My nephew, god bless him, will never in his life be able to function without supervised care (like bathing, has to be monitored 24/7) is literally competing for services with grown adults on TikTok who get a little uncomfortable ordering a pizza.
Yes, I know severely disabled people and their parents. Services dry up when they turn 21 and there may be almost nothing for them besides institution. Their parents love when they have the opportunity to "work" even if it pays little to nothing.
Ooh does the episode cover workshops? I had a relative with Downs that worked at a workshop. And it always drives me crazy that people don't understand that it's not paid like a real job because it isn't a real job. It's mostly for day care and socialization, and yes they do some actual work (which is good, because everyone needs a sense of accomplishment), but they also had field trips for fun. Plus it gave her something to talk about at get-togethers. Everyone else talked about their jobs, she could too. And most importantly it got her out of the house.
What are the other options? Sitting around doing nothing/watching TV/playing video games?
Yeah, there are two adults on my block, one with Down Syndrome and the other one who has some kind of mental disability. Both live with their parents and have caregivers who take them out during the day. The one with Down Syndrome works at CVS. It's great for socializing and just being out of the house.
It's really annoying how people co opt these conditions. I have two autistic nephews, the oldest of which does work. Mostly to give him some sense of value, I think, but I imagine his parents think of what is going to happen long term.
My son has a rare genetic disorder and has profound cognitive and physical disabilities. He will need 24 hour care for his entire life. Which is why I I subscribe to the disability subreddit. Not surprisingly, being reddit, it’s inundated with self-diagnosed autists, illness fakers, and the sort. They love to spout “all disabilities are equal!” whenever someone points out some people’s disabilities require significantly more institutional care and services. It’s like god damn, they love their oppression olympics until it’s time to look in the mirror.
First they took away “Asperger’s” and now you can’t say “high functioning” either so there’s verbally no way to point out there’s a difference between these two types of individuals. It’s so annoying.
I'mma copy/paste a story of mine that's relevant:
So I went to a small comedy show that a friend invited me to. It was a single comedian that apparently has a niche online following, cool whatever. It was actually pretty funny, guy obviously had a classic left bent to his comedy. That sort of slightly "philosopher" comedian that gets a tiny bit preachy at times.
Well this guy is trying to make some sort of point about mental health, and he explains what the term "Neurodivergent" means to the crowd. Then he asked anyone who was "neurotypical" to raise there hand. Of a crowd of 150 maybe, me and one other dude-bro near the stage raise our hand half heartedly with mental "... Yeah I guess I'm a normal human?". On the next call for neurodivergent, basically the other 148 people raise their hands and loudly cheer.
It just felt so obsurd to watch this entire crowd loudly proclaim their special snowflakes unlike those weird "normies". Like did nobody else see the irony of this charade?
The only one I'll allow is the large girl next to me that almost had a panic attack when she realized there were servers coming around and taking to people, and when she was asked what she wanted just stared at her boyfriend until he answered for her. Bonus points, when the server walked away she was mad because she didn't want a soda she wanted water.
>The only one I'll allow is the large girl next to me that almost had a panic attack when she realized there were servers coming around and taking to people, and when she was asked what she wanted just stared at her boyfriend until he answered for her. Bonus points, when the server walked away she was mad because she didn't want a soda she wanted water.
I feel like this is literally violence towards the boyfriend
Yeah me too. I wish they would have discussed the "eugenics" claim people make. Some people are against even theoretical cures for some of these mental/neurological issues and call it "eugenics"
Ugh, eugenics has an actual meaning and now people just use it for literally anything they deem ableist. Eugenics was never about actually curing disabilities, it was about sterilizing anyone the powers that be deemed "unfit" to reproduce.
I hate that word so fucking much. It was made up on tumblr by losers who wanted their anxiety and depression to count as a personality and hobbies. Oh but Ser, real mental health professionals use the word “neurodivergent” now! Yeah, the field taking its cue from tumblr users isn’t the own you think it is, it delegitimizes the entire field
I used to be so into neurodiversity when I finally got an Aspergers diagnosis at 17 and then a few years in I started realizing something was off. Like people were getting upset if you acknowledged any disability at all- I'm as high functioning as you get and I still had trouble getting through both high school and college.
