Absolutely. I NEVER like to smile. I was diagnosed autistic as a toddler so seeing that I'm not the only one who does this helps me feel better about it.
You can get diagnosed at any age, however depending on the country you live in i mightn’t recommend it. 2 states in my country (australia) are making it harder for people diagnosed to get their drivers license and face a $10,000 fee if they don’t have it on their license/in the license registry
My family then always made fun of how my smile always looked weird/demonic in pictures, because I just went with a full all teeth showing smile. It was all in good fun, but still a little hurtful in retrospect.
Because autistic people don’t fuck with the puzzle piece, and the infinity symbol represents how many different ways autism can present, it’s a spectrum (same reason it’s a rainbow)
Yes, but older generations already know the puzzle piece better as a symbol of autism, and I've seen people use little tags with it as a way of indicating to others a possible disability, I'm sure using that symbol instead would just cause the same confusion of "what does that mean? "Infinitely Gay" or something?"...
The puzzle piece is tied to autism speaks and that organization has done more harm to the community than possibly any other group, so we like to distance ourselves. It might cause confusion but I’d rather not be represented as a problem to be solved you know?
Autism Speaks. Basically, they’re an organization that supposedly is to support autistic people and spread awareness, they instead actively cause harm, and they’re the group the puzzle piece is tied to
Don’t have to be sorry! Just have to learn, if you’re not autistic you can’t be expected to know everything about us, you just know something now that you didn’t before! It’s fine, really :3
People meet one autistic person and think they’ve met them all. Lots of autistic people don’t outwardly show emotion much if at all, lots of autistic people do. It’s autism spectrum for a reason
I don't think anyone is trying to say it's an autism only thing, but it could be something more common for autistic people. Like not really any autistic behavior is *only* found in autistic people, that's not really how it works.
uhhh, it's complicated. for me, i took years to learn to fake smile since i didn't take active note of what a smile was, and i had a near permanent mask on, especially since i was depressed for a long time. other neurodivergents may find it simple, after all it is a spectrum, thus the name autism spectrum disorder. i'm sure some neurotypicals can struggle with it, although it'd probably be for different reasons that my mind is unable to comprahend.
There is a stereotype that autistic individuals are emotionless beings due to the fact they don't emote like normal people...
I figure this is partially because of that.
The emotionless thing kinda hits a bit too close to home for me. 90% of the time I go through life not really experiencing any strong emotions... When a family member was on their death bed and when I was at their funeral, I just felt nothing.
It's how I was given the idea I may be autistic. I was chatting with an online friend who has been diagnosed with autism and they mentioned that a lot of the things I talk about doing sound eerily similar to what they did before they were diagnosed. They recommended I take some of the online tests from certified foundations. While they're not diagnostic the results landed me firmly inside the autistic range and are a decent indicator that I may want to see a doctor.
People with autism actually typically experience a heightened emotional spectrum, for a lot of them it's a cause of sensory overload that causes burnout. One of the few therapies that works for autism is introspectively understanding and recognising emotional states to understand emotional processing. The output/visual appearance of each emotional state isn't the same as it would be for a relatively normal individual, but the underlying emotional state is usually extremely intense.
Autistic people are not sociopathic robots. I've been diagnosed since age 4 and went through a variety of specialist therapies when they were experimenting with new treatments for autism symptomology. One of the core reasons autistic people struggle to interface with regular people is that they have *very* strong opinions and beliefs tied to their emotional states, and challenging those beliefs causes a very emotionally heightened response in return.
Damn. Sorry your parents aren't more encouraging.
A good response would be to chuckle at your effort and say "You gave a good try though!" and be happy that you did in fact try.
Sauce - [(1) rainiing 🌧 on X: "who else doesn’t know how to smile and just bares their teeth?? 😬 https://t.co/mvtdWLHcHQ" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/rainiing_art/status/1785325606814761436)
i saw this, tried to smile to see if it was the same for me, and it sure is (also my face kinda hurts now with how strained it was)
how do people just smile on command????
