RageAgainstTheSurge
Member
Hello, I'm RageAgainstTheSurge (a.k.a. R.A.T.S., a.k.a. Surge) [He/Him].
Eight months ago, I moved to a new town, though I would make some new friends on Facebook, I was making 100 karma points on Reddit per week after almost a decade of being banned from that website and getting back into that site hoping Reddit's ban system would not catch up to me. I thought I was making progress.
I'll admit, I'm a high functioning autistic white guy who has had trouble finding work and was finally able to live independently after winning a personal injury lawsuit.
I am the kind of Millennial who has been on the receiving end of some of the worst events in history the last 25 years.
My parents had to lie and say I had Tourette Syndrome so that the local school district wouldn't try to send me to some special school because of my autism. I excelled at math. I had a growing love of computers. I wish my parents had let me spent more time with video games. They were worried that video games would corrupt me so they got me a computer. The computer had better access to porn. I don't hate porn. Heck, the last thing I want to do is be one of those "born-again" losers who say they found Jesus Christ, but actually found Christianity to be an outlet to be an even more hateful jerk. Have you seen those guys lately? Try to ban books. Bragging about "Christian Nationalism" and not understanding theres more nationalism (fascism) than their is actual Christianity. Invading the US Capitol Last Year!!! I mean, what the actual [word you probably can't say here].
But I can assure you had I spent more time with a Nintendo 64 instead of a piece-of-crap used Apple computer (because this was the late 1990s), I definitely would have made more friends.
I spent a lot of time alone. Tried making friends in middle school and high school and college and in social groups. I was always too extreme, too smart, too awkward, or too offensive.
Late sophomore year, April 1999: At a high school 1000 miles from where I was, a notorous school shooting at a place outside of Denver that I never once though about where two morons killed classmates and teachers. Unbeknownst to be, and probably a lot of other teenagers in America, the wheels inside the heads of a lot of school adminstrators were turning as to how they could use this tragedy to expel a lot of other students who were or whose parents were a real thorn in their side. But a fear was implanted into peoples minds, how those "odd kids" probably were "plotting to blow up the school" (where my art projects were and the places at school which were a quiet refuge sometimes and the few people I tried to be friends with were during the day? What incentive would I have to destroy the school or murder anyone there. Never the less the school had this one woman who was like 26 pretend to be ten years younger (but her age was showing; insert that Steve Buscemi "How do you do, my fellow classmates" meme here) shadow me all day to see if I would do anything only for her to report that I was the most BORING person she ever meant. And I sad, with sarcasm, "No, really? You think?!" Regardless, Junior year was hell, I think I had a mental breakdown that year. And by Senior year I was taking classes from home on the Internet, which wasn't doing me any favors socially.
You could say that I had done remote learning 20 years ahead of my time and it was pretty bad in 2000 as it was in 2020.
Went to college in 2001, two weeks into it on a warm sunny Tuesday in September, I walk into my work study where the TVs were turned on and we were watching the towers fall down. Some of my classmates quit college to serve in the military. Others just wanted to hide away in the library and not worry about young, angry, stupid Americans like myself being mad about what happened. (Again, my myopic world view with my conservative parents wasn't doing me any favors in an environment that was primarily based around liberalism and free thought...both which were given bad names at the time because of what just happened.) Freshman year of college went OK. Sophmore year, I had skipped classes, stayed in my room a lot. Taking advantage of all the freedom I had. Again, being socially akward being a math/computer nerd who liked Invader Zim, downloading music, and watching Flash Animation Cartoons a lot more than my school work. After that, my folks felt that I didn't have the emotional maturity for dorm life.
My school was one of those early adapters to "The Facebook" in 2005. Some guys at another, more expensive college was introduced to it. It was a much better website back then. We had social group about what classes we were taking with this one professor, we joked about how ridiculous nobody could solve The Shrine of the Silver Monkey from the original Legends of the Hidden Temple. Facebook's halcyon days were my own halcyon days of web development. I probably should have spent more time working on Java than JavaScript, but I guess every Node.js and React.js developer today would say what I was trying to do with JavaScript was ahead of its time and not as thoroughly recognized as some rich Ivy League nerds who we now loathe today.
Regardless, in 2007, I finally got my Bachelors of Science in Computer Science...right about at the same time the economy crashed. Of course, my mom though that now that I had completed college it was time to start hanging out with more "developmentally disabled" people. This was a big mistake. I literally got no respect for being an intelligent person. My resume meant nothing to these people. I asked if they could help me find a job with web development or computer programming, they assumed that the coding I was talking about was equivalent to medical coding, which I really didn't want to do because I really did not want to be in a medical environment. There was an attempt to finally teach me how to drive, but with no follow up and my neighborhood being a crappy place to take the drivers test, that wasn't happening. One time I went to the DMV to take my test and the lady failed me before I left the parking lot so she could go home at 4PM.
