectrum may or may not experience in their day to day lives.
It’s also important to understand that what may or might apply to one word, might not apply to another. It may stick for longer, it may vanish and it might not.
How so? we have a filter for bad words on this forum… If you insist to write negro, you will suffer a ban… you have to change.
If multiple people report you for being to rude, you will suffer a silence.
Someone have to start with the change, and you know that just as well as I do.
Will you keep blaming millenals for their rudeness or will you raise your kids to awareness?
You can’t keep hiding under peoples own choice or people have to stop being to soft - find an insult that suits instead of hanging on to words or ways that doesn’t do anything good in particular.
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It is nice too se you have interest on the subject and are aiming to work on the field. I would suggest, in the very most kind purpose, to save this whole post of yours and look it again when you have started your studies (perhaps after one year or two). I promise you will find it interesting and get a lot to think about then. I wish all the best for your studies! 
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We have a filter for words that can be deemed as offensive, however it’s perfectly easy to offend someone without needing to use a specific word or term. On that note, Blizzard only seems to actively take action against people who have been flagged. As a rule of thumb, I generally don’t flag posts unless they’re related to doxxing or threaten someone in-real life.
I will write what I want as I am often wont to do and if I get silenced or banned for it again, then that’s something I’m quite used to by now. I don’t think changing oneself or one’s view points comes about from censorship. What is important, I find, is declaring clear intent when someone proffers confusion at what you’ve said.
Context is ultimately far more important and there isn’t a single word out there that’s inherently bad or negative.
I generally think the world is a far more interesting place when you get a mixed variety of people. The more we censor and the more we tell people they can’t be offensive or get offended, the less human and less interesting we aspire to be as a result.
At the end of the day, when people throw around terms like ‘autist’ or ‘retard’, they’re not actively thinking about or referring to people who are actually retarded or autistic. A component of acceptance is tolerance and being able to tolerate people’s use of words is an important step in being accepted by them as a result.
Use of a word need not necessarily change but what can change is how people respond and react to it. I’ve noticed in recent times that the use of the word negro is far less controversial than it used to be.
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Guess I’m lucky, my aspergers has never really given me issues playing games, even multiplayer/co-op ones. Sensory overload doesn’t affect me when it’s on screen.
Thankfully I don’t generally crave real social contact though, because just pretending to function almost normal for the 8h a day I have to is stressful enough.
Crowded social situations and work meetings definately fatgue me thanks to the “sensory overload”.
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I agree to your post
Completely agree. Not on the spectrum myself, and I actually got a few raiders who have very mild autism, but I get it. Some people just don’t want to raid, but Blizzard keeps insisting that we have to raid, or can’t for whatever reason, yet Blizzard will pull out literally every single stop they can to make us raid.
And that effectively means you can’t enjoy it, because yours is a situation even LFR can’t save. On the one hand LFR is so easy you can just AFK it and win anyway, but why would you want to, right? You don’t get the story that way, so what’s the point?
I hope Blizzard tones down this raid or die mentality some time soon. It’s not healthy for the game.
In the meantime, my advice to you OP, is to just find another game. Blizzard obviously doesn’t care about people who don’t like raiding anymore. 
I wish they did. I want you enjoy your time in Azeroth, but yeah…
I hope Blizzard will fix it. Keep up with the community sites and let’s hope they wake up. 
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That isnt playing the game so your point is moot .People like you show no empathy at all.
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I’m sorry Mion I wanted to give you a proper response, but I was going out as you made your response to me.
I also believe that you with your reply are beginning to derail this thread a lot.
I agree overall in your post, as I see it fitting in the real world.
But I will reply on one of your statement that I strongely am against.
This is a whole snip that annoys me - specially the fattened part.
Why don’t you care about your voice being silenced?
As any you should have the will to staying in the debate as long as possible 
I find it troubling that some are so willing to stay locked in old believings that they can’t change one little thing like a word - for the sake of having your voice.
Retard is an old word, the flavour is gone and it is now a simple insult.
The awareness of the word autist is different, so I can’t grasp why it is so difficult for someone who knows the rules of the social game to change.
I have never been banned in any forum, I have never had any warnings in any forums - real life forums or virtual.
I can adapt to the rules and I am skilled as anyone else to both praise and insult without crossing any borders.
So why are you so reckless with your voice, for the sake of old believings?
Anyhow, I still believe it is possible to both show your anger towards people without being an a$$.
On topic, I think this game should have some clever ingame installations as many seem to wish and seek for those ingame changes
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I am a bit jealous now.
In my case I have to be a bit picky on what I can play. Single player (or playing MMOs like single player) is better, because I can just save/log out when it’s getting too much.
I also can’t play anything with a first person perspective, because it gives me brutal motion sickness. (No Bioshock! Boo! Hiss!)
I know the “I really can’t people anymore!” feeling so well; days where I have to be social all day are ok, but they leave me completely drained. Another reason, to play WoW like a single player game for lots of the time. Luckily Blizzard have twigged at some point in the past, that many players prefer to play like that and have added more content for people who just log in sometimes to spend an hour or two and who don’t want to make the game their main hobby.
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That’s actually an interesting point that I haven’t considered.
I’m personally of the opinion that people should always be open to change, but only if they want to make that change themselves. I generally don’t use the term autist in a derogatory manner unless I’m speaking to like minded friends that I bicker with or exchange vitriol with on a routine basis.