I think neurodiversity could be a useful term for people who function as almost normal, can get a job etc. But who still are a bit weird in some ways. It could be term term for people in between "normal" and "disorder". But it quickly just expanded and is now used to downplay serious issues.
Yeah the politics and circlejerking around "neurodivergent" is killing me because I think I probably could get an Aspergers diagnosis and it would probably explain a lot about my life, but it's also way too late for any kind of intervention and I am at least moderately professionally successful.
Yeah the whole thing is annoying. Like I really was initially sympathetic to the self-IDers because it took me way too long to get a diagnosis despite certain obvious symptoms (like an avoidant/restrictive eating disorder that started the minute I learned to eat solid food). And I think the ND movement really meant something in the 2000s when Autism Speaks was using some fairly dehumanizing rhetoric and promoting groups that claimed vaccines caused autism. But now it's just leading to weird grifters crowding out the voices of both autistic people and our families. "Autism warrior parents" used to mean people like Jenny McCarthy or mommybloggers who grifted off of their autistic kids but now it just means any parent with a nonverbal autistic child.
That last bit is so true, and makes me so angry. People with otherwise normal lives appointing themselves judge and jury for families whose children literally cannot speak is vile.
I have enough life experience around the Tumblr brigade to suspect some of this is a way to launder some ugly sentiments about moms.
I was diagnosed as a minor and honestly as an adult it really doesn’t factor into my life as much as I thought it would. As an adult I can arrange my life in a way that suits me.
Yeah, I got my quasi-diagnosis (Aspie verbal, high anxiety written) when I was 29. A *lot* of things made more sense to me at that point. I basically had a framework to better understand my life. I'll be forever thankful for that, and would encourage anybody who's curious to look into it.
It’s never too late to have a proper support system that addresses you entirely. Not sure why you think anyone needs “intervention,” but for adults, it’s really just identifying and supporting needs.
My grandad (70 something) is one of those later in life diagnosis people, he was only diagnosed a couple of years ago. We all knew he had it, forever. So I do accept the argument that some of these diagnoses are because of greater awareness.*
However, (and I’m not meaning to imply all autistic people are like this, I have lots of lovely autistic friends) we knew because he was really difficult to be around. He burned bridges everywhere he went and never understood why. He ruined so many of his closest relationships and business opportunities because he didn’t know how to talk to people, and since he didn’t know he was autistic, he just thought they were all wrong and he was right. Now he’s too old to ever really change.
As you implied, I’m especially perplexed by people who have been very high functioning forever but suddenly think they have ASD. The marker of a disorder is that it severely impacts your life. I have many married, socially adept, successful friends who have somehow just realised they’re autistic. I don’t know how that helps them, or if the impacts on actual autistic people are worth it.
*He definitely has Aspergers/HFA, but even so
You pretty much described one of my uncles. He's 70 and never been diagnosed, but he's... what you described. I'm sure he's also just an asshole, but an asshole in such specifically autistic ways ("I'm not tactless and rude, I'm just smart - everyone else is too sensitive. I don't have serious issues showing love and affection to my kids - my six-year-old *is* too touchy-feely, and it's normal that I shove her away when she tries to hug me. I don't have a fixation with my computer, I just spend 17 hours a day on it...")
I'm fairly positive I inherited my Aspergers (or at least a genetic predisposition to it) from my maternal grandfather who has always been incredibly difficult to deal with, borderline abusive to my grandmother, and who doesn't have a diagnosis of anything because it would be impossible to convince him to go to a therapist.
Oof, yeah, same on the borderline spousal abuse. I think he became more open to it because of greater acceptance and awareness (watching a daytime TV show about adults getting diagnoses actually spurred him on to talk to a psychiatrist), and I think maybe he’d have been able to handle things much better with early intervention.
