Found what I thought was a decent Tumblr autism community since their rules didn't say anything pro-self DX, but it was dumb to get my hopes up. When I saw this poll, I expected most of them to be late-diagnosed (no shade, since I am too), but 35% self diagnosed is just insane. Why are so many people trying to be autistic?

If you don't fit the critera you don't fit the criteria. What is his problem, genuinely? Yeah. Something IS fundamentally wrong with you if you want a diagnosis of a life-altering disability. Bit of an overreaction there, mate. 😑

(Wasn't sure what to flair it with)

They’re not nonverbal they’re just shutting the fuck up. Also you can’t just go nonverbal. It’s so damaging using mental health/psychology terms to describe a normal experience.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2w6sGq2/

BTW, this isn’t meant to be a call out post, or anything of that nature. This is meant to be a constructive discussion post. What are your thoughts and opinions? What are your thoughts about it?

Do you believe autism is being hijacked?

I follow several accts on Instagram run by an autistic person, mainly level 2 and 3s (with help). And the way they use Instagram, particularly the story function - if you remember hearing about Snapchat streaks, it's kind of like that - reminds me of how my non-autistic school mates did / continue to use it.

Constantly posting about their follower count, asking others to ask them questions / 'give excuses to info dump about their restrictive interests', reposting other ppl's - likely their friend - follower 'update' post to their story.

Just generally using it in a way that is typical of someone who is non-autistic - in my experience - and for the life of me, I can't figure out what the purpose of this is.

Do I not understand bc ive never done these types of things? Is it because I have less than a handful of friends?

I'm genuinely wondering if I'm missing something.

According to Age of Autism in Twitter, Ari Ne’eman, Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee and the Autism Self Advocacy Network fought against elopement/wandering from being included in the ICD classification:

https://x.com/AgeofAutism/status/1877836184472203451

https://x.com/chapnalli/status/1877835613426090105

https://theconnorchronicles.wordpress.com/tag/ari-neemans-war-against-kelli-stapleton/

http://autismgadfly.blogspot.com/2018/09/samantha-cranes-interesting-take-on.html

They shared a YouTube video with me and I was like, "oh I'll watch this, this seems relevant to things today"

I had no idea, though, about how bad tiktok is with this stuff... Literally fully TD people on there saying they're autistic and then gatekeeping!? Like wtf this is insane! Isn't this illegal somehow?

I was sitting here thinking it was just a few people here or there that maybe they were just a little confused about the criteria, but apparently there is an entire movement of people today trying to erase autism as a diagnosis like what the literal duck!? I'm so mad to learn about this!

Anyway, thank you for sharing that video with me, whoever you are (it was in this sub so, I'm sure you'll know who you are).

The video: https://youtu.be/p0fhHcehc3Y?si=RoHaOwT0RjPhvvMD

The use of the r slur has been quite common already in toxic (gaming) communities but has anyone else noticed the recent influx of people freely using the word and then clarifying before anyone can call them out that they are allowed to use it because they are autistic?

I've noticed this rather often on social media lately and I recently stumbled across a tweet about some big Minecraft YouTuber drama. I don't watch any of these YouTubers but YouTuber A called YouTuber B out for using the r slur in a meme tweet while previously making tweets about how the use of it should be reduced online. Considering the hypocrisy of that YouTuber, I think it is fair that YouTuber A called them out.

But in the quotes of YouTuber A's tweet, I have seen dozens of people also making fun of that call out, stating things like how they use the word all the time and don't think it's bad, while also claiming they are autistic.

I don't know about you but what seems so suspicious to me is on one hand, that it's always people who claim to be autistic - even though the word has been used for other (mostly intelectually) disabled people in the past - and these people making those claims are usually self diagnosed. These people make it seem as if only autistic people are allowed to discuss that topic. To me, it makes it seem as if being able to identify with a developmental disorder gives them a free pass to throw around slurs that were used to describe many people of said group in the past.

Sure, there might be diagnosed people here and there who use the word all the time but from what I've seen, most of us feel uncomfortable with it and don't want to reclaim it. So seeing a bunch of people who aren't probably autistic or disabled in other areas to begin with, just feels like a red flag to me. Imagine these same people throwing around slurs but eventually deciding to get assessed and then finding out, that they do in fact not have it. If that would happen to me, I would feel very guilty and embarassed about it.

Just stumbled across a tik tok where a popular (!!!) autism creator Paige Layle claimed that quote she’s convinced that EVERY single dancer, every single human being who has the need to dance has autism or ADHD or both because no other type of human has the need to constantly move their body unquote. She then went on talking about her experience as a dance teacher of 60 kids and apparently she meant to say that she had already armchair diagnosed those kids with at least one of these disorders. And you know what I’ve got to say on the matter?