1/3
Eight months ago, I moved to a new town, though I would make some new friends on Facebook, I was making 100 karma points on Reddit per week after almost a decade of being banned from that website and getting back into that site hoping Reddit's ban system would not catch up to me. I thought I was making progress.
I'll admit, I'm a high functioning autistic white guy who has had trouble finding work and was finally able to live independently after winning a personal injury lawsuit.
I am the kind of Millennial who has been on the receiving end of some of the worst events in history the last 25 years.
My parents had to lie and say I had Tourette Syndrome so that the local school district wouldn't try to send me to some special school because of my autism. I excelled at math. I had a growing love of computers. I wish my parents had let me spent more time with video games. They were worried that video games would corrupt me so they got me a computer. The computer had better access to porn. I don't hate porn. Heck, the last thing I want to do is be one of those "born-again" losers who say they found Jesus Christ, but actually found Christianity to be an outlet to be an even more hateful jerk. Have you seen those guys lately? Try to ban books. Bragging about "Christian Nationalism" and not understanding theres more nationalism (fascism) than their is actual Christianity. Invading the US Capitol Last Year!!! I mean, what the actual [word you probably can't say here].
But I can assure you had I spent more time with a Nintendo 64 instead of a piece-of-crap used Apple computer (because this was the late 1990s), I definitely would have made more friends.
I spent a lot of time alone. Tried making friends in middle school and high school and college and in social groups. I was always too extreme, too smart, too awkward, or too offensive.
Late sophomore year, April 1999: At a high school 1000 miles from where I was, a notorous school shooting at a place outside of Denver that I never once though about where two morons killed classmates and teachers. Unbeknownst to be, and probably a lot of other teenagers in America, the wheels inside the heads of a lot of school adminstrators were turning as to how they could use this tragedy to expel a lot of other students who were or whose parents were a real thorn in their side. But a fear was implanted into peoples minds, how those "odd kids" probably were "plotting to blow up the school" (where my art projects were and the places at school which were a quiet refuge sometimes and the few people I tried to be friends with were during the day? What incentive would I have to destroy the school or murder anyone there. Never the less the school had this one woman who was like 26 pretend to be ten years younger (but her age was showing; insert that Steve Buscemi "How do you do, my fellow classmates" meme here) shadow me all day to see if I would do anything only for her to report that I was the most BORING person she ever meant. And I sad, with sarcasm, "No, really? You think?!" Regardless, Junior year was hell, I think I had a mental breakdown that year. And by Senior year I was taking classes from home on the Internet, which wasn't doing me any favors socially.
You could say that I had done remote learning 20 years ahead of my time and it was pretty bad in 2000 as it was in 2020.
Went to college in 2001, two weeks into it on a warm sunny Tuesday in September, I walk into my work study where the TVs were turned on and we were watching the towers fall down. Some of my classmates quit college to serve in the military. Others just wanted to hide away in the library and not worry about young, angry, stupid Americans like myself being mad about what happened. (Again, my myopic world view with my conservative parents wasn't doing me any favors in an environment that was primarily based around liberalism and free thought...both which were given bad names at the time because of what just happened.) Freshman year of college went OK. Sophmore year, I had skipped classes, stayed in my room a lot. Taking advantage of all the freedom I had. Again, being socially akward being a math/computer nerd who liked Invader Zim, downloading music, and watching Flash Animation Cartoons a lot more than my school work. After that, my folks felt that I didn't have the emotional maturity for dorm life.
My school was one of those early adapters to "The Facebook" in 2005. Some guys at another, more expensive college was introduced to it. It was a much better website back then. We had social group about what classes we were taking with this one professor, we joked about how ridiculous nobody could solve The Shrine of the Silver Monkey from the original Legends of the Hidden Temple. Facebook's halcyon days were my own halcyon days of web development. I probably should have spent more time working on Java than JavaScript, but I guess every Node.js and React.js developer today would say what I was trying to do with JavaScript was ahead of its time and not as thoroughly recognized as some rich Ivy League nerds who we now loathe today.
Regardless, in 2007, I finally got my Bachelors of Science in Computer Science...right about at the same time the economy crashed. Of course, my mom though that now that I had completed college it was time to start hanging out with more "developmentally disabled" people. This was a big mistake. I literally got no respect for being an intelligent person. My resume meant nothing to these people. I asked if they could help me find a job with web development or computer programming, they assumed that the coding I was talking about was equivalent to medical coding, which I really didn't want to do because I really did not want to be in a medical environment. There was an attempt to finally teach me how to drive, but with no follow up and my neighborhood being a crappy place to take the drivers test, that wasn't happening. One time I went to the DMV to take my test and the lady failed me before I left the parking lot so she could go home at 4PM.
1/3