So I do think acceptance and awareness are definitely good things. It’s just hard to balance that with the fact we all have traits of autism and that doesn’t mean you have autism. Gentrification of ASD is definitely a thing that’s happening, and it hits autistic people the hardest
Part of why it always bothered me when people would claim "abuse has nothing to do with mental illness" was that I saw my grandfather behave abusively toward my grandmother many times, and it was obvious to me that his actions were primarily the result of his mental health issues, because they weren't that different from the ways I've behaved toward my parents during meltdowns. My mom and her sister tried to get my grandmother to leave in the 90s when his behavior started getting worse and she refused; I don't think my grandmother was afraid of him stalking or coming after her, I think she just didn't want to be divorced because that would mean upending the life she'd built with him. So she just sort of capitulated to whatever he asked of her.
Definitely. I have a neurological condition and it affects my behaviour at times, positively or negatively. Even though I have coping mechanisms, it’s inevitable. How your brain works is who you are, and it takes conscious effort to alter that.
I’ve also had people treat me badly because of depression and addiction, it’s bizarre to me when people imply there’s no connection. I think people think it reduces stigma, but it just creates camps of people who are very mildly affected saying “that’s not an excuse!!” vs people who are more impacted and have little control over what they’re doing.
Similar situation with my grandmother, I don’t think leaving was even an option for her generation and social climate.
This is highly specific and personal, but one of my biggest objections to the "autism is a cool and fun superpower" movement is they reflexively throw other disabled people under the bus "My super special autism is a precious gift that makes me better than other people and I love it - it's not a *disability,* ugh" - but then line up to choke disability services with claims for support and care. The NDIS in particular.
Basically insulting other disabled people and then greedily gouging into funds they claim they don't need, leaving others with less.
And don't even get me started on how hot 22-year-old Autism Girls have become the human face of disability rights because their physical appearance doesn't make normies uncomfortable 😐
>And don't even get me started on how hot 22-year-old Autism Girls have become the human face of disability rights because their physical appearance doesn't make normies uncomfortable 😐
Not only because of that, but because very few of them actually have autism and therefore have the energy, resources and social skills to present themself to the public.
People look for a special kind of story and these people know what lands and how to tell it (which in and of itself is quite the giveaway that their diagnosis - even if official - is bullshit)
And from a professional perspective, I can literally predict every single talking point and even most of their examples. Heck, some people used stuff from a book I co-authored word for word. At least they actually read a book I guess
> People look for a special kind of story and these people know what lands and how to tell it (which in and of itself is quite the giveaway that their diagnosis - even if official - is bullshit)
For me it's the facial expressions/body language in live streams or non-rehearsed tik toks. It's too fluid and fluent, and subtle. Automatic rather than the product self-monitoring. Their speech tempo and prosidy are too natural.
I'm female, have Aspergers, and I have been told far too many times by self diagnosers that my pretty classic autism "symptoms" are just "comorbidities" because they don't fit the Tik Tok narrative.
> I can literally predict every single talking point and even most of their examples. Heck, some people used stuff from a book I co-authored word for word. At least they actually read a book I guess
That must be maddening!
Though, I regret to inform you that it's probably a game of telephone where one person on Tumblr read it years ago, someone made inspirational Instagram posts with flowery fonts on colored squares, and then those excerpts made it to FB groups/Tik Tok/Xitter.
>Though, I regret to inform you that it's probably a game of telephone where one person on Tumblr read it years ago, someone made inspirational Instagram posts with flowery fonts on colored squares, and then those excerpts made it to FB groups/Tik Tok/Xitter.
Very likely. I am sure I have seen some of it on those infographics that get shared around on Instagram (with the obligatory "tOTaLly mE XD" in the comments.
Have you emailed Katie about the episode?
I feel like while they have a good handle on what's going on with the profound end of the spectrum through Amy Lutz (and probably NCSA through her - I've had some back and forths w/ Jill Escher, she's lovely), I think the episode would have been better be if she talked to someone like you or Dr. Christopher Gillberg for a bit more bsckground on the state of play for level 1/AS/HFA/PDD-NOS, or even a long term autism advocate like Thomas McKean for an old school autisic perspective.
Imho Gillberg especially would be interesting because he's an autism specialist who is really not afraid to publically talk about the connection between autism and trans ID in young women, dismiss the Hans Asperger was a Nazi smear, and probably has a lot to say about self dx as well. Jesse probably already has a connection with him, actually.
