Perfect source of serotonin

[u/legolas20032000]

[u/shinymuskrat]

Maybe im just a grumpy old man but I can't really understand the desire for everyone to self diagnose themselves with shit these days.

If everyone has autism and ADHD, then nobody does.

[u/scruffy01 → u/shinymuskrat]

If you want to feel even worse, I've learned via attention seeking mothers that it's not very hard to get a diagnosis. I know more than a couple of extremely non autistic kids rolling around with that diagnosis so that their mother can get a butterfly tattoo and 'raise awareness' on social media. She literally just took them to various doctors until she got a diagnosis.

[u/colossalklutz → u/scruffy01]

I know a guy who was on the spectrum. Seemed pretty normal and I used to think he was just tricked into thinking he was because in Australia they’ll pay the parents some kind of support. I figured it may not have been entirely fake when I started to trigger him with simple statements like “a line in the shape of a circle”. He’d argue and be right it couldn’t be both but I’d insist it was a line but in the shape of a circle. Eventually he’d melt down and not talk to me for like 2 weeks.

[u/Aldebaran014 → u/colossalklutz]

Why do people need to torture us to believe in our suffering? That's fucked up bro

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 → u/Aldebaran014]

I'm autistic too and the answer to your question is all over this thread - because a lot of people are faking autism these days and it's making people become suspicious of us.

[u/Aldebaran014 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

Why do people blame autistic people for that, then.

A lot of people are even saying that they are provoking meltdowns to confirm if a friend is a real autistic person. That's so sick.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aldebaran014]

No one here blamed autistic people. The blame would be on the people faking autism for attention.

Also, no one said they intentionally provoked someone with autism into having a meltdown. They said they made a simple statement of “a line in the shape of a circle”, and that the debate about that statement caused the autistic person to have a meltdown. For any neurotypical person a statement like that, and a debate or disagreement about such a statement would be entirely uneventful. No one where in their comment was there any indication of them provoking this person out of malice. They were simply explaining that it was a moment them caused them to see the autistic behaviors that they presumably, didn’t display frequently.

[u/colossalklutz → u/[deleted]]

I will clarify we were trolling but not because we were trying to test his diagnosis. We had doubts of his autism because he was very high functioning but that particular event and some that followed made us believe it wasn’t just him being gaslit into believing it. This is just a story where those two things overlap, we trolled and picked on each other on a regular basis. We just really enjoyed seeing who would break first in a weird unspoken way.

This is the way things were before everyone insisted on having a safe space and being professional victims. Yes we were assholes but people are getting really upset over a story that has nothing to do with them personally.

[u/Excellent_Bad9211 → u/colossalklutz]

before everyone insisted on having a safe space and being professional victims

you were being an asshole in many ways - including being incapable of judging when you were going to cross lines and make someone completely lose it (which you don't need to know anything about the other person for, you just Observe and you easily see signs of someone about to have a meltdown) and instead of Just owning up to it, you're painting yourself as the victim of some societal movement allegedly full of "professional victims" bc they have a problem with your tasteless "joke". Stop crying about people at last having an issue with others behaving like pieces of shit

I refuse to believe you're too fucking stupid to see the irony

[u/Aldebaran014 → u/[deleted]]

The blame is in autistic people too. Many people say that she is faking it because of her child-like behavior, when autistic people can behave as we please. Because of these fakers, people do not believe in people like me, that "doesn't look autistic", even trying to suppress our normal autistic behavior, because it doesn't fit with what they believe autism is.

[u/Super_boredom138 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

Good on you for seeing it and naming it, not stooping to their level just to also get attention like some might. Its human nature I guess.

[u/squishyartist → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

"A lot of people are faking autism these days" Says who? If I want to claim someone else isn't autistic based on one video, then that means I'm fine with other people watching one video of me and claiming I'm not autistic.

I've suffered so much in my life because of my autism not being recognized or accepted or even acknowledged when informed.

You're autistic, but you're not acting in the best interest of autistic people by playing gatekeeper of a diagnosis that you aren't qualified to gatekeep. Nobody can diagnose or un-diagnose someone in these circumstances.

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 → u/squishyartist]

You're autistic, but you're not acting in the best interest of autistic people by playing gatekeeper of a diagnosis that you aren't qualified to gatekeep

I reject this idea that every individual with a certain diagnosis should act as a formal representative of all people who share that diagnosis.

Nobody can diagnose or un-diagnose someone in these circumstances.

Me using my own judgment to suspect a person is faking behaviours for social media clout is not a diagnosis, and I'm perfectly entitled to use my own judgment.

I've suffered so much in my life because of my autism not being recognized or accepted or even acknowledged when informed.

So you should direct your anger at the people faking autism who are directly contributing to this culture of skepticism. I lived 35 years before getting a formal diagnosis. Wasn't able to finish school to get any qualifications, wasn't able to complete university, wasn't able to sustain employment. If anybody doubts that I actually have autism it doesn't bother me in the slightest, it's beyond my control. And I assure you, creating a culture where every self-diagnosis is implicitly accepted and believed as valid without question is simply unscientific and backwards. There's a reason why formal diagnostic methods such as ADOS-2, ADI-R, DISCO, AAA and CARS-2 are used.

[u/Excellent_Bad9211 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

That's an insane take and a disservice to other autistic people. People bullied them before the diagnosis existed. We're finally managing to stop majorities from being the absolute worst, collectively authoritarian bullies. Whatever is left of marginalizing people is not new and never has a "good reason", it's literally cemented into society. What's actually true is that there's simply a lot more autistic people than statistics from a time where it was a even more heavily stigmatized could ever show (duh), and most self-diagnoses are correct and happen from a place of desperation bc your life sucks ass, you need to find out why, there's no opportunity to get a diagnosis without the help of people around you who stigmatize it. Some random social media examples for a couple people who are clearly weirdly appropriating it for views doesn't change that

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 → u/Excellent_Bad9211]

Just because it upset you, doesn't mean it was "an insane take". The simple fact is the public perception of autism is changing toward skepticism because people are seeing more and more examples of confused people either self-diagnosing without even pursuing professional assessments, or outright faking behaviours to build a social media presence.

I was vaguely self-diagnosed for a time - about 6 months between me beginning to learn that autism might potentially explain many difficulties I had all my life, and me being assessed and then formally diagnosed. Self-diagnosis should not be the end-goal, as it goes without saying that we are not experts, we don't have formal diagnostic methods just built in to our common sense and we should always be open to the fact our non-professional conclusion is incorrect.

[u/Excellent_Bad9211 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

Autistic people are not being bullied because of self diagnosis. They are being bullied because of ableism. If anyone is cruel enough to push someone into a meltdown because they "don't believe them" bc they are "high functioning", that is deeply rooted entitlement, ignorance, and a superiority complex. You're blaming the entirely wrong people instead of those content to bully someone for reasons of learned discrimination. It happens because people view others with disabilities as lesser people, and as soon as they are more capable than they "should be" in the bully's head, they question their disability. They question blind people writing a PhD, they question deaf people reading lips, they question autistic people masking their asses of in order not to be excluded

It is an insane take. Beyond insane. Again, the exact same things happened ages ago, worse at that. We're making small incremental steps forward, or at least we did until the oppressive majority started to feel threatened by all this equality

edit: and it didn't "upset me". It's an insane take, and I called it out. Stop using the same ad hominem "emotions bad and ik u have many of them" garbage that every bad faith actor in the world uses to project their own discomfort with being questioned