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You don’t have to be in-community with all and sundry - I’ve had lots of LGBTQ+ friends without me feeling the need to be in-community with them. It’s simply not necessary - we weren’t friends because they were LGBTQ+, we were friends because we shared other interests.

I completely agree. I don't consider myself in-community (or however we want to say it) with common neurotypicals. I've tried all my life to be, but I am not, and I've learned that I probably will never be. However, I've learned how their social cues and humor works, how to communicate effectively with them, when to use sarcasm, and when not to, etc. I've learned to adapt to them, because I don't expect they'll ever be able to understand or adapt to me. Afterall, they represent the vast majority of people - seems like well over 80% of the working population are either pretending to be, or are neurotypical. This is completely an anecdotal observation and not based on anything beyond my own personal experiences in dealing with others.

That was all delved from experience, and a lot of trial and error. Luckily, there's plenty of neurotypicals that I can observe and note when certain cues mean specific things and when there's understanding without explanation. I can understand when common people are saying something sarcastically, or that something is so exaggerated that it cannot be anything other than hyperbole.

I don't have the experience to do the same with so many other groups of people. They're not monoliths, but like generational gaps, I don't presently understand..... which leads me to another group I am having trouble adapting to, which is generation Z. There's plenty of boomers, Gen X and millennials in the workforce who I've learned the lingo and language of, but there's several terms and phrases that the zoomers are using that I'm having trouble understanding why they exist and how they've come to mean what they do. It's just something new I need to learn and adapt to as they enter the workforce. I don't want to be the guy in the room trying to be cool using the new generation's lingo, or something, I just want to grok their statements.

The list of groups/communities/cliques/whatever that I don't understand is very long, and most of them I don't really mind not understanding, since most of the time I don't deal with those cultures or groups; but Gen Z is coming, and I support and know, through indirect association, many LGBTQ+ folks that I just feel awkward around since I don't know if the joke I want to crack, that would land fine with normies is going to flop and I'll end up getting bitched out for saying something mean/hurtful/whatever when I meant it to be funny.

It's confounding, awkward, and altogether horrible. I don't like it and I would fix it if I could, but it's an entire culture of people that I'm not a part of and don't have enough involvement in to really understand. I love everyone, regardless of any gender/age/politics/whatever; and I want to be someone who at least doesn't stand out for being insufferable when I'm in any group. Most of the time I just stay quiet to the point of being weird, which in and of itself makes everyone else awkward, and to me that's worse.