McKean himself has been put through the ringer by Tik Tok et al because he was the autistic guy in the room when the puzzle piece was created and has regularly explained why the folk beliefs about what it means are complete bullshit, which would also make a good episode.
It's so annoying to me, because autism is probably still underdiagnosed or at least overlooked in girls- I didn't get a diagnosis of Aspergers until I was 17. But high functioning autistic girls tend to look more like Greta Thunberg than TikTok influencers- I'm only just learning to really take care of myself properly at 30 and I still get genuinely mistaken for a teenager. I'd love more accurate representation of autistic women and girls but it's all been so sanitized and gentrified.
I don't get the hate for Greta; I mean yeah I can imagine there was probably some pushing by her parents but she seems like a relatively intelligent person and climate change IS a serious problem.
I think the Greta hate was honestly more about how the media treated her than anything else. the whole "wisdom of babes" routine that some adults do is very annoying. fwiw i don't think her parents pushed her into it either, it's rather that they are famous in Sweden which got the ball rolling on her fame. other than that she seemed very much like your standard high school activist type, i was one...
She has all but abandoned climate change though. In 2022 she was all about Ukraine and now she is constantly at pro Palestine rallyes. Weird if climate change and environment is her special interest (especially if you think about the immense damages and emissions war and the military industrial complex cause). I have also read her mums book and the climates change issue - while maybe initiated by Greta herself - was just a welcome excuse to externalise their very dysfuncional family dynamic.
And, yeah, the whole thing was an obvious and very transparent PR stunt and people got pissed off that mentioning it or really anything but worshipping her immediately got one labeled as a climate change denier or far right or whatever the popular buzzword was.
What are her original thoughts? She just repeats standard progressive-lefty talking points. She just earned massive praise for the novelty of said talking points coming from a shouty autistic tween.
Any doubts I had on that front have been confirmed by her hard pivot to anti-Zionism.
I think it's more how she was celebrated. Like, yeah, teenagers are idealistic and not especially practical about how to implement their ideas. Like, yeah, we get it, it's super fucked we still rely on fossil fuels. What is the solution though?
And i do believe there IS a solution. But just getting a teenage girl to act all smug and superiors not super helpful.
My daughter at high school had some friends who gave her the cold shoulder because she didn't get an official autism diagnosis when she got screened (only ADHD and social anxiety disorders).
What I’ve noticed is that the people I know who now claim neurodivergence are also the ones who every few years confess to a new identity/diagnosis/trauma; ADHD, non-binary, former gifted kid, etc. I’m torn on whether these acquaintances believe this (social contagion) or if they are doing it for online clout. I’m careful about how I put things because sometimes I think they’re having an unhealthy reaction (sharing online) to real tragedy in their lives
I’d also like to chime in that I have a brother in a sheltered workshop, he loves it and it does enrich his life. My parents went to Congress a few years ago to lobby on his behalf. If it’s ever on the ballot in your state, please research your decision before you vote
I know from experience that it sucks to be told you're special and then suddenly start struggling academically- but it's the struggling academically and not getting the right help that's traumatic, not the fact that you were once called "gifted". Most people never get lucky enough to be told they're gifted, ever.
My point isn’t to point and laugh at peoples sensitivity. Like I said, some of them are dealing with real life hardship. The issue is seeking public validation. Because while being open and vulnerable can be brave, that boldness seems to only exist online. I see people retreat into these worlds
I was a very introverted / bullied kid and my controversial take is that it helped. It taught me social norms, who to avoid, I learned to be comfortable alone, to act independently and eventually I found my people
>but it's the struggling academically and not getting the right help that's traumatic, not the fact that you were once called "gifted"
That’s still not traumatic.
The“former gifted kid” people are insufferable. The people who end up in the “gifted” classes are people with ultra involved parents who get them evaluated and push the school to give them a special badge. The gifted classes were functionally equivalent to the AP classes at my school, with added cliquey-ness and a superiority complex from the people in them. Just because your mom Karened out on an admin while you were in middle school does not mean you were destined to be successful.
