I have a little brother that is on the spectrum and he is obsessed with meme culture and memes to the point that he cares about nothing else. He can’t talk about anything else and always tries to say memes without context and understanding hoping to make us laugh. I would not have a problem with this unless it was not the only thing that came out of his mouth. I am worried about his future. He won’t be able to live with just memes. He maybe sometimes plays minecraft and that is the only creative thing he does. He is great but he will do some pretty upsurd stuff like, he will avoid his friends just because they bought a memed soft drink. He hates talking unless it is memes. He doesn’t like questions. He hates thinking. What do I do? I literally can’t connect with him. Once I will give him a piece of advice, like, “maybe find a better time to say the jokes so that they land better” and “please try not thinking about memes all the time” and he will say yes and proceed to ignore whatever I said.
He has obviously found a single interest that really engages him… That is a very ‘seductive’ thing for autistic people.
One suggestion is that if he is dropping jokes that are not landing, ask him what he wants to achieve when he’s making these jokes… It might well be that he simply hasn’t grasped the fact that not everyone speaks the same language that he has discovered.
The world is such a puzzling place to autistic people at the best of times, and it really is possible that he just assumes that everybody else understands these memes in the same way that everybody else seems to understand so many things that are a mystery to him.
Thank you! I will ask him next time!