I guess it’s another way of asking, “What event in your life had to most effective impact?”
I’ve had the cops lie about me too. Luckily my case wasn’t so severe. I’m really, really sorry to hear that happened.
a doma enabled deportation of my life partner 12 years ago.
it was a life altering event that turned me from a liberal into a leftist.
An important distinction these days. I’m curious, how will that dictate the way you vote in the next election? (None of my damn business, but I’m curious.) Feel free to message me about it if you don’t want to post here.
i’m too autistic to care about other people’s feelings when i share my political opinions and my post history is littered with it especially since my life has also been heavily impacted by clinton enacting don’t ask don’t tell; biden extolling executive order 10450; clinton, bush jr, obama, trump and biden’s immigration policies; the country’s student loan debt situation created by biden’s student loan act; biden using the inflation reduction action to block truly affordable EV’s; and biden banning tiktok.
i’ll save you the trouble of going through my post history and give you a tldr: both clintons & biden are shit stains in this country’s political history and have fucked me over much more than trump could ever fantasize about; even with project 2025. i also wish kamala was better so that i could vote for her, but she’s seems hellbent on make sure that i don’t; so i’m 99% sure i’ll end up voting for the green party again as i have done in the past 12 years, but this time around i’m deeply touched that nearly all of the people who know and care about me will be doing something similar thanks to my proselytizing.
i’m too autistic to care about other people’s feelings when i share my political opinions
Honestly tuned out after that. Autism doesn’t work that way, and no one gives a fuck about your ideals if you tune out other people’s input. If you want to affect change with the people around you, I’d start with conceptualizing that autism isn’t about disconnection from people’s feelings. That’s just being an asshole.
Oh boy. Just one?
I guess I’d go with “signing up to a random online forum back in 2012”.
I was a very shy and introverted kid back then, without friends or social life to speak of. I would spend all my time playing videogames and reading books.
That online forum gave me a chance to speak to other people while staying “safe” in my shell. Without realising it, I slowly gained confidence and social skills that helped me make friends both online and irl, some of whom I still speak with to to this day. Thanks to one of the people I knew on that forum, I now have a job that I like.
I wouldn’t recommend online forums nowadays to fight depression/lack of social skills, as the internet has become a cesspool. Online chats are breeding grounds for political extremists. But in my case it definitely helped.
A close second would be having a girl in college confessing to me. I had never really thought about my sexuality back then: it just wasn’t on my mind, like, ever (which should’ve been a red flag, but whatever). She was really nice and wasn’t pushy at all, but I knew that I couldn’t leave her hanging forever, and I had to give her an honest answer in a relatively short time.
Well, long story short, I realized I wasn’t straight. At first I thought I was bi, then gay, but a few years later I understood that I am ace (again, should’ve been obvious by the fact that I literally never thought about sex for the entirety of my teenage years, but I’m dumb).
But seriously, there are so many important moments in one’s life, it’s difficult to choose only one or two. Watching nature documentaries with my brother as a kid turned me into a huge animal lover, to the point that I’m literally unable to kill a fly because it makes me sick. Thanks bro, those are some of my most treasured memories!
That first part is eerily similar to what I was about to post.
In 2011, I was a lonely introvert. I spent my time binging TV shows and reading.
In 2012, on an IRL meetup thread on the 4chan x (paranormal stories) board, I met a new friend. I think deciding to meet them was the critical moment. They introduced me to a local arts and crafts club, a certain sci-fi fandom, and Minecraft.
The arts and crafts club became the basis of a friend group that is still my main friend group today. They brought me to a local convention in 2013 where I discovered I was trans.
In that sci-fi fandom, at a 2016 convention, I met my current partner, and a bunch of new friends.
I played a lot of Minecraft from 2012 to 2016, but then my partner in 2016 introduced me to Factorio.
Start of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Now I have to worry every day that people I know (who have not managed to escape Ukraine) will either get killed by a Russian rocket or will get kidnapped from the streets by Ukrainian “recruitment officers”.
kicking heroin
