As an autistic person I have definitely been lectured on how to look people directly in the eyes. I can kind of trick people by looking between their eyebrows, but it’s definitely more specific than just the face.
As an autism, I thought it meant physically pushing my eyeballs into the eyeballs of the person I’m talking to. I have somewhat sunken eyes so it’s always been very difficult. Also the people I talk to seldom appreciate it. I will be doing it correctly from now on 👍
I’m not here making some value statement about the importance of eye contact or whatever, for the record. do what u want, lots of people don’t like direct eye contact, it could well be enought to look generally at people’s faces most of the time, and it’s a pretty intricate social tool, I’d argue. I’m not qualified to give complicated eye contact takes
I’m autistic and I was taught cheats as a kid to look at people’s faces for eye contact. I only do eye contact with people I’m close to but I am able to do it after some time (real eye contact)
I’ve been sucked into this side of tiktok (I’m autistic) and the best thing I saw about it was an eye tracker study that showed that allistic people alternate between eye contact and looking at the mouth throughout a convo.
You’re doing the autistic community a genuine service, thank you lol. I also thought it meant looking into people’s eyes and was kinda bewildered by the notion that it doesn’t. That said, one of the best autism life-hacks I ever found out about was that as long as you’re looking in the general direction of people’s faces, it truly doesn’t matter what part you’re looking at. The only time you might get caught doing this is if you’re like 2 feet apart.
i literally went to a speech language pathologist and one of the things we worked on was eye contact. looking at other parts of the face is an autistic strategy to get around eye contact. idk why someone lied to them like that.
I think the misunderstanding here is that when people tell neurodivergent people they need to make more eye contact they dont just mean direct eye contact. They’re assuming that it’s implied that other parts of nonverbal are included and that the person they’re talking to knows the limits for how much direct eye contact should be made before it creeps people out.
It’s a little wild that one of the most common how to act neurotypical rules can easily be taken as ‘i absolutely hate you’ or ‘im about to commit a crime’ when followed literally
Misinformation and fake “fun facts” have always been prevalent on the internet but TikTok seems to have made its own weird ecosystem for it. There are times when people will tell me something false and I can tell just by the way they say it and the particular type of weirdness of the misinformation that it’s from TikTok. It seems to me like because of the way TikTok and similar platforms encourage people to think like algorithms, people make false statements that are kinda like the false statements ChatGPT makes.
I think the tiktok comes from a place of earlier interpreting eye contact as having to look straight into other people’s eyes all the time constantly, and now realizing people just want you to look in the general direction of their face (which still contains the eyes) from time to time. It is a reduction of intensity. People get uncomfortable if you are dead-staring them in the eyes. I interpret this because I once thought the exact same.
Important tip – if you ask a neurotypical person (or any person maybe) abt what seems “normal” to them, they’ll often give misleading, incomplete, or almost random answers. That’s how you get unhelpful suggestions like “eye contact doesn’t mean looking someone in the eye”. And also remember that neurotypicals arent the judge of the way you should act, you are the judge. To figure out how much eye contact you should be making just reflect on ur own feelings and relationship goals, as well as how the ppl you’re trying to connect with are responding to you.
Idk if I’m autistic or on the spectrum or not (though my parents have told me the doctor who screened me for ADHD as a kid said he thought I was on the spectrum), but eye contact – in my opinion – has always felt awkward and/or threatening. As in, me making eye contact feels like I’m somehow subconsciously threatening or slighting them, and same to me if they make eye contact. You know, like on those survival shows where they talk about how looking into the eyes of a wild animal is a threat to them/saying you want to fight? I’ve always felt that way about it, so when in professional settings where they expect eye contact, I just look at the bridge of their nose usually.
A lot of this varies dramatically from culture to culture, too. Autistic people will have conversations about what allistic people do (I’ve seen it often on Mastodon) but they’re actually taking about allistic people in their culture. Janet Holmes’ book _Sociolinguistics_ has an account of cross-cultural communication going poorly because of different understandings of eye gaze. Also, don’t forget that Deaf people will use eye gaze quite differently to hearing people. In general, eye gaze regulates turn taking in conversations, which may be one reason why autistic people can find it difficult to get into a conversation without being spoken over.
In the context of conditioning autistic children to pretend they’re not different, the phrase “make eye contact” just means “look at people when they’re talking to you”. This double meaning is exactly what the person is referring to, as it leads to the rather upsetting realisation that the eye contact you’ve been forcing yourself to engage with to put the people around you at ease is actually TOO MUCH eye contact, and is having the opposite effect. No one is happy, and it’s somehow your fault again.
I’m autistic and I think the distinction they’re missing is that you can generally feign eye contact by just looking at someone’s face, that you don’t always have to stare directly into someone’s eyeballs. Like it wasn’t some sort of false meaning, it’s just that you can take steps to make it easier on yourself (if eye contact bugs you) by changing the way you approach eye contact
I always make direct eye contact with you when we watch you, Little Joel.
As an autistic person I have definitely been lectured on how to look people directly in the eyes. I can kind of trick people by looking between their eyebrows, but it’s definitely more specific than just the face.