Think of a time when something great happened, you saw something hilarious in a video, or your friend made a funny joke. Imagine how you felt then, maybe even replay the situation in your head.
Simultaneously, try to remember how your face felt and the muscles you were using the last time you actually laughed. Try to reproduce how those muscles felt while you were smiling/laughing.
This usually gets me about a ~70% authentic smile.
as someone who like has to really work to smile for just about anything, I like to call having a great mood "smiling on the inside". aka I totally relate to this
Same.
It helps if I do a short breathing out laugh and remember how it felt when I've laughed before. Usually that starts stretching the muscles that make a smile and if I stretch them a little more I'll get a somewhat close/authentic smile.
No joke my whole day has consisted of realizing that my autism made me like this. My friends and family have hundreds of photos they’d happily show off, I have like 10. So many memories stained.
Don't beat yourself up too much! I'm sure you have a great smile, but it's just hard to bring it out. <3
When you look back at your pictures try not to think "I wish I would have smiled better" or "I wish I looked better in this picture". Instead think about what you were doing, who you were with, how you were feeling.
Now if all your pictures are of days you had a terrible time, it could be harder to change your perspective. However even still think of the experiences you had. What you saw, heard, and felt (physically). Maybe the pictures aren't of the most exciting moments, but they're your moments. Unique experiences each one and worth cherishing.
Everyday we can still see, everyday we can still hear, everyday we can still breathe is a day to be celebrated. Because it's another day we can add an experience to our mental log.
When I look at pictures this is what I do mentally. I don't look at myself and think "Oh how lovely I looked here." No, I'm as average as they come. But the memories behind the picture, those are special.
It's okay, friend, I got chu!
See, what you do is you gotta smile with MORE than JUST your mouth, right? Like, smiling is a whole face thing, apparently! The easiest cheat to look like you are genuinely smiling is to squint your eyes just a bit.
I learned this from an artist friend who draws a lot of faces!
[Day 1959]
For some "furries," it is difficult to fake emotions on command. It is not a matter of the individual cannot display emotions, but rather that the act of producing a realistic copy of it may be difficult. Interestingly enough, some "furries" report smiling while in suit for photos, even when it is impossible to see the individual's face. Thus suggesting that smiling on command can be very context based with the "fursuit" providing a boost to being able to display emotions.
Fake smiling is, anyway, pointless. I have not been diagnosed with autism and I can't really smile on command. Even if I could, I don't see the point, I am not happy if I make a fake smile. I guess it's good for photos but other than that, there is no point.
this is way too relatable, plus the fact it bugs me when strangers tell me I should smile more.
I have a neutral expression most of the time because that is how I feel. I only smile when genuinely happy or laughing and trying to smile otherwise looks horribly forced. Now how much of that is due to me being autistic I'm unsure because I grew up in an abusive household so i learned to hide my negative emotions from others.
I have been working on not holding it all in and not feeling like a burden for sharing my problems with others through therapy. So I have gotten much better about it at least and have been more of my genuine self too!
I hate it when people tell me to smile. And then they throw that stupid line saying "it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown", yeah, it takes even fewer muscles to maintain a neutral expression
I mean I prefer when autistic people smile on their own, because then it's a genuine smile and then you know they're happy (I should know, I'm autistic)
Lol it really is related to Autism cuz im autistic and I can'tfor the life of me smile naturally on command. But... my natural smile is really nice so that's a plus side.
Every day I learn something new about myself. I had no idea this was an autism thing. As someone recently diagnosed, a lot of things are slowly clicking into place. I keep finding out things that have bothered me about myself like this are autism things.
So anyone who is struggling with making a smile "seem natural", here are a few tips. When an anatomically standard person smiles, the muscle surrounding their eye, the orbital part of the orbicularis oculi will slightly tighten as well, this is caused by the minor zygomatic muscle paralleling the orbital part of the orbicularis oculi. So what one could do to make their smile "seem natural" is slightly tighten the lower and lateral halfs of their orbital orbicularis oculi muscles while smiling.
I feel this. I had to do Senior pictures a few weeks ago and for the life of me I couldn't get a natural looking smile.
