neurotypicals need to understand that there’s an important difference between “no need to do X” and “I’d rather you didn’t do X”

the first one is saying “I consider X unnecessary, but you can choose to do it if you want to”. the second one is saying “X may or may not be helpful in some way, but I’m expressing a preference for you to not do it”

@kasdeya oh god. folks not understanding and/or caring about the difference between these makes some experiences retroactively make a lot more sense

@kasdeya I swear sometimes it feels like folks just memorize groups of words without thinking through what they actually mean or what contexts they're appropriate in