Someone wrote to me, asking for advice. I didn’t really ask permission before posting this, so I’m stripping out the identifying information:

Hi nebu, hope i’m not intruding in a way that isn’t pleasant, but I just saw some of your posts on what it’s like to have aspergers and was curious about a few things. A good friend of mine is also diagnosed with aspergers (and is also 30 yrs old), and I’m trying to get to a point where I can understand some of his behavior just a bit better. He’s gone through some tough times recently, and I would love to be able to be of more help to him next time a similar situation rolls around.

Anyway, in this post you talk about a few things I’m curious about. I wanted to just post a reply, but it seems like that isn’t possible on older posts anymore.

Do you have any theories as to why eye contact sometimes causes you to cry? Do you feel distressed while these tears emerge, like do you feel the tears are a physical expression of sadness in the way they often are for NTs? Or do you think it’s something different?

Also, you say you like to drink out of your blue mug. Could you explain why you prefer this mug to other mugs? And what you feel (or what you would feel) when drinking from something other than your mug?

Could you possibly give me any advice when it comes to helping out my friend? I think the current situation is screwed up beyond repair, but it’s bound to happen again and I’m wondering if I can help him in the future.

There was a girl that he liked. And he really liked her - he fell in love with an intensity that I really haven’t seen before. Really, he went into this with no doubt whatsoever about his own feelings, which I found quite admirable as I’m rarely so clear in my own NT mind about things like that.

I thought that she liked him as well, but without the same level of certainty. Because of this, she sent some mixed signals - essentially, she expressed a lot of obvious affection for him when they were physically hanging out together, but when emailing and texting said some things that made him think she was not interested (for example, mentioning that she had seen some attractive guys at the beach and would like to see them again, that she enjoyed looking at attractive guys). These things, although they seemed insignificant to me, occupied his thoughts to such a degree that he grew quite upset and ended up preemptively cutting off all contact with her. Now he’s in a depressive funk, convinced that he’s never going to find anyone that he will have a relationship with.

So I guess what I’m asking is - do you have any relationship advice for a fellow aspie? Have you been in any serious relationships, and if so, how did they come about? Have you also gone through significant emotional turmoil brought about by not connecting with a girl/boy that you felt strongly about?

Thanks so much Nebu, if I’m being too intrusive simply don’t reply - that will be fine with me. But if you’re inclined to reply, I really would appreciate it deeply.

Wow, I can’t believe reddit doesn’t let you reply to old posts. They used to let you do that (I “accidentally” replied to a 2 year old thread once), but I guess now they took it out. Maybe they’re planning on charging us for the privilege, as part of their reddit gold thing.

Anyway, on to the parts you actually care about.

Do you have any theories as to why eye contact sometimes causes you to cry? Do you feel distressed while these tears emerge, like do you feel the tears are a physical expression of sadness in the way they often are for NTs? Or do you think it’s something different?

Something different. I’m trying to think of an analogy to help explain it, but I realized I don’t actually know under what conditions normal people cry, other than sadness or pain. Hmm… When you’re kind of sick, and you blow your nose a lot, do your eyes get watery? I guess it’s sort of like that. My eyes just start… leaking tears. And when that happens, I feel extremely self conscious and embarrassed. I start to feel pain if I force myself to maintain eye contact, but it’s psychological pain, not physical. I just feel like I’m such a freak of nature for crying over something as simple as looking at someone in the eye.

Also, you say you like to drink out of your blue mug. Could you explain why you prefer this mug to other mugs? And what you feel (or what you would feel) when drinking from something other than your mug?

The few times I drink from other mugs, I feel disgusted. It smells funny. The liquid tastes different. Where did this mug come from? Who used it before me, and what were they drinking? When I pee afterwards, it burns. Maybe that last one is coincidental, but I just attribute it to change of mugs, just because I’m already in the mindset that his mug is “bad”. It’s not MY mug.

There was a girl that he liked.

Oh man. I don’t think I’m the right guy to ask for advice on this. My love life hasn’t been all that great either. I don’t even know what to say, because if I start talking about this, I could easily see myself ending up with a 20 paragraph essay that doesn’t even begin to address why I don’t think I’m the right guy for this.