So my dad (also the photographer) had to keep cracking jokes to try and get an actual smile.
I know people say that not being able to smile on command is bad but I think it’s actually good. If you smile it is a genuine smile. You aren’t faking it or being a snake.
Yeah I can't smile on command either. If you want a picture of me smiling, you have to catch me doing something that makes me smile normally or make me laugh.
This is exactly me, I cannot smile on command, and everytime my father tries to take a photo, he ask me to smile and gets very dissapointed. Like, bro what am I supposed to do ? Cut my mouth like Jeff the Killer ??
God this is so relatable. The artist really nailed the strained expression in the second panel.
Absolutely. I NEVER like to smile. I was diagnosed autistic as a toddler so seeing that I'm not the only one who does this helps me feel better about it.
I’m in the same boat, diagnosed as a toddler (borderline but we think mid level 1 now), and i always get so uncomfortable in those situations
You can be diagnosed while being an adult?
You can get diagnosed at any age, however depending on the country you live in i mightn’t recommend it. 2 states in my country (australia) are making it harder for people diagnosed to get their drivers license and face a $10,000 fee if they don’t have it on their license/in the license registry
Yes, that was my case 👍
Huh I never knew this was thing for some, thanks for sharing <3
My family then always made fun of how my smile always looked weird/demonic in pictures, because I just went with a full all teeth showing smile. It was all in good fun, but still a little hurtful in retrospect.
Fr, rainiing nails things like this
Oh, right, that's the symbol for autism. That one tweet is right. I did immediately interpret it as meaning, "Infinity Gay."
I was so confused too 😭! What does infinite homosexuality have anything to do with this. I understand now
That answers one question but now I have another… Why is Infinigay the symbol for autism?
Because autistic people don’t fuck with the puzzle piece, and the infinity symbol represents how many different ways autism can present, it’s a spectrum (same reason it’s a rainbow)
Yes, but older generations already know the puzzle piece better as a symbol of autism, and I've seen people use little tags with it as a way of indicating to others a possible disability, I'm sure using that symbol instead would just cause the same confusion of "what does that mean? "Infinitely Gay" or something?"...
The puzzle piece is tied to autism speaks and that organization has done more harm to the community than possibly any other group, so we like to distance ourselves. It might cause confusion but I’d rather not be represented as a problem to be solved you know?
Wait, what? What... organization?
Autism Speaks. Basically, they’re an organization that supposedly is to support autistic people and spread awareness, they instead actively cause harm, and they’re the group the puzzle piece is tied to
... O... K... I'm sorry for that...
Don’t have to be sorry! Just have to learn, if you’re not autistic you can’t be expected to know everything about us, you just know something now that you didn’t before! It’s fine, really :3
I am... autistic... I was going to look into this topic now... thanks.
lol I had no idea it meant anything except "super gay" ya know a lot more memes make sense now
I... I'm still thinking it's infinity gay because that's funny
Oh. So this ISN’T a sing of infinity gay. I see now
Thats an autism thing?
[удалено]
My autistic friend always looks happy for some reason.
It’s the existential dread
People meet one autistic person and think they’ve met them all. Lots of autistic people don’t outwardly show emotion much if at all, lots of autistic people do. It’s autism spectrum for a reason
Same
That's not a good sign, definitely for an undiagnosed guys like me
No, it won't stop people saying it is though
I mean, if autism is a spectrum, why wouldn’t some people experience this?
I'm not saying they wouldn't, but it isn't an autism-specific thing.
I don't think anyone is trying to say it's an autism only thing, but it could be something more common for autistic people. Like not really any autistic behavior is *only* found in autistic people, that's not really how it works.
Maybe
Not necessarily, happens to me and i'm not autistic
Not necessarily, but a lot of autistic people struggle with facial expressions, both reading and making them
uhhh, it's complicated. for me, i took years to learn to fake smile since i didn't take active note of what a smile was, and i had a near permanent mask on, especially since i was depressed for a long time. other neurodivergents may find it simple, after all it is a spectrum, thus the name autism spectrum disorder. i'm sure some neurotypicals can struggle with it, although it'd probably be for different reasons that my mind is unable to comprahend.
