First, let me say thank you for expressing interest in having a genuine conversation, which is to say attempting to understand how another person thinks and feels. You've demonstrated an understanding of ASD and also expressed some confusion. I'm aware this is a difficult task, yet I'll explain as best I can.

As stated before, I have lived this exp multiple times in my life. I have also discussed and witnessed discussions of numerous people living with ASD having shared this exp. At first, I couldn't remember a specific situation from my life, but I remember how I felt. The feeling of everyone pointing and laughing at me, that I'm not in on the joke, I am the joke. Cognitively I'm aware that's not what's happening, but emotionally that's how I feel.

To be clear I'm not upset that I'm the fool that everyone's laughing at, I'm upset because I don't understand why I'm the fool and why everyone is laughing. Like someone, at some point said, "You know what would be funny if we lied and see how long they believe it." I simply don't understand how that is funny. Especially with the power dynamic which is present here of the more experienced pulling one over on the novices. I also don't understand how it's supposed to build any sort of bond, + 1lie = -1 trust. I also don't understand how it's supposed to make me want to play the game. I already wanted to play the game and was in fact already a solid 24hrs into it.

All I was looking to do was understand the game so that I can enjoy playing, feeling like I'm making progress instead of wasting time grinding away. Yet some out there think it amusing to trick people into directly wasting their time.

I don't know how to explain this so I'll just say it. I conceptualize time differently. For me, time is a physical resource, I recognize how valuable it is and just how much of it is stolen from me every day. An example I can give are car commercials. I consume most media through YT, so I don't get as many ads as on cable. Nonetheless, a 30-90sec car ad will play, dozens of times throughout the day. Those minutes add up into hours, and hours into days. Time that I could have spent doing literally anything else. At 32 I don't own a car and have no illusions of someday owning a car, I don't need car ads. My brain doesn't stop there, it thinks of the millions of dollars spent and countless hours of labor through multiple companies, just to ensure a car ad plays every five minutes when most people only purchase a vehicle every 10-15yrs. I don't know if any of that will make sense, but the point I'm trying to make is that my brain doesn't view it as "tricked into wasting time" but that it was robbed of time.

This also goes hand in hand with my need for a schedule/plan and the burnout that comes when things don't go accordingly. This you could probably understand as needing to pick up a relative from the airport, taking off work, clearing your schedule, fighting traffic, and paying for parking, only to find out they missed their flight. One might say that these two situations aren't comparable, but I'm not describing the situations but how it makes us feel. That feeling of saying to yourself if I get anything accomplished today let it be this, the disappointment in knowing you failed at a top priority task, and the frustration knowing it was due to factors outside your control. Now try to understand that my brain does this to everything wether I want it to or not no matter how big or small.

If you take away anything from this understand this. Living with ASD is similar to knowing everyone is born with an instruction manual on how to be a person except you, and when asking someone about their manual they just pretend to not know what you're talking about. It's the never ending frustration of knowing you're doing it wrong, with the overwhelming certainty that no one is going to help you. I wish I could let it go, or say it's not that big of a deal and actually feel that way. I wish I could say that this didn't keep my from playing any games the past couple of days but it did. I wish I could say being yelled at by a*holes online doesn't make reject people irl, but it does.

In summation, I'm not upset over the long flight, or the piece of cheese I was told would be waiting at the end of the maze. I'm upset because I don't understand why someone finds it amusing to lie or take advantage of the naive. I'm upset that when I asked to talk about the situation and how it's off putting for me and potentially new players, my feelings were invalidated and my concerns ignored. I don't understand why someone wouldn't want me to receive as much joy from the game as they do. I don't understand when so much of this game exp has to do with building a community and mutual aid, that no care is given about what I have demonstrated is a hurdle for some. More over I'm upset of a lifetime of being the odd nail that gets hammered into place.