Even ADHD-oriented media is often being dishonest with people who suspect themselves to have this condition, being toxicly positive and showing ADHD as a "superpower" as if you can hyperfocus your way to success. It is neither a gift nor even an equal exchange between advantages and drawbacks like "you'll be always late but also always creative!" It's a crippling thing that may ruin career or end a relationship. There is nothing good with ADHD.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago (14 children)

Absolutely. People want there to be a fair trade-off, but life just doesn't work that way. I've seen similar romanticization of autism too, especially with the "savants".

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 months ago (12 children)

Sorry. Most of that shit has been my fault, and people like me.

In recent times, there's been a push to reclassify certain disabilities from .. disabilities, into "neurodivergence." in an attempt to destigmatize certain disorders, and cast them in a new light as part of human evolution.

The idea that life is a min-maxing situation comes from the "just world fallacy", the fallacious belief that all good and evils "must balance out". Someone born with some profound disability might have no overarching heartwarming lesson for society to learn, and life might just be about abject cruelty.

I don't know if the community appreciates or hates that change, but, I've seen autism go from being called something quite hateful (/r) in the 1990s, to becoming a spectrum, to people working with autistic people and just calling them "different".

The romanticization might come from movies like Rain Man, and the few high profile savant cases (on ASD), e.g: I recall speculation that Bill Gates and Elon Musk both had Asperger's Syndrome.

What's your take on this?

[–] broken_chatbot@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I understand what you mean! What I (and probably most of us) want is the balance between "treat me like a normal person" (as in, with the same dignity and less condescension) and "don't set expectations too high". I believe portraying persons on the spectre as savant geniuses as in "Rain Man" or ADHD as a "superpower" skews the balance to one side and we just need some disclaimers to even it out.

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