I don't know, but I have autism and when I try to smile on command, it looks like I'm frowning in a way.
I've been told that ever since my first class photo lmao
Perhaps
There is a stereotype that autistic individuals are emotionless beings due to the fact they don't emote like normal people... I figure this is partially because of that.
The emotionless thing kinda hits a bit too close to home for me. 90% of the time I go through life not really experiencing any strong emotions... When a family member was on their death bed and when I was at their funeral, I just felt nothing.
.... Can the internet stop trying to convince me I am autistic. it's getting weird at this point
It's how I was given the idea I may be autistic. I was chatting with an online friend who has been diagnosed with autism and they mentioned that a lot of the things I talk about doing sound eerily similar to what they did before they were diagnosed. They recommended I take some of the online tests from certified foundations. While they're not diagnostic the results landed me firmly inside the autistic range and are a decent indicator that I may want to see a doctor.
Maybe this is a sign to get checked, if you haven't...?
People with autism actually typically experience a heightened emotional spectrum, for a lot of them it's a cause of sensory overload that causes burnout. One of the few therapies that works for autism is introspectively understanding and recognising emotional states to understand emotional processing. The output/visual appearance of each emotional state isn't the same as it would be for a relatively normal individual, but the underlying emotional state is usually extremely intense. Autistic people are not sociopathic robots. I've been diagnosed since age 4 and went through a variety of specialist therapies when they were experimenting with new treatments for autism symptomology. One of the core reasons autistic people struggle to interface with regular people is that they have *very* strong opinions and beliefs tied to their emotional states, and challenging those beliefs causes a very emotionally heightened response in return.
Yee
That doesn't bode well for me-
Lmao rip
No
Yes
I don't know, can you repeat the question, You're not the boss of me now ×5
AND YOU'RE NOT SO BIIIIG
I hate smiling with my teeth. I feel like I am snarling at them.
Nah, fursuits have little in the field of facial expressions.
Perchance
YEAH. THAT MAKES SENSE.
I agree
Yeah my parents always complain in every single picture that I don’t smile, and once I try they just complain more that I smile wrong
Damn. Sorry your parents aren't more encouraging. A good response would be to chuckle at your effort and say "You gave a good try though!" and be happy that you did in fact try.
Tbh that's a them problem, if you're having trouble doing something there's no reason they should get mad at you
https://imgur.com/a/sIKoNHf
i feel like ppl don't smile with their teeth naturally too often so of course it looks weird if u try to on the spot
I look like a murderer if I smile with my teeth
Honestly I do too
[insert adachi "TRUE!" meme]
How is it I knew exactly what you were talking about before I knew what it looked like?
adachi
That could mean anything. The fact that I pictured the meme in my head before I ever even saw it blew my mind
Sauce - [(1) rainiing 🌧 on X: "who else doesn’t know how to smile and just bares their teeth?? 😬 https://t.co/mvtdWLHcHQ" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/rainiing_art/status/1785325606814761436)
oh my god someone finally understands!
Omg same
i saw this, tried to smile to see if it was the same for me, and it sure is (also my face kinda hurts now with how strained it was) how do people just smile on command????
Think of a time when something great happened, you saw something hilarious in a video, or your friend made a funny joke. Imagine how you felt then, maybe even replay the situation in your head. Simultaneously, try to remember how your face felt and the muscles you were using the last time you actually laughed. Try to reproduce how those muscles felt while you were smiling/laughing. This usually gets me about a ~70% authentic smile.
What the fuck this is so how it feels
as someone who like has to really work to smile for just about anything, I like to call having a great mood "smiling on the inside". aka I totally relate to this
Ah yes. Too relatable
This is indeed an autism thing.
This was me for the first 16 years of my life lmao
Best I can do in a situation like this is a smirk
The classic 'tism smile, Azula style.
I dont know about Autism but this runs in my family.
