Blake

Makes me really sad to see how people engage with with something that they don't particularly understand. Jason is autistic, that doesn't absolve him of responsibility nor does it render him incapable of learning etiquette, but the problem is that these things are completely unintuitive. I'm on the spectrum to a lesser degree, and literally every single thing I do has to go through multiple layers of is this acceptable, how will others perceive this, have I learned anything from a previous interaction that I need to be considering, and that doesn't just "go away" it's a repetitive step I have to take for the rest of my life. I can only imagine it's even worse for Jason, he lives with a caretaker; it doesn't matter that he's 37, this is a developmental disability he's going to live with for the rest of his life. That doesn't mean you should exonerate everything he does, but there's an extremely obvious line between informing someone that they need to reevaluate their actions and making them out to be a vile disgusting piece of shit. Things that seem like common sense to you are just not to a lot of people on the spectrum, and that's nobody's fault but it's a fact of life. You don't dogpile on a kid to teach them, and unfortunately every new thing in his life needs to be treated that way, even if it's "obvious" to you. He's gotten infinitely better at taking accountability, this would've been no different. It looks like he needs to be in an environment where these things are accessibly learnable and clearly he hasn't had that in quite some time. I hope those of you who are actually feeling animosity over this and aren't just dunking for internet points (fuck you if that is you) can put the same energy into researching how to manage a learning disability as you did to ousting someone that already got banned from the event, took an obvious financial hit, and is suffering immensely.