In one recent argument with an individual who later confirmed they were autistic, I felt slightly bad because I called them a dick. Primarily because all of their responses were very single track and weren’t considerate of any points being made. I mention this because I felt wary of their potential autism and several times, I felt like asking them if they were autistic or even felt tempted to blatantly insult them with it in part due to my own frustration.
Sadly, a lot of people don’t like being asked if they’re on the spectrum because they receive it as an insult. Mind, a lot of people on the spectrum aren’t aware of it themselves.
As in regards to my own voice being silenced, I admit, at times it is frustrating but it’s how this automated system seems to function. I’ve been unsilenced/unbanned plenty of times after speaking to the admin team, who are usually very sympathetic.
Going back onto topic a little, since I was mostly responding to the use of ‘autist’ as an insult, I’ve had a few negative experiences in raids where people have openly spoke up about their autism or sensory issues and asked for a bit of compassion, only to be ridiculed and in some cases, accused of making it up by people who also claim to be on the spectrum.
It’s happened in a recent FFXIV raid I was in too. I’m not happy with how apathetic some people are in regards to other’s struggles.
Also, due to my bad anxiety, I’m not overly keen on engaging in voice chat, so I get left out of a lot of group activities. I think we all have some form of struggle or other. 3x
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THIS. If someone is on the spectrum and wants you to know, they will tell you. Don’t ask, please. You don’t know the background of the other person and you might hurt them.
If you notice, why not just cut them some slack? If the conversation goes in a circle, try to defuse the situation or step away from it. It’s not always necessary to be right and to discuss everything until the end. Sometimes it’s ok to realise, this is not going anywhere and I retreat before I get annoyed or insult someone.
Part of the reason I opened this thread in the first place was, to see the reactions. And to normalise the topic. The more we openly talk about issues like autism / ADHD or mental health problems like anxiety or depression, the more normal it becomes; people who are not affected by any of this might learn a thing or two, people who have any of these things might feel less pressured in their daily lives.
I hope you understand, that a group of people who regularly run into problems and get insulted because of what they are, might be ever so slightly tetchy about it and not really interested in finding out, if the person who just threw ‘autist’ in their face is in fact a nice person or not?
That being said, you’re apparently not such a horrible person as I first thought; I still don’t agree on the “I say what I want” thing, because I don’t see the point of pissing people off if it’s not really necessary.
We totally do.
Autism usually comes with anxiety as well, mostly because the world around us is so lovely to anyone who doesn’t really fit in…
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I agree, raids shouldnt be forced on people, I think best thing to do is, make LFR automatic, where people go with bots and there’s no chance of wipe, so people who dont want to raid can just go there and watch story.
and make highest raid difficulty more rewarding, to motivate people who do want to raid further.
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Yeah. I pretty much agree with all of the above. In regards to what I meant about this in-particular, I’m quite keen on not dancing around egg shells or minefields in open discourse.
It’s not necessarily about offending people. It’s about being able to use words in appropriate contexts without being censored or silenced as a result because someone’s taken issue with something you’ve said which wasn’t intended or isn’t inherently offensive.
In discourse, I believe that doing someone an offence, be it intentional or not is a necessary social component that leads to reciprocation and greater understanding, if television shows have taught me anything.
Recently, I’ve been kicked from a discord server because I used a word to refer to people who are of the multi-downstairs bits variety. It wasn’t an offensive comment, but a term I used at the time to describe a situation I encountered in-game. I then had to go and google why certain groups find the term offensive, which quite honestly, still comes across as a little absurd to me.
It’s not the first time I’ve been made to feel like a criminal or bully for just using a word. I’ve been casually talking to people who I deem as friends one moment, only for someone to suddenly say ‘please don’t use that word’, to which I of course, acquiesce but it then puts me in the awkward position of ‘I’ve just hurt their feelings and I can’t learn from the experience because rather than talk about it, we’ve just gone quiet’.
I just generally don’t agree with what I deem to be unnecessary censorship. In short; ‘I’ll say what I want’ doesn’t equate to ‘I’ll offend whoever I want’ because at the end of the day, it’s the offended party that receives the comment and or/word as an offence but in my mind, all it means is ‘I won’t completely censor myself because that’s not who I am’.
There are certain words and terms I won’t use around certain people, but the prospect of having to walk on egg shells around those people puts me off the idea of a dialogue to begin with.
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Or just take the story at this extent out of raids.
Does anybody here actually like seeing the same cutscenes and videos in Battle for Dazar’alor for the 14th time?
Get the storytelling into quests and the open world and even dungeons. Raids are supposed to be attacks on enemy fortresses, not the primary storytelling vehicle.
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Can I suggest something? If that happens, just say “sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, can you explain to me what is wrong?” That way you can still learn something.
I mean, I get the “be as open and straightforward as possible” bit, because that’s what I do too, but I’ve also learned, that everyone has a different context and might see something that I find completely harmless, as really offensive.
That is, by the way, also a thing for many autistic people, because some of us really don’t deal in social niceties and are direct to the point of brutal honesty. See Greta Thunberg for an example.
In any case, I find it useful to try and not offend people (doesn’t mean I have to walk on eggshells all the time, just be a little observant), because it may slam the door shut on any communication and it’s always better to talk and find common ground. 
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I mean I like story there. and its fitting, I’d rather have story in raids than quests that require me to “kill 10 this” and “collect 10 that”
nope, raids were always since day 1, a biiig story tellers.