I’ll say this: I think it’s really nice of you to try and help out your friend, but people too are complex to be meaningfully described with just one label. Okay, so your friend is an aspie. I don’t even know if it’s safe for me to say “I’m sure he’ll appreciate knowing you’re there for him” because I don’t know where on the spectrum he is. If he has a very weak theory of mind, it might not even occur to him that you ARE there for him, or why it takes effort on your part to be there for him, or why other people putting effort is something that might be worth appreciating, etc.

I don’t know how to say this tactfully, but does he really understand what love is? I’m asking rhetorically, to bring up when you mentioned “he’s in a depressive funk, convinced that he’s never going to find anyone that he will have a relationship with.” If he’s just looking for companionship, that may be a much easier goal to achieve, than to find love. Honestly, I think almost nobody finds love, but maybe I just have a different idea of what love is, compared to most NTs.

The piece of advice I can bring up here, is something I heard somewhere and which sort of inspired me: “A tall man and a short man will both have successes and failures in their lives, but the short man will attribute all of his failures to his shortness.” (I think) everybody has relationship problems, self esteem problems, suffer from loneliness, and so on. Not just aspies. Do we suffer MORE loneliness? Maybe. More self esteem problem? There’s no reason that has to be the case. Relationship problems?

I know we certainly suffer different relationship problems. I’ve had a few girlfriends, and the general consensus is that none of their other relationships have been anything even remotely like how it was when they were with me. Both in a good way and in a bad way. If you’re in a self-pitying mood (and there’s nothing unusual about that, I often self pity, thinking my life is worst than everyone else, because everyone is NT and I’m not), then it’s easy to say “I’m autistic, so no one will like me.” But it turns out there are girls who specifically dig autistic guys; at least the high functioning ones… My most recent relation was with one such girl. She was very cruel to me, mocking my strange behaviour etc. until she found out I had aspergers, after which she took a strong liking to me. I think we were together for about one year. My last relationship before that lasted 3 years, and the one before that one year. I’ve also hand a couple of very short relationships (e.g. less than a month). I hope that gives you a vague idea about the level of seriousness I’ve had. And yeah, I’ve been very upset over relationship problems too, getting into “depressive funks” as you call them, writing emo blog posts and toying with the idea of suicide, etc.

But I’m digressing from my main point, which is to say that having Asperger’s can be both a hindrance and a benefit in terms of finding a relationship. It’ll probably be a hindrance more often than not, simply because girls who are specifically attracted to guys with Asperger’s is more rare than girls who are not, but the point is that Asperger’s doesn’t have to always be a hindrance.

I don’t know what your financial situation is like, but maybe you can give your friend this book: Asperger Syndrom: A Love Story. It’s cowritten by an NT girl and an aspie guy. It’s mostly written by the NT girl, though, and so don’t expect to glean much practical advice from “how to make relationships work” or “how to find girls” or anything like that. That’s not why I’m recommending this book. Rather, it’s to present as evidence that, yes, there exists girls who specifically like guys with Aspergers. In fact, maybe you don’t even have to buy the book. Maybe just the knowledge that this book exists will be enough to convince your friend of this claim.

Other than that, I think the generic advice for meeting girls works just as well for Aspies: Have confidence. Knowing that (some) girls dig aspies is one step in that direction. Don’t be ashamed of your neurology. Aspies are typically “smarter” than NTs (at least in terms of rational thought processes; don’t ask us to solve mushy emotional/social problems), and lots of girls dig smart guys.

I don’t know what your friend is like, but when I’m down, the first thing I want to do is have some time to myself so I can mope and self pity. I like to know that you’re there for me when I need you, but I don’t need you just quite yet. Give me some time. If it starts to stretch out, ask me to hang out with you, doing stuff to get my mind off things. In my case, that’d be playing videogames or something. I don’t know what your friend is into. Then, when I’m in the right mindset, to actually tackle my problem, that’s when I’d want concrete, actionable advice. “Be confident!” is too vague. “Your sense of style sucks. Let’s go shopping and I’ll help you pick out a new outfit” isn’t.

