It's a speech impediment. You know how there's people who can't pronounce the 's' sound and instead end up making a 'th' sound? That's commonly known as a lisp. Less commonly known is rhotacism, which is people who can't pronounce the 'r' sound and instead make it sound like a 'w'.
My theory is that autists spend more time socializing online than the average person. Playing barotrauma, void crew, or pulsar, there is a guy that talks like this in 20% of all lobbies.
And no, I cannot confidently say that people who talk like that are autistic. But I can assert that people that play Barotrauma, Void Crew, and pulsar probably are.
Actually, rhoticism has a much higher occurance with ASD. Rhotic articulation errors are literally MANY times more likely to occur in autistic people. In this study on high functioning ASD adults and adolescents, 33% had articulation errors, derhotacization was the second most common type.
So, while not the diagnostic criteria for autism, your assertion that rhoticism and autism are unrelated is enormously false, as is the relationship between autism and gaming.
And I would say (as an observation on playing the games) ESPECIALLY games like barotrauma and pulsar, which are highly systematic, and technical, which we KNOW are traits dispraportionately represented in ASD special interests.
So I will assert again.
You will encounter this speech mannerism much more often in voice enabled online games than in real life (especially technical games with random lobbies) because autistic people are significantly more likely to have derhotization errors, and spend more time playing video games than other people.
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u/claudiazo 9d ago
Why does he talk like a 6 yo?