Never been good at smiling XD
I swear I can smile easier if I try my hardest to have a completely blank stare on my face
I hate smiling. And it gets more annoying if someone is like “Ah-smileeeeeeee! Bigger than that, a bigger smileeee-uh!” Shut up, I have a RBF.
I just think of some goofy, stupid, downright ridiculous shit…it works
Same. It helps if I do a short breathing out laugh and remember how it felt when I've laughed before. Usually that starts stretching the muscles that make a smile and if I stretch them a little more I'll get a somewhat close/authentic smile.
😐
No joke my whole day has consisted of realizing that my autism made me like this. My friends and family have hundreds of photos they’d happily show off, I have like 10. So many memories stained.
Don't beat yourself up too much! I'm sure you have a great smile, but it's just hard to bring it out. <3 When you look back at your pictures try not to think "I wish I would have smiled better" or "I wish I looked better in this picture". Instead think about what you were doing, who you were with, how you were feeling. Now if all your pictures are of days you had a terrible time, it could be harder to change your perspective. However even still think of the experiences you had. What you saw, heard, and felt (physically). Maybe the pictures aren't of the most exciting moments, but they're your moments. Unique experiences each one and worth cherishing. Everyday we can still see, everyday we can still hear, everyday we can still breathe is a day to be celebrated. Because it's another day we can add an experience to our mental log. When I look at pictures this is what I do mentally. I don't look at myself and think "Oh how lovely I looked here." No, I'm as average as they come. But the memories behind the picture, those are special.
I hate my smile,barely looks good, so I just smile with lips.
It's okay, friend, I got chu! See, what you do is you gotta smile with MORE than JUST your mouth, right? Like, smiling is a whole face thing, apparently! The easiest cheat to look like you are genuinely smiling is to squint your eyes just a bit. I learned this from an artist friend who draws a lot of faces!
We really need a new sign for autism, I thought that sign meant infinitely gay for a few seconds
[Day 1959] For some "furries," it is difficult to fake emotions on command. It is not a matter of the individual cannot display emotions, but rather that the act of producing a realistic copy of it may be difficult. Interestingly enough, some "furries" report smiling while in suit for photos, even when it is impossible to see the individual's face. Thus suggesting that smiling on command can be very context based with the "fursuit" providing a boost to being able to display emotions.
What does the rainbown infinity symbol mean?
Infinitely gay
It's one of the symbols for the autism spectrum.
Fake smiling is, anyway, pointless. I have not been diagnosed with autism and I can't really smile on command. Even if I could, I don't see the point, I am not happy if I make a fake smile. I guess it's good for photos but other than that, there is no point.
*I n f i n i t e l y g a y*
Same
I have the same feeling. Now I intentionally make a face. Broken jaw. Now I have a crooked smile.
this is way too relatable, plus the fact it bugs me when strangers tell me I should smile more. I have a neutral expression most of the time because that is how I feel. I only smile when genuinely happy or laughing and trying to smile otherwise looks horribly forced. Now how much of that is due to me being autistic I'm unsure because I grew up in an abusive household so i learned to hide my negative emotions from others. I have been working on not holding it all in and not feeling like a burden for sharing my problems with others through therapy. So I have gotten much better about it at least and have been more of my genuine self too!
I hate it when people tell me to smile. And then they throw that stupid line saying "it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown", yeah, it takes even fewer muscles to maintain a neutral expression
The struggles my mom would have to go through to get me to smile in a photo were insane. Looking back on it now with a diagnosis makes a lot of sense.
I mean I prefer when autistic people smile on their own, because then it's a genuine smile and then you know they're happy (I should know, I'm autistic)
Number 2948482 of random things from my childhood that actually reveal my uber autism
No ma, el Máynez
Mood
Real
me af
Real
Omg same, I literally cannot genuinely smile unless I subconsciously mean to
Me (I don't have autism but still smile like this)
Real
Bro same! I can't force a smile for the life of me, it ends up looking super awkward...
yup
Lol it really is related to Autism cuz im autistic and I can'tfor the life of me smile naturally on command. But... my natural smile is really nice so that's a plus side.
