Start by watching the video below, then dive into the post.
👋 Introduction
In this hilarious comedy performance, Lou Wall, a multi-media stand-up comedian, recounts the story of trying to give away a free bed frame on Facebook Marketplace. What should have been a simple exchange turns into a chaotic saga when Eileen misinterprets pickup times, arrives at 5 a.m., steals a neighbour’s bed, and sends increasingly bizarre messages with dramatic emoji usage.
After watching this gem from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I asked myself:
What if both these people were neurodivergent?
What if this whole chaotic exchange was two people trying to get their needs met - in the best way they knew how?
Suddenly, the story became more than comedy.
It became a parable of miscommunication, revealing a deeply human aspect of a chaotic world. Where expectations clash, systems fail, and nobody shares the same map.
🏗️ The Setup: Lou - Structured & Creative Neurodivergent
Lou Wall transforms a chaotic online interaction into a PowerPoint-powered pop musical, revealing both brilliance and the exhaustion of managing overwhelming social chaos.
Her behaviours reflect traits common in autistic or OCD-style cognition:
- ✅ Plans ahead: Converts the event into a structured musical narrative
- ✅ Manages ambiguity: Clearly states “It’s free” and sets boundaries
- ✅ Assumes systems work logically: Expects Facebook Marketplace to follow rules
- ✅ Copes through creation: Uses humour, sarcasm, and storytelling as forms of emotional regulation - a kind of autistic masking
🌀 Under stress, Lou seeks control through structure - setting exact pickup times, delegating roles (“Ask for Tim”), and translating chaos into art.
⚡ The Twist: Eileen - Emotive, Hyperfocused Neurodivergent
Eileen bursts into the story like a whirlwind of emotional urgency and literal interpretation, suggesting traits associated with ADHD, rejection sensitivity, or borderline emotional styles:
- 🕔 Time blindness: Arrives at 5 a.m., misinterpreting “See you at 5”
- 🎯 Hyperfocus: Fixates on getting the bed, regardless of signals
- 😭 Emotional dysregulation: Expresses herself with intense emoji’s ("🪓⛏️🔥 🤢🔥," “😡🐬💩”)
- 🚪 Boundary blurring: Wakes up housemates, returns uninvited, takes a neighbour’s bed by mistake
To Eileen, this is all logically driven by emotional necessity. The bed represents a goal, a connection, a victory - and failure is existential.
🪞 The Collision: Different Desires, Different Distress
| Trait | Lou (Structure-Oriented) | Eileen (Emotion-Oriented) |
|---|---|---|
| Seeks | Order, predictability, logic | Connection, approval, and closure |
| Coping Mechanism | Humor, irony, narrative reframing | Repetition, volume, urgency |
| Trigger | Plans being ignored | Emotional signals being missed |
| Processing Style | Externalises chaos as comedy | Remains trapped in emotional feedback |
📌 What we’re seeing isn’t villainy or madness - it’s two neurodivergent people misunderstanding each other, speaking different neurocognitive “languages” in a neurotypical system with no translation layer.
This perfectly illustrates the Double Empathy Problem. The idea is that miscommunication isn’t due to a deficit in one person but a mutual lack of shared context and understanding between people with different neurotypes.
Rather than one being “socially broken”, both are struggling to empathise across neurocognitive differences.
📊 Trait Radar Chart: Lou vs. Eileen
To visualise this divergence in cognitive profiles:
This chart shows:
- Lou’s preference for order, clarity, and indirect emotion
- Eileen’s emotive urgency, impulsivity, and literalness
They’re not broken - just differently calibrated.
🔄 The Tragic Comedy of Neurodivergence
What makes this story so funny - and painfully relatable - is that it could easily happen to any of us:
- 😇 Neither person is “wrong” - both are operating in good faith
- 📉 Facebook Marketplace, like many platforms, assumes neurotypical behavior: vague time, soft expectations, polite emotional distance
- 🎭 Instead, we get a chaotic duet of raw emotion vs. rigid planning
👊 The Platform Becomes the Punchline
To add the meta-ironic cherry on top, the official Facebook account commented on Lou’s Instagram post of the video:
“Gives standing ovation”
This moment is telling and poetic, the system that failed to support two neurodivergent users applauds the story of its own failure - not by improving, but by engaging performatively.
It’s like the software clapping for the bug report that became a viral TED Talk.
🧩 Final Thoughts: A Neurodivergent Parable
Through a neurodiversity-affirming lens, this story is more than just a quirky comedy; it is a poignant exploration of human experiences. It’s a parable of miscommunication where both Lou and Eileen strive to be understood in their own way.
“Two people, each navigating the world with a unique operating system, collide in a system that offers no tech support.”
This underscores the deep human need for recognition and validation. Lou’s public performance can be seen as a defence mechanism, a way to regain control over a bewildering experience. At the same time, Eileen’s abrupt block reflects a protective withdrawal in response to perceived betrayal.
In the end, what might seem like a comedic sketch is a deeply human drama about the struggle for connection in a world that often fails to understand or support neurodivergent modes of being.
It’s hilarious.
It’s a bit of a mystery.
It’s a little tragic.
But above all - it’s deeply human.
Have you ever experienced a similar communication breakdown? Perhaps viewing it through a neurodiversity lens could change how you interpret such interactions.