#spacejokes

Thanks to my autism I've been confused by communication and social roles since forever, which is why I love the space oddities things so much. Here's some things I think would definitely confuse aliens. Disclaimer: not all autistic people experience the same confusion about social stuff.

- When a human is physically hurt, surrounded humans that are considered to be in some sort of social connection with the hurt person at that moment - including all those that can't help them - are expected to pause their activities and express regret or empathy in the form of exclamations or clearly futile attempts to help the hurt human. Unless the hurt human is a child, the surrounding humans often express more pain than the hurt human themself. In fact even, it's a known issue that in situations with a lot of humans, the humans will block help coming for the hurt human due to this effect of spending unnecessary attention to the hurt human. Any human that is considered connected but does not in some way express this empathy, will be thought of as unkind or called "cold" as if referring to their body temperature, while their body temperature doesn't seem different from the others. Oddly enough, only specific connected humans are expected to show this behaviour and those who do not fit that specific group won't be called "cold" when continuing their activities. Reasons for humans to be expected to show this behaviour include:

- That they had been doing the same activity as the hurt person until injury.

- That they have a personal connection with the hurt human.

- That they were in some way considered to be in the same group as the injured person.

- That they were one of relatively few humans present when the injury happened.

Oddly enough, other lifeforms that are (almost) equally intelligent to humans are expected to show the same behaviour, regardless of their lack of similar instincts, and both young and adult humans tend to automatically show this behaviour towards not just humans but other life forms as well, without ever being told to do so. When other equally intelligent life forms do not express the same behaviour, a human - especially the injured one, but those considered personally close to them as well - might get angry at the life form not expressing the emptions.

However, these expectations aren't applied to life forms considered significantly less intelligent than humans like the animals they have domesticated to be their life companions. In some cases these life forms do oddly enough mimic this behaviour when their human is injured. Many humans will pretend to be injured to trigger this response in their non-human life companion and it is considered to be humerous. Some humans even play this same "trick" on other humans, but that is oddly enough not unanimous received as humorous by all humans and might sometimes spark anger.

The reason for this behaviour doesn't seem clear. Although it makes sense that in small groups, it would be good to focus all attention on an injured companion, the tendency of those unable to help to interrupt their activities is highly inefficient as even the smallest expression of pain from any human or non-human life form will immediately be met with an interruption of the other human's activities, even if just for a second.

woah oooo, Mona Luna, you’re guaranteed to run these tides