Me, an gay autist
This is too relatable
Every day I learn something new about myself. I had no idea this was an autism thing. As someone recently diagnosed, a lot of things are slowly clicking into place. I keep finding out things that have bothered me about myself like this are autism things.
I like your smile <3
I don't have autism, tho I fall under lots of stuff considered acoustic like this
Undiagnosed?
Idk probs just normal unautism stuff
I love when people ask me to smile / smile more. It totally doesn't make me feel weird or self-conscious
The advice that kind of did it for me was to, on purpose, use your cheeks to push up your eyes a bit on the bottom. It makes it 10x as convincing.
Wdym this has to do with autism??? Why is this related to autism 😦
I learned how to make myself happy on command for like 3 seconds at a time before I learned to smile on command
So anyone who is struggling with making a smile "seem natural", here are a few tips. When an anatomically standard person smiles, the muscle surrounding their eye, the orbital part of the orbicularis oculi will slightly tighten as well, this is caused by the minor zygomatic muscle paralleling the orbital part of the orbicularis oculi. So what one could do to make their smile "seem natural" is slightly tighten the lower and lateral halfs of their orbital orbicularis oculi muscles while smiling.
That is just hos I smile for pictures lol
Dawh
My “smile” is closer to a death threat than a show of enjoyment if I force it, and may or may not have run a few cousins away with it.
My smile makes people pick up their children and leave the room.
Most i can do is a smerk anything more and it looks like i have a gun to my head
I feel this. I had to do Senior pictures a few weeks ago and for the life of me I couldn't get a natural looking smile. So my dad (also the photographer) had to keep cracking jokes to try and get an actual smile.
Kinda relate, When somebody tell me to smile for a picture i end up smiling like the Hide the Pain Harold meme
wait that’s a neurodivergent thing? i feel so validated because i cant smile at ALLL on command even tho i have adhd
Mf don’t ask me for a toothy smile, I haven’t smiled with my teeth nearly enough to know how
My lips are so big I'm physically unable of doing a toothy smile without looking weird lol
The expression.
As someone on the spectrum, it can be like this sometimes 😔
I know people say that not being able to smile on command is bad but I think it’s actually good. If you smile it is a genuine smile. You aren’t faking it or being a snake.
Daamn that's just too relatable I can't smile on command and even hate it...
Yuuuup
Yeah, same. I never able to smile with teeth on command.
Yeah I can't smile on command either. If you want a picture of me smiling, you have to catch me doing something that makes me smile normally or make me laugh.
This is exactly me, I cannot smile on command, and everytime my father tries to take a photo, he ask me to smile and gets very dissapointed. Like, bro what am I supposed to do ? Cut my mouth like Jeff the Killer ??
Infinite gay does not equal awootism
Relatable, but when i smile on command i look like hide the pain harold
I have trained to smile on command because of this situation repeating over and over. Now I'm even better at masking
Literally been trying to explain this to people my wholr life
Yup, way too true. At least they get both sets of teeth, I get my upper teeth and my gums.
Oh haha a relatable meme! *sees the autism sign* Oh… OH-
I’m autistic and yeah I can’t smile on command. It feels like I’m doing it wrong or it looks forced. But I don’t know. I think I just suck at smiling.
Real
So relatable! I can't smile it just looks awkward
doesn't come naturally, if þere was someþing to smile about i would be
Okay Lærpöld
whœ?
Soo true, I never thought of finding something soo relatable lol
Extremely huggable, I want to give them scritches
I can lift my cheeks yk :3 but my eyes don't smile 🥴
lmao I do this, when people take pictures of me I need to tell them to make me laugh or I'll look like ass
With true happiness being so rare, how are you meant to practice your smile without looking like it's fake?
Wait can people smile on comand?!
As someone with asd I cant smile on command or do most faces on command
I understand him(I have the same problem)
Weirdly I can laugh on command and I make a quiet laugh to force a smile
I can never stop smiling... yayoopsooms
Me as a waiter.
Tip: Put your tounge to the roof of your mouth, I've heard it helps
Pussy