I'll mention something different for my own contribution than my usual:
I've always hated Seinfeld, including when his show was brand new. "It's a show about nothing!" was a thought terminating cliche in the 90s that was used to pitch the show at me again and again by its fans, and also to dismiss any and all problems I had with the show and its ultra-privileged smarmy main character. If I got anything valuable out of that show and for that matter his stand up routine, it was a lifelong allergy to New Yorker comedy that front loads a whole lot of "I am a New Yorker which means I am smarter and tougher and wiser and more cultured and more sophisticated yet more grounded than you" self-aggrandizement into the set. :nyet:
EDIT: Please post your own disliked Hexbear-approved popular things! Don’t just reply to mine! :rage-cry:
The big problem is that a lot of this is stuff that I've genuinely been trying to work hard on for the last 4-5 years, and not only has it not really changed anything socially about my life (although I have been slightly more stable in employment), it's all come crashing down on me lately. I got a real bad leg injury (like, probably gonna require surgery to reattach something bad) in the course of keeping up with my regular weight-training routine & my work, and not only is it costing me a lot of money, but it's also prevented me from moving forward with my life (i.e. getting my own place closer to work).
I'm also someone who didn't have a lot of opportunities growing up, I don't feel. I come from, & still live in, a small & relatively poor community, and I myself lived in a trailer park until I was about 12. I've also got ASD, and it's significant enough that I got diagnosed very young & spent nearly all my school years in special education; and where I went to school they were very big on physical restraint & isolation as punishments. My parents, just as well, had a lot of their own problems & were not generally able to pay attention to what was going on with me, or my sister (who has had a whole host of problems on here own). I never had a lot of chances to make friends with people in my time, and when I have tried most don't seem to care for my company, or my particularities. Admittedly some of that is my own fault though I suppose, as I was not a very happy or positive person for a very long time, and in a lot of ways I'm still not most of the time though I still try & do what I think is right.
I suppose for all of those reasons I don't really have the ability to be as naturally "attentive" as people might ask or expect of me; and that makes me very dubious of my ability to ever really be a part of society.
...
I'm not sure how I want to conclude this now as it's close to my bedtime, and I'm running out of brain-power to formulate & connect ideas with; but I hope you can figure out what I'm trying to get at here.
That's fair, though honestly quite a lot of people mostly take on the aesthetic of attentiveness through charisma but fall flat once people get to know them.
I think it's understandable that you're probably not actively trying to be selfish, but it can come off that way to someone not used to speaking to people with ASD. It may help to try to get advice from other people with ASD on things they do to mask effectively and such, and given the commonality there it might be possible to form friendships based on that empathy.
Other than that I think if you're trying to slow down, common "nerd" hobbies might be places to find more people who get what you're about. I've been considering that myself, tbh.
Well see, that's the problem with it, that's why I wanted to move closer to where I work. The town I live in has a population of only ~10k people (or less, more likely less frankly), and the last time they measured it the per-capita income of the place was less than half the national average (just a little bit less than that of Russia, and about +80% that of China, but without any of the social services that presumably would be available there). To drive the point home I suppose, one of only two people that I was ever friends with here grew up in a literal tar-paper shack on the outskirts of town. He didn't have reliable access to water for most of the time I knew him, his family got into a spat with the local public utilities board over fines not paid that resulted in them losing garbage removal services for a time, and I once had to sell off most of my own personal affects to keep them from getting evicted when his mom got her disability checks cut off.
So my point here is like; people have tried to open those kinds of stores here before, but there's no fuckin' money here to keep them open.
I do think that sucks and you should be doing better given your description of the kind of person you've been but...yeah, it's crazy how small towns are dying. That's the reason I left one. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry if it's uncomfortable bringing up such matters, I don't mean to impose; I'm mostly just trying to accurately describe the situation I've got myself into.
It's not a big deal! We just kinda reached a point where I'm at the end of what I can say about it. In an ideal society people would be a little more kind to strangers, but in ours sometimes you just have to meet the rest of society halfway because they don't like to budge. But as far as small town life goes, I'm just at the limit of my advice. That's a systemic/structural thing that's beyond me.
I do genuinely hope things look up for you, though.