ASDKings.com

The most dangerous lie they tell the neurodivergent community is that the world is a meritocracy. They tell us: “Work hard, be yourself, and the rest will follow.” But for those of us on the spectrum, the Patient Zeros of the corpo world trying to navigate a map built for the neurotypical, we know the truth. The world isn’t a meritocracy; it’s a  Vibe Economy . In the Vibe Economy, a person’s value isn’t determined by their performance, politeness, adherence to rules, or output. It’s determined by “cultural fit,” the ability to mirror social cues, and willingness to  appear  hardworking, whilst more importantly  selling the fuck out and kissing ass  participating in the performative theatre of small talk.  For us, the Vibe Economy is a rigged market. Every time we try to “be ourselves” or “just network,” we are essentially trying to buy a high-priced asset with an overinflated neural currency rapidly devaluing in real time. Try buying a house with Zimbabwe ...

In part 1 , I spoke about how I used the pop psychology Darkness Integration techniques taught by Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willink, and David Goggins to harness rage for fuel in the gym and tap into raw sides of me for motivation. I operated on this system for a couple of years, then the super toxic relationship I mentioned in pt.1 broke down right as covid lockdown began and threw me into another vortex of darkness, with no occupational routine to take my mind elsewhere.

I don’t need to tell you how much harder it is for autistic people to find and keep friends and partners. You know it. You’ve felt it. You’ve felt the lack of it. Your friends chat all kinds of shit they know nothing about and somehow bumble and lumber their way into friends, situationships and relationships, while you put in 10 times the work and thought, crafting every word perfectly just to get ghosted. Forgotten. Friendzoned. Used. Discarded. Mocked.

The Brick. I have this problem. An affliction. An addiction. No matter what, I always see myself as the underdog. I often see people with more than me as people who cheated or privileged nepo babies.

Autistic people bring problem-solving, obsessive focus, deep expertise, creativity, and the ability to see patterns others miss. The problem is that most work environments fail us.   Survival in these places depends less on how good we are at the job, and more on whether the system is willing to bend even a little.

My Story I am a late-diagnosed Autistic man with ADHD and Persistent Demand Avoidance. Before I knew this truth, I assumed I was “weird”. I didn’t need to assume it, people let me know.  Every time I didn’t understand an unwritten social rule, or didn’t get other people’s weird hints because they were scared to say what was on their mind, or any time I expected total honesty from dishonest people, I realised they were running on a different operating system.  This first understanding led me to believe my life would be pain after pain the longer I lived by “be yourself” and “Treat others how you want to be treated”, because that advice always backfired. So I stopped being real…  People didn’t want to be treated how I did and they didn’t want me to be myself because I was “too much”, “too intense”, ““too random” and told “Can you please just act normal for ten minutes?” when I wanted to talk about things that were actually important or interesting.  As a teenager, I bl...

I was 20 years old, waiting alone in a government-funded room filled with kid’s toys and stickers on the wall. My eyes looked through the window blinds, across the field at the city skyline, wondering what my true potential really was. The family trauma specialist came in to empower me in this damaged state with one-liner truisms and canned pop psychology. Any deep thoughts I had were quickly steered by her back into the conversational shallow water where she felt comfortable.  She looked like Harleen Quinzel, too hot to be a therapist, but I took the work seriously and never held back the cringe if I thought it was necessary for growth. I told her I felt like a loser, like I’m behind, and I’m not becoming who I’m meant to be, and that I don’t blame it on the family tragedy that brought me here, I blame it squarely on myself because I believe I control my life. She discouraged me from building agency and asked me to open up about my pain. I did and she rearranged words and phrases...

What is “Vibe" and "Aura”? Every NT knows the answer to this but can’t explain it to save their life so I will try. Simple version: Vibe has 2 meanings: 1. An externalised, comparative emotion or gut feeling you project onto something/someone. 2. The internal emotion or gut feeling you experience. The term is attached to its source, like an adjective. If someone is dependable and this makes you relaxed, they  have a solid vibe and you have a chill vibe, not the other way around. Aura  = How cool a person is. Negative Aura  = cringe Aura Farming  = Showing off Counterfeit Aura  = Masking It’s giving XYZ = XYZ is the vibe I’m getting. Vibing  = chill and relaxed. Full Version: Vibes  are the emotional effect you have on other people through your demeanour, energy, appearance, speaking style and the emotional energy you project by leaking your feelings through your body movements and voice. Keanu Reeves, as himself, can be said to have a ‘Zen’ vibe. Grah...

My brain has always wanted rules. That’s how it survives. If I can boil the chaos of people down to patterns and categories, maybe I won’t drown in it. But those rules turn into prisons. They teach me lies. One of the worst was that women are all the same. That if I could just crack the code once, I’d have the script forever. Black and white thinking did that to me. Autism did that to me. I walked into dating like it was a puzzle I could solve if I stared hard enough. But every time a woman didn’t fit the archetype in my head, I felt betrayed. I thought there was something wrong with her, or worse… something even more wrong with me. The mindset killed my shot at connection before it could begin. It stripped her individuality staring me in the face. It made me blind to the real her(s). Guess what happens when you operate with inaccurate data… The scripts failed me and I crashed, overthought things, shut down… I started resenting the world for not bending to my rules. I’ve sabotaged conn...

  Integrating the darkness was a pop psychology trend a decade ago, pushed by Psychologist Jordan Peterson, and former Navy Seals David Goggins and Jocko Willink. These were my chosen role models at the time, in a world that was stripping away the value of masculine strength, just as I was at the age where I was developing mine. When they said:  “Harness the dark matter in the calluses on your soul” “Use Emotion when Logic fails. Use Logic when Emotion Fails”  “Now that I know how dark it can get, I truly appreciate the light” and  “ A good man is not a harmless man. A good man is a dangerous man who chooses to do no harm.” My Autistic mind took it beyond face value and took it all the way to my unconscious core values. ‘Okay then, let’s go.’ was my response. In it’s deeper levels, what it entails is embracing the dark, corrupted, toxic, hateful, spiteful, greedy, jealous, aggressive and otherwise “bad” parts of the normal human experience and finding “Good” ways of ...