What is shopping like?
This is nothing to do with AI. I just want to know.
I have a question. What are supermarkets & shopping malls like for normal people? Normal as in not deviating. At least not much. Normal as in people who happily go to shopping malls.
Fi & I are autistic. Shopping malls are a journey to our psychological limit. We go until one of us can’t stay any more. Until we drop to the floor and can’t move. Or start to cry.
And we’re normally surrounded by people who aren’t crying. Except at Christmas - the happiest time of the year. But the rest of the calendar? Is the average neon-maze filled with “happy shoppers”? I’m wondering, out loud at last, if that is true - or if we are we all on a death march in these places; efficiently mapping our paths through the carnage to bag carrots and unnecessarily sliced salad items. Or just a litre of milk. Or a coffee. Or a surprisingly expensive towel. And if it is not a form of torture then what is shopping in a mall like for non-autistic people?
Like any form of danger, we avoid them. And restaurants too actually. I would walk around NYC trying to raise the courage to go in to diners. (I ate a lot of cereal instead). In Tokyo I had one cafe I would travel to. When I do shop I wear my headphones and a cap (or sunglasses if that’s not too weird) and I pretend I am in a Spike Jonze video about shopping. Or Björk. And you can invert that if you want to know how I understand these spaces, personally. Being autistic, or even introverted in America was the worst. As a generalisation, ‘they’ could not ‘deal’ with the expression rather than the concept of autism. Just like I cannot ‘deal’ with the mad noise, sharp light or social hyper-stimulation that was the expression of normality in the US. Just in case you too want to know what it feels like, or does to your mind.
Fi has an assistance dog. Most of the time it is a pet. Except when we’re shopping, or in bars, or the institutional sector. Ironically the place most people object to a pet existing. It is in these environments that it becomes clear how attuned the dog is to distress. Mostly our distress. And can feel the distress, and tell her, warn her, sometimes drag her out of situations before her internal timer goes off that we have to get out of wherever we are. That is why they are called assistance animals because they assist when humans tend to earnestly insist you stay a little bit longer (because that’s what they have to say to show that they care for you (which is also, to me, insane)).
And yes, the internet. But also, the world. My interaction with the world cannot remain long walks around parks and trusted spaces. Sometimes you have to go shopping. I even tried buying things, lots of things, for a few years. I didn’t like it. I also don’t like meat, or alcohol. I am aware none of this is ‘normal’. I tried. For the people around me, not for me.
I’m absolutely fascinated by what it’s like for them, for others. And who is in the majority. The malls especially do something, intentionally, with the design, the noise, the colours, the light, the joy and carnival of chaos - and that must be profitable. So I am wondering, as I have all my life, is it ‘fun’?