this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Autism

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 hours ago

I’ve long held a hypothesis that a lot of folklore monsters are based on prejudices and stereotypes against behaviorally divergent people. While this post references autism, I feel like the origin of vampire myths are most likely rooted in what are essentially nasty rumors about people that regularly engaged in behaviors that would eventually become associated with OCD (and ironically, I would argue that almost all of the behaviors described in this post besides the sleep schedule one are much more associated with OCD than autism).

For instance, a common OCD thought pattern is being intensely preoccupied with how strangers perceive you, which leads you to engaging in agoraphobic tendencies, which could easily lead to people coming up with wild and cruel speculation about why you might struggle to be outside like everybody else

People with OCD might compulsively avoid certain foods and become intensely distressed if they are exposed to the foods they’re avoiding, like a vampire trying to avoid eating garlic.

Compulsive rituals is another one. This is literally just OCD in the most obvious sense. There’s an old legend that you should bury a vampire in rice because they have to count every single grain any time they find it.

And lastly, another extremely common OCD thought pattern involves being intensely preoccupied with concepts like blasphemy and sacrilege and religious imagery in general, and I think it’s easy to see how that sort of issue can lead to people, especially along time ago thinking that you are some kind of unholy individual.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

To paraphrase an old meme, vampires don’t hate crucifix explicitly, they’re just allergic to bs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

But... Garlic bread good. 🥺

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

Vampires hating garlic is a myth. It's actually like catnip to them.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Never age. Can turn into a bat. Typical autistic traits

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Autists will also die if a wooden stake is driven through the heart.

As they are also vulnerable to silver bullets, maybe autists are werewolves, too?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I've never seen evidence for either of these claims. How do you know they're true?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 hours ago

I've hunted my fair share of autistic werewolves