People use this tactic against autistic people all the time so it’s easy to see how it gets internalized. So many situations where it’s like “Oh, they know what this means and Im not going to humor them by explaining it, so I’m just going to pretend they know what everything means.” It’s very tempting to flip. As a teenager I definitely said “use your words like an adult” to adults, especially the types that would pull that reverse bullshit themselves.

Literally half of “social cues” are pretending not to acknowledge something and hoping that leaving it unsaid draws attention to it.