Eye contact means you physically touch your eyeballs to their eyeballs. It’s why it’s called eye *contact*
I’m on the spectrum, and I appreciate Little Joel looking me in the eyes when he gaslights me about eye contact.
As an autism, I thought it meant physically pushing my eyeballs into the eyeballs of the person I’m talking to. I have somewhat sunken eyes so it’s always been very difficult. Also the people I talk to seldom appreciate it. I will be doing it correctly from now on 👍
I’m not here making some value statement about the importance of eye contact or whatever, for the record. do what u want, lots of people don’t like direct eye contact, it could well be enought to look generally at people’s faces most of the time, and it’s a pretty intricate social tool, I’d argue. I’m not qualified to give complicated eye contact takes
I’m autistic and I was taught cheats as a kid to look at people’s faces for eye contact. I only do eye contact with people I’m close to but I am able to do it after some time (real eye contact)
I’ve been sucked into this side of tiktok (I’m autistic) and the best thing I saw about it was an eye tracker study that showed that allistic people alternate between eye contact and looking at the mouth throughout a convo.
You’re doing the autistic community a genuine service, thank you lol. I also thought it meant looking into people’s eyes and was kinda bewildered by the notion that it doesn’t. That said, one of the best autism life-hacks I ever found out about was that as long as you’re looking in the general direction of people’s faces, it truly doesn’t matter what part you’re looking at. The only time you might get caught doing this is if you’re like 2 feet apart.
There may be no more cursed phrase than “I saw a screenshot of a Tik Tok on Twitter.”
i literally went to a speech language pathologist and one of the things we worked on was eye contact. looking at other parts of the face is an autistic strategy to get around eye contact. idk why someone lied to them like that.
Joel’s lack of eye contact in this video is a harrowing artistic decision
I think the misunderstanding here is that when people tell neurodivergent people they need to make more eye contact they dont just mean direct eye contact. They’re assuming that it’s implied that other parts of nonverbal are included and that the person they’re talking to knows the limits for how much direct eye contact should be made before it creeps people out.
It’s a little wild that one of the most common how to act neurotypical rules can easily be taken as ‘i absolutely hate you’ or ‘im about to commit a crime’ when followed literally
Misinformation and fake “fun facts” have always been prevalent on the internet but TikTok seems to have made its own weird ecosystem for it. There are times when people will tell me something false and I can tell just by the way they say it and the particular type of weirdness of the misinformation that it’s from TikTok.
It seems to me like because of the way TikTok and similar platforms encourage people to think like algorithms, people make false statements that are kinda like the false statements ChatGPT makes.
I think the tiktok comes from a place of earlier interpreting eye contact as having to look straight into other people’s eyes all the time constantly, and now realizing people just want you to look in the general direction of their face (which still contains the eyes) from time to time. It is a reduction of intensity. People get uncomfortable if you are dead-staring them in the eyes. I interpret this because I once thought the exact same.
Important tip – if you ask a neurotypical person (or any person maybe) abt what seems “normal” to them, they’ll often give misleading, incomplete, or almost random answers. That’s how you get unhelpful suggestions like “eye contact doesn’t mean looking someone in the eye”.
And also remember that neurotypicals arent the judge of the way you should act, you are the judge. To figure out how much eye contact you should be making just reflect on ur own feelings and relationship goals, as well as how the ppl you’re trying to connect with are responding to you.
Idk if I’m autistic or on the spectrum or not (though my parents have told me the doctor who screened me for ADHD as a kid said he thought I was on the spectrum), but eye contact – in my opinion – has always felt awkward and/or threatening. As in, me making eye contact feels like I’m somehow subconsciously threatening or slighting them, and same to me if they make eye contact. You know, like on those survival shows where they talk about how looking into the eyes of a wild animal is a threat to them/saying you want to fight? I’ve always felt that way about it, so when in professional settings where they expect eye contact, I just look at the bridge of their nose usually.
A lot of this varies dramatically from culture to culture, too. Autistic people will have conversations about what allistic people do (I’ve seen it often on Mastodon) but they’re actually taking about allistic people in their culture. Janet Holmes’ book _Sociolinguistics_ has an account of cross-cultural communication going poorly because of different understandings of eye gaze. Also, don’t forget that Deaf people will use eye gaze quite differently to hearing people. In general, eye gaze regulates turn taking in conversations, which may be one reason why autistic people can find it difficult to get into a conversation without being spoken over.
In the context of conditioning autistic children to pretend they’re not different, the phrase “make eye contact” just means “look at people when they’re talking to you”. This double meaning is exactly what the person is referring to, as it leads to the rather upsetting realisation that the eye contact you’ve been forcing yourself to engage with to put the people around you at ease is actually TOO MUCH eye contact, and is having the opposite effect. No one is happy, and it’s somehow your fault again.
So, you’re both right! (:
I’m autistic and I think the distinction they’re missing is that you can generally feign eye contact by just looking at someone’s face, that you don’t always have to stare directly into someone’s eyeballs. Like it wasn’t some sort of false meaning, it’s just that you can take steps to make it easier on yourself (if eye contact bugs you) by changing the way you approach eye contact