As for actually “meeting” girls, I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. If your friend is anything like me, then social gatherings will just make him anxious. Forget going to bars or clubs or pool halls and just chatting with girls he’s never met before. It’s not gonna work. (Do NTs even really do this, or am I just stereotyping?) I’m afraid you’re on your own for this step…

For those of you outside of Montreal, STCUM is Montreal’s public transportaton system comprising primarily of subway trains and buses, though they’ve been expanding into car-rentals too. Bixi is a bicycle rental system recently established in Montreal. I don’t know if Bixi is profitable (or even whether its meant to be a for-profit project, as opposed to being subsidized by our government the same way STCUM is), but most people I’ve spoken to have a generally negative impression of it: it’s too expensive, and the pricing scheme is too confusing (you need to buy a “subscription” for $5 per day, which then allows you to rent the bike on a per half-hour basis, whose cost varies from $0 to $6 per half hour. People generally have negative impressions about the STCUM too, but since it’s the STCUM has been around for decades, and there’s no real alternative, people have generally stopped bothering to complain about it.

The STCUM prices are independent of distance traveled. Whether you go from station to its neighbor, or the the furthest other station on the system, you pay the same flat rate (in contrast, e.g. to Japan, where it costs more the further you travel). You can buy single-use tickets, a “book” of 6 tickets for a discount; a weekly pass (which gives you unlimited access to the system for 1 week), and a monthly pass. Previously, a monthly pass was a magnetic card which you’d swipe through a sensor to use. Recently, the STCUM is pushing for a transition to the so-called “Opus” card, a smart card which you buy once, and “recharge” when your pass or tickets runs out. Whether you buy the traditional magnetized card, or recharge your Opus with a digital pass, the price is the same, which is around $70 for a monthly pass these days.

To me, Bixi looks like it’s poised to become a big failure unless some drastic changes are done. And as I mentioned earlier, the biggest complaints seem to be that it’s too expensive, and the pricing scheme is too confusing. I think both of these problems could be solved if Bixi were to integrate itself with the STCUM.

Both companies have a similar goal: to reduce car-traffic, especially downtown, via public transportation, and thus both companies seem to be targeting the same demographic. Instead of competing, the two services can complement each other. STCUM should acquire Bixi (or the other way around; it doesn’t really matter, but I suspect STUCM is bigger) and then have Bixi as an optional upgrade on your monthly pass. I don’t know what the economics are of running an operation like Bixi (particularly if you have an existing infrastructure like the STCUM does), but if I could get virtually (I’ll explain what I mean by “virtually” later on) unlimited access to Bixi for an extra $5 ontop of my monthly pass, I’d definitely subscribe, even though I predict I will almost never use Bixi. For an extra $10, it becomes a “maybe”, and for $20, it’s a “probably not, but plausible”.

This solution definitely solves the “complex pricing scheme” problem, but what remains open is whether it solves the “it’s too expensive” issue. Can the STCUM afford to maintain Bixi at $20 per monthy, when Bixi currently charges… well, whatever it is they charge? I don’t know, but two things worth noting is that the STCUM is subsidized by the government, and there will probably be a significant number of customers who, like me, will pay the monthly fee, but virtually never use Bixi bikes. Then again, there will likely be many more Bixi users once this new plan is in place, possibly driving up the maintenance costs. That said, I almost always see the bike racks full, and unused, and very rarely see anyone actually using a Bixi bike anywhere. As such, I’m assuming that currently Bixi is taking on a lot of losses, mainly from sunk costs of just having the system in place, and having more usage at a lower revenue, even if it raises maintenance costs, would be a net gain for them.

Another issue is that the reason Bixi’s pricing scheme is so complicated is that they want to encourage circulation of the bikes. They don’t want, for example, someone renting the bike for a month, taking it home, and keeping it for a month. That’s why, for each half hour that you keep it, that half hour is more expensive than the previous half hour. While I understand the sentiment, I think half an hour is a very easy limit to hit, and so is a big deterrent to a lot of people considering the service. Plus it seems that they are having trouble communicating to the customers that if they keep the bike longer than for half an hour, they will be charged extra, leading to a lot of bad first impressions with the service. I would recommend that they increase the time units up to two hours. So the first two hours is free (assuming you’ve already bought a “subscription”), then every two hours from there is more expensive than the last. This way, a lot of people won’t even encounter the limit, and you can easily inform the customer that they must return the bike within 2 hours or face additional fees. I guess when you use the machine, it would print out the time-of-purchase and due-time on the receipt.

