I was in elementary in Canada early 90’s. My school was weird. There’s a large Mennonite community in the area where I grew up so a large percentage (more than 50%) of the kids in this school were Mennonite. For those unfamiliar, these are similar to Amish. Such farmers with strong religious views, most of them were “old order” meaning they grew up in homes with little to no electricity. They also finish school at age 12 regardless of progress. This meant that they were exempt from a lot of the classes my tiny public school had to offer. No French, computing, or Sex Ed. A lot of them were also in special Ed. I’m not going to sugar coat this. It’s forbidden from them to marry outside of their culture and only like 4 families came to the area. So there’s a lot of disabilities as a result of inbreeding with that community.

All this to say that my school had absolutely no clue how to deal with my undiagnosed autism. But they seemed to have decent funding due to the much higher needs.

I was in special Ed via French exemption status. This means I never learned french. I’d instead be placed in a room with all the Mennonite kids often in a corner trying to read. Eventually I was put into some kind of program. A neurologist should come by and do experiments on me. Nothing weird, just testing my fine motor skills. They (falsely) diagnosed me with “elementary tremors” a pediatric doctor upped this to a “retardation caused by mild down syndrome” (extremely wrong) after years of that nonsense they decided to use this crazy new fangled technology to give me a leg up with writing. I was given a Macintosh computer. I had a desk with tiny wheels and my 4th grade self had to wheel this from class to class (including “portables”). Of course this was pretty obsolete tech even for its time. My parents got me an Alpha Smart which was way better. By 6th grade I had a personal support worker to help get me caught up. I failed grades 3-6 but was ‘placed’ into the next grade anyway and never made to repeat anything.

Highschool was very different, no Mennonite, so way less funding. It was still a French exemption class but there were only about 5 other students in the class. It seemed to be less about education, or assessment of my condition. It was some watching videos and doing some analysis. It was mostly just a time to catch up on homework. Often there wasn’t even a teacher present.

Probably like 40-50 my rommate has a weird fascination with them. At some point they brought home a box if like 40 of the cheap ones. I assume it was part if some art thing they planed then never bothered with. Now they are all over the apartment.

Let’s not support reddit by participating in their attempt to boost stats.

I considered a simular answer, but realized I was given that same advice so often when I needed to hear it. I still ignored it.

Much to our detriment. The "heart"often circumvents all logic and reason. Especially to our younger selves.

Best we can do is try to instill a enough self worth that we become a little more stable. At least in my case I’d have been less willing to change who I am if I actually knew who I was.

I suppose it’s a bit more sensible for news related subs. The reddits ines sre likley using bots to find the news and post it, though such bots may not exist for lemmy yet and its just easier to scrape from reddit.

But then I see somthing like the ask reddit sub on Lemmy. It’s just all of the questions none of the answers and no engagement at all. Some of the content is years old.Why does that need to exist? I can understand the idea of a reddit archive but why use lemmy for it?

I’m also wondering about the ethicacy of it. I’m annoyed at Reddit for not allowing me to delete my old content. There’s a lot of folks threating legal action and such over reddit denying people the right to remove that content. Now we are copying that content. I assume without consent of those who’d posted it, and adding it to our own platform.

Though perfectly legal, is that really a good idea? Is that what we as lemmy users actually want? does this actually improve the platform?

That is good advice. I hadn’t considered that.

Probably moving to a big city from a prondomity Mennonite village I grew up in. I am not a Mennonite myself, not religious either, just grew up in that kind of environment. A tiny unfinished suburb surrounded by miles of corn fields and cows.

Highlights include

• having to idea how public transit worked I was riding the bus without paying for the first few months because I didn’t realize I needed to.

• saw my first homeless people, saw women dressed “imodestly”, and tall buildings. These are not things that bothered me but certainly things I should have seen prior to my 20s. I had no clue how to interact with people outside my bubble.

• having grown up with many siblings and close friends I was hit with a lot of loneliness. Definetly a low point.

• I also had none of the skills needed to survive life on my own in a big city. Schools teach budgeting but they didn’t teach me to avoid scammers, where to shop, how to get places, housing, access to health services ect.

I’m still learning about 15 years later. Now it’s about assertive communication skills, legal knowledge, cultural histories, how to pay respects to indigionous cultures and why its important to do so, im understanding local politics and how to work with it.

Frankly that’s my favorite part of all this. I’m (slowly) learning, and feel like I am growing from being a part of the culture and not in a bubble.

I feel that. Reddit’s bit of an addiction for me. I don’t use other social media so it became my one stop shop for news, inspiration, and to connect with all the little niche intrest.

Oddly, I was frequently just doom scrolling r/all to see what was going on the the world. And when I ran out of revent stuff if just sort by new. Super unhealthy behavior.

Hopfully this transition will help me slow down a bit and get back to reality.