I’m personally convinced that every single creator who spreads misinformation should get banned for doing so.

I’m personally convinced that people need to be REALLY braindead and have zero respect for their audience to feed them such ill-informed nonsense.

I’m personally convinced that if a teacher armchair diagnoses little kids with disorders like this, this teacher is a FUCKING CREEP.

EDIT: I’ve never watched any of her videos before but decided to have a look. There’s a video where she criticizes Sia for casting a neurotypical actor to play an autistic girl. Now that we know that Maddie is a dancer and Paige Layle convinced us that every single dancer is autistic or has ADHD, then, by her logic........lol a little bit awkward, right?

While many Self DX claim that autism in women is not studied or viewed as legitimate , it simply is not true. one for the very obvious reason, and the other because the majority of autistic advocates are female or non-male aligned , to the point that the very few instances of male autistics online are those with severe or profound autism, and maybe one or two mild and moderate. and for those with severe / profound autsim, it is mainly snapshots provided by their parents and caregivers.

The only time i hear about males with autism is because their partners or parents are seeking advice.

The online ratio is so steep that I find myself alone more often than not.

Its just something interesting to me. What are your thoughts?

They can be just as bad and put on the other extreme. Like you have the LSN autistic community in certain other subs and certain TikTok influencers that fit one extreme end, the autism moms with HSN children and siblings that likely don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand social media, etc. on the other end.

What are your thoughts on them posting their kids meltdowns? Could we call it abuse? Do you think the parents purposefully trigger their kids into having behaviors for views? What are your honest thoughts and opinions?

ETA: if the child is old enough and has the maturity level and intellectual capacity to post their own meltdowns on social media for the purpose of awareness, that is fine and perfectly acceptable as they are the ones who chose to do so. Same with professionally diagnosed autistic adults.

If anyone isn’t familiar with Fathering Autism on YouTube or other social media platforms, he is the absolute worst at exploiting his daughter Abbie. His daughter Abbie has profound autism and is non speaking. In one old video he even discussed Abbie’s toiling while she was using the bathroom and her menstrual cycle. His wife who has her own MLM scheme is no better. She exploits Abbie to promote her MLM business. All the money made they could have used to cater to Abbie’s sensory needs, and accommodate her, they buy things for themselves. They also kept the tags on her clothes purposely for views. All to benefit themselves. I am in the process of retraining with a different ABA company, and as a behavior technician on the autism spectrum they are just awful. I just wanted to rant about how autism parents vloggers are as bad as some major level 1 autistic adult vloggers misinformation and promoting self diagnosis in that regard to exploitation to HSN autistic children teens and adults.

I find it personally so funny how all "autistic" people on TikTok and other social media are always conventionally attractive, have socially acceptable special interests, and have a high social justice awareness.

Like, for the conventionally attractive part, autistic people aren't usually that conventionally attractive, especially because a lot of them don't care about their appearances, as it's mostly a socially valued attribute. Especially conventionally so, a lot of autistic people have trouble seeing what's conventionally accepted in society like tendencies and trends.

Then the socially acceptable interests. I find it weird how something that's supposed to be such a random thing like a special interest always ends up being a fandom or a trendy thing on TikTok.

The high social justice awareness then.... I'm not saying that autistic people are all bigots. But seeing things that are part of social science can be really tough to understand for autistic people.

Lastly, I don't mean to say that autistic people can't have those traits (I'm an autistic person with high social justice awareness), but I find it weird how all that we see on people is all of those traits.

I'm open for constructive discussion and if someone wants my post deleted, I'll delete it.

I’m so tired of self diagnosed autistics on TikTok making content about autism and spreading false information. Like I followed one specific creator for her content and then she self realised she was autistic and that’s now what all her content is. And a lot of her content is being like “any other autistics do blah blah blah” or “here are autism traits that you wouldn’t think are autism traits” (which makes no sense at all) and then the comments are just non autistic people saying “I didn’t know that was an autistic thing I guess I’m autistic”. I’m not gonna share her user name cause I don’t want this to be like fake disorder cringe.

I do think she’s autistic or ADHD despite her being self diagnosed but I think the main issue I have with creators is that they document the after diagnosis or realisation too much. I had a phase after my diagnosis (I was 13 so I was just annoying) where I thought everything about me and every trait and behaviour I displayed was autistic and I just wouldn’t shut up about it, but I wasn’t posting about it online and confusing other people.

Idk I just wanted to rant cause I feel like we don’t talk enough about how after you get diagnosed that doesn’t give you the right to immediately start acting like you know everything about autism and spreading information and educating others because it’s important to process that information and that change.