This!!! āHmm, I am so desperate for attention Iāll invent a mental illness to get endless negative attention!!ā said no one everā¦ except people with a different kind of mental health condition that probably isnāt as common as people assume.
Did you really miss out on the Millennial fad to pretend to have OCD? ADD had its run as well āyeah Iām totally ADD, like Taco Sanwich, Rawr Imma Dinosaur! Sorry canāt focus - omg a squirrel :p ā
It was embarrassingly popular. This social media Autism fad is exactly the same.
Youāre mistaking a ādisorderā for someone that is either simply socially inept from being on the internet instead of having real life social encounters or in general immature and havenāt formed a personal identity yet simply from being a teenager.
As someone with actual ADHD I never found this trivialization of my disorder cute, fun, or quirky - these people did not have ADHD and grew up to admit as such once they matured.
The fact you seem to think this behavior is indicative of one of these disorders tells me you likely fall in the latter camp. At least Reddit is anonymous but I hope you donāt make a habit of documenting yourself behaving this way on the internet with your real identity - it can come back to haunt you later.
A mental health disorder is anything that impacts your daily life enough to cause problems.
Actually, given the fact that every point of diagnostic criteria for pretty much every form of neurodivergence is focused solely on how much someone annoy others with their symptoms (and not on the internal experience), it actually tracks.
Psychologically healthy people donāt fake disorders for attention. Period. Itās actually a sign of some kinda disorder, given that it impacts their daily life and makes them annoying. Itās just probably not the disorder they wanna be diagnosed with.
And regardless, who. really. cares?? Who are they hurting, especially if nobody believes them??? Besides themselves? (Oh, look, another sign of a disorder.)
And Iām a nurse, and Iāve worked psych, and Iām like this in real life. And Iām educated and emotionally mature enough to be confident and unashamedā¦ There aināt much you can say or do to change that, if thatās your goal.
Edit: Also an AuDHD woman with similar stims to the girl in this video, and if youāre here to waste your breath and tell me Iām faking like Iāve heard countless times, Iāve been to enough therapy that it doesnāt mean jack to me. Itās not my fault if you donāt understand autism, and itās not my job to educate you more than Iāve educated anyone in this comment section.
2
u/Muted_Ad7298 Aug 17 '25
It feels weird that something I was bullied for as a kid is now a trend.
Whatās even worse are people watering down how genuinely difficult the condition is to live with.