There are other problems with Bixi, but I might be able to express them in 140 characters, so I’ll save them for my Twitter. The conclusion is that right now, Bixi looks like a failure, and what they really need to do is focus on getting people to try the bikes, and having a positive experience from it. When I’m walking downtown, and I see bike racks full of unused Bixi, this is just confirming my suspicion that the service is a piece of crap (or else the bike racks would be all empty, the bikes currently being in use). They need to destroy this perception, and get the bikes into circulation, even if it means at a loss at first.

A friend of mine had asked me about investing in GameStop a while ago, and I advised him against it, because I felt that GameStop’s primary business model, namely buying used games low and reselling them high, was not viable in the long term. Well, I really wish I had made that prediction public back then, because over the last month, a ton of news release have poured in confirming my prediction. The exact wording of my original prediction was:

In the long term, I think GameStop is going to lose out. The video game industry doesn’t like this “secondary market” of used videogames (they’d much rather everyone buy stuff new every time). And I think they will win. They are doing this by moving games to an all digital platform. WiiWare, XboxLive, PlaystationNetwork, DSWare, Steam, iTunes, etc. The online digital-only stores are getting better and better every day. I don’t think GameStop can survive in the long term.

Also, this was recently announced at E3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onlive

My friend asked for more details (partly in the form of a rebuttal). One of the specific points he gave (which I repeat here, because I refer to it in my response) was that most companies would not likely be willing to digitally sell Street Fighter 4 for more than $10 beneath retail price, and if a consumer was given the choice of the digital download for $59.99 versus the retail copy for $69.99, he’d probably opt for the retail copy, both for the packaging art and other physical materials, and for the possibility to resell the game used. He also mentions large downloads times as a deterrent. My response:

1. Don’t neglect casual games, which many people predict is going to be huge, possibly even dwarfing “traditional-core” games likes SF4. In the last month alone, I’ve bought 6 games for about $5 each. 3 of which I played once and will probably never play again, 1 of which I’ve owned for maybe 2 weeks and haven’t even played yet (and don’t plan on playing any time soon). And I don’t have buyer’s remorse at all. At the $5 price point, I am extremely open to taking risks and splurging. In contrast, SF4 at $70, I would more likely pirate it.
2. I don’t know about other people, but I find selling used games to be a huge hassle, and don’t even bother with it anymore.
3. Steam actually lets you sell digital games. Basically, you can transfer ownership of a digital title from one account to another for $2 or something like that. The seller of the game has to pay Steam $2, and then Steam will transfer ownership to any other account. You’re on your own for actually handling transfer of funds from the buyer to the seller.
4. Downloads times are actually pretty reasonable: buy a 1GB game, usually it’s ready within 1 hour. Consider the time between deciding to buy a physical game, driving to the store, buying it, and driving back home. They’re comparable times, and not having to leave your house is very convenient.
5. Online stores are 24/7, more easily searchable, never run out of stock. I find them more pleasant to browse as well, as many of them integrate social media stuff, like linking to reviews, etc. If I see an unknown game at a store, it’s a hassle to try to look it up on my iPhone to find out if it’s any good.
6. The only game that’s even rumoured to come anywhere near 50GB is the next Final Fantasy. The DVDs that Xbox360 uses have a capacity limit of 8GB, and most game images on torrent sites are 4GB to 6GB.

I think GameStop may start failing financially even within 1 to 3 years, depending on how aggressively Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Valve and Amazon push their online offerings.

The 50GB is in reference to my friend’s balking at the idea of digitally downloading a 50GB game. I guess he got that 50GB figure from the fact that the maximum capacity of a Dual Layer BluRay disc is 50GB.

A couple of weeks later, I’m vindicated by this Ars Technica article and then Sony drops the bombshell, announcing that their next PSP console will not accept physical media at all, forcing all future games for that platform to be in the form of digital downloads. Finally, Microsoft announces (apparently to the great surprise of many) that they are making full Xbox360 games available as digital downloads.