How to make friends?

Wrongplanet.net has a chatroom - seemed mostly young people to me. Have you tried it?

That wrongplanet place is like a zoo with all the cages open, judging from my last vist there. Plus, for genuine people like me who suffer from Asperger's, getting bullied by people there is something that happens. What you have on that place is young guys who've never stepped foot outside their front door and who enjoy analysing every word you type, trying to find disagreement in what you're saying.

Yeah, I got attacked on that site on like my second post... forget exactly what I said, but it was made clear to me that is was not a place I fit in at. I peruse the threads there now and then, but I don't post any more. I do know of two IRC channels: one that is new, and one that is old. Aspies for Freedom is a good site. Log on to there and check out how to login to their chatroom with an IRC client. I believe they're are on irc.freenode.org:6667/ #aff, but check to be sure. I haven't been there in a while. The other is one that a fellow member here made, but its yet to get any real activity. The address there is irc.irchighway.net:6667/ #AspergersPrivateChat .

Those are the only ones I know of...

yeah I'm no fan of the place..."a zoo with all the cages open" great description. It's not an open handed recommendation...people should proceed with extreme caution.

"young guys who've never stepped foot outside their front door and who enjoy analysing every word you type, trying to find disagreement in what you're saying" yeah, there's quite a lot of that, it's a big ego site. Plus it's the noisy crowded shopping mall of AS support sites, too many people really.

I don't really know what to tell young people who want to make friends or meet partners, it's very hard, that's the nature of Asperger's - it's social spasticity and we're pretty lame at forming relationships, the poor face recognition alone would hamper that, and that's before you take into account all the language and mindreading stuff. I had friends when I was younger, but mostly I was used, that was the price you had to pay. I think I'd do it again, because at least it was some social life and I was getting practice at language and being social. There comes a point when you have to move on as it just becomes more abusive. I probably should have got out sooner, in hindsight, but I did get something out of it.

I remember someone else describing the sort of positions allowed to aspies in social packs (like a maslow or somebody theory) and apparently we are only ever allowed to be 'the expert' or 'at the bottom'. It seems true in my experience, so of those two choises, it's better to be someone that others will want to keep around for their knowledge or skills (of practical use), so in that scenario, aspies need to develop practical useful skills/knowledge that people will want to draw on, yet don't have themselves. You also have to 'use' people back, to make it fair, otherwise they just think you're stupid, but I'm not very clever at that.

How were you used?; and I suppse that those people weren't really friends if they just used you, right? I had such people in my life too, but then they'd just ignore m,e in school; and if we were out together and other guys from school saw us, my 'friend' would try to pretend that he wasn't really hanging out with me. At times, they would even partake in the jeering of me. I was used for my computer games. I remember once my brother saying to me that my 'friend' was just their to use me, and it felt like my whole world fell around me. I knew that something wasn't right - of course - but it was just one more rejection-reality that I had to face.

... ...we (people with Asperger's) clearly tried to be friendly when we were younger, but it just never worked out.

A new girl came to my school when I was about 16 and befriended me, she sought me out and formed the relationship, in hindsight I can see she was a sociopath, but at the time, she seemed charming and her language usage was amazing, so I got taken places, asked out, phone calls...as we got older it was parties, travel, she got me work occasionally, cause she had the gift of the gab, but you end up being their personal taxi, lending them money which isn't returned etc. There's more and it got worse, it went on until late twenties, but I'm often befriended by sociopaths, my face recognition and abilities to initiate relationships are poor. At least I recognise them more quickly now. So...yeah I probably had a lot of experiences I wouldn't have, I had quite a busy social life in my early twenties, before people realise you're not just unusual, there's 'something wrong'.

Hmm, it's not everyday that tou meet a 16 year old sociopath. It is more common to just meet a 16 year old girl who just behaves like a bitch, don't you think? I'm just trying to refocus the way you look at the situation that happened. Anyawy though, I also have stuff that has not been returned to me, including money. I once paid for a ferry trip with a girl and it wasnt' cheap, but even though I was promised to get the money back, it never arrived. She also still has a book belonging to me, and some of my sanity too. I don't think that I can get my sanity back though.

oh she was a pathological shoplifter, attracted to crime, she'd meet a dx criteria for sociopathy, I just didn't realise it at the time, plus I didn't really have many choices. She wrecked a lot of people's lives.

then that makes me a sociopath too, because I have done each of those things too. However, I'm clearely not [ a sociopath]... ....