The Funny Money Stops Here

Welcome back! This week, we will continue to learn more about the misconception: do people on the spectrum get humour. We already know the answer (yes) but there are other factors of the myth that are important for us to learn as to why it came about, why is it still around and just how wrong is it really? Will, that is what we have been learning for the past two weeks now, and this week will be no different. Please welcome back to the stage to help explain the whole debacle, the BBC! (pre-recorded cheering)

 

Last we left off, we were talking about how last year was a big shock (to the BBC at least) of just how funny people on the spectrum can be, one way of which was having a special on an international streaming/film production/god-knows-what-else company. A lot of humour, in my opinion, is taking the mickey out of patterns of our daily lives, but how does someone with Autistic/Asperger’s view such patterns in our lives? Will, the creator of the aforementioned Netflix show Nanette, has her view on things.

 

Take this picture for example: is your life pattern one of a series of beautiful coloured glass steps leading ever upward towards success, or a nightmarish glass slide leading ever down towards a circle brightly lit by the ever-burning flames of the home of beelzebub? Could go either way really.

 

She herself “understands things a lot deeper than a lot of people” (Do autistic people ‘get’ jokes? Paragraph 14), and by “things”, she means feelings. But what is strange is that our good doctor Asperger is not only responsible (according to the article) for kick-starting the no-humour myth, but he is also known to believe that people on the spectrum lack both empathy and social understanding (wonder if he watched as many cartoons as his “little professors” have before coming up with these, um, “interesting” ideas).

 

However, not only did the no-humour belief have a huge upset last year, but so, it might seem, did the no empathy/social understanding myth. The article states that many of the people who watch Nanette seem to agree with her “analysis of feelings and emotions” (Do people autistic people ‘get’ jokes?), which kinda pokes a giant hole in the foundations of the myth doesn't it? Someone should really have it bulldozed as it’s a health hazard.

 

This guy's got the right idea. Or is it manure he’s shovelling over? Hard to tell the difference between the two.

 

Will, that does it for this week, and also (for now at least) my analysis of the myth: people with Autism/Asperger have no sense of humour. Next week we will be moving on to a different topic, as always, of which may (or may not) exclusively deal with Autism/Aspergers. But until next time, this continues to be, the Audacious Aspie. 

 

Source used:

https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-46555014