Thinking you have a relationship with someone you have no reciprocal interaction with is not concrete. It is a delusion. It’s not different than thinking a movie star is your wife or a Senator is your friend.
These are also shared delusions in the 21st century. It does not make them real.

UnReal is soooooo good.

I don’t think I can get my kid to make his bed because I never make my bed.

That castle was once owned by a man who had 15 illegitimate children from multiple affairs. He built several follies and grottos designed specifically for liaisons with his mistresses.

I understand. I’m an SLP. Clinically, we diagnose based on strengths and weaknesses. But if the article is going to use colloquial language, rather than clinical language, I didn’t want to get into the weeds about severity of communication disorders, cognitive deficiencies and pragmatic understanding with an audience…

I’m less concerned with what individual commenters are saying than what mass media is saying.

You highly over-estimate an actor’s authority over a project. Actors can’t say anything that’s not in the script. If a director doesn’t like what an actor is doing with a part, they’re fired. Most directors consider actors walking props. They can advocate all they want, but the movie the studio wants to get made is…

It wouldn’t surprise me because I’m an SLP.
High or low functioning isn’t really used much as a diagnostic tool anymore because it doesn’t actually tell us anything. We diagnose based on strengths and weakness. One can function with severe deficits in language. One can function with severe deficits in cognition. The…

They’re also useless.
Clinically, we diagnose based on strengths and weaknesses. Someone can have severe language deficiencies while having no impaired cognitive function. Or vice-versa. Labeling either of those as high or low functioning doesn’t actually tell anyone anything.

I don’t know why there is tremendous pressure to cast actors to be neurodivergent and none for the writers and directors, the people who have the most power over how the story is told.

Also, ASD is a huge spectrum which presents with many different kinds of communication impairments and RRBIA. A high functioning actor with ASD can’t know what it’s like to have ASD so severe they are completely non-verbal any more than a neurotypical actor can. Some people don’t look any deeper than the label.

That’s the first time I’ve heard prison called an “outreach program”. Or cops racking up OT as “volunteering their personal time”.

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

So...America?

You forgot the best of all commercials:
TAB! For Beautiful People!

Not even a little bit true:

Catherine FitzGerald, a member of an Irish royal dynasty

If you were Baron, wouldn’t you be hiding in Cheney’s old bunker hoping no one noticed you?

About 10 years ago entertainment media did some Manufacturing Consent stuff where they convinced everyone she was the hottest thing on two legs and, therefore, a movie star.

Everyone on The Affair is pervy-looking.