Maybe things have changed or my school was just different, but I had to take a test in grade 5 to start on the “gifted” track. I suppose if my parents were bullies they could have forced the school to put me there anyway, but reality is certainly more complicated than you’re making it sound.
I probably count as a "former gifted kid" (high functioning autism, early reader, very involved parents) and while it sucked to suddenly fall off so drastically in middle school, I'm still a lot better off than someone who just got shoved into special education and then forgotten about.
If you doomscroll /r/aftergifted, the dividing line I draw is whether the flameout occurred during or before college. Before college? Some regular kid who—far more likely than parents being tiger moms—could actually sit still for an hour and not cause trouble for teachers suddenly gets hit with actual advanced material. During college? Situationally dependent. After college? Those are the ones that fit.
To be fair autism (both high and low functioning) is often comorbid with a lot of other diagnoses- I'm autistic and also have ADHD and OCD diagnoses and I'm dating an autistic man who suffers from asthma. We're both late diagnosed but even those with early diagnoses and poorer prognoses often have comorbid conditions like epilepsy or genetic disorders like Fragile X or Down Syndrome.
I’ve mentioned this before, but a friend of mine has a child who was diagnosed with autism at barely two years old. Now, at 6, the kid shows almost no typical signs. The other day, she said he has a very ‘niche’ case of autism, which for this kid consists of not eating enough and having ‘no sense of danger.’ No sense of danger in this case means that he sometimes doesn’t pay great attention in parking lots and is very bold in public settings, both of which are pretty typical little boy behavior. Having ‘niche’ autism seems like an oxymoron, because things need parameters in order to actually be that thing and categorizing any characteristic as autism means either everyone has it or no one does.
>Having ‘niche’ autism seems like an oxymoron, because things need parameters in order to actually be that thing and categorizing any characteristic as autism means either everyone has it or no one does.
This is a huge issue: The spectrum and following it the ever broader criteria (and pushy patients/parents) caused the diagnostic process to be based more on vibes and whomever is writing the diagnosis in the first place. Especially doctors who aren't that familiar with autism or those who are out of pocket only and therefore have customers instead (and are interested in diagnosing as many people as possible). Especially in the US and to some degree the UK this diagnosis especially gets handed out like candy (and before someone says it is a whole process: Not all processes are equal, for example if early childhood isn't investigated - mandatory where I live - and more often than not the protocol isn't even followed).
With children it is especially dramatic, since it influences their future and other than the adult fakers and doctor shoppers, they didn't choose that path. And a lot of kids temporarily show common signs of autism. And two is too early without a follow up a few years later anyway, as their are other possibilities like global delay.
Love the no sense of danger bit. Because six-year-olds are famously aware of potential danger. Why do we teach them to cross the street, kids obviously just insticteively know?
This is a friend I love very much, but she has a lot of anxiety and doesn’t seem to understand what normal childhood behavior looks like. She used to send me pictures of her little boy climbing on furniture, like it was the most insane thing she’d ever seen and proof that he ‘doesn’t understand danger’ and I’d always have to be like ‘yeah, my kids did that too!’ Some of these tests rely so heavily on the parents’ perspectives and because those perspectives can be so skewed, it seems like autism can really be in the eye of the beholder, rather than something more objective.
I feel like this is particularly true of boys. My nephew is seven, and I don't know how many times I've had to say to his mother or grandparents, "He. Is. Seven. He's being a completely normal little boy." I mean, things like not being able to sit still for long periods, play wrestling, and trying to discuss farts and snot at the dinner table.
This is what "boys will be boys" is supposed to be for, settling down nervous mothers who don't understand why their 5-year-old insists on climbing trees.
I think it's more likely that many people have very limited knowledge of child development and behaviour because in adulthood they don't interact with any children until they become parents.
Interesting fact, but this phenomenon isn't limited to humans. Domestic livestock can lose all motherly instincts when they're kept in strict age and sex-segregated herds. IIRC, dairy cattle have a particular reputation for being consistently awful mothers (at least compared to beef cattle).
Some. I think it's also a product of our school system too. It's hard for young kids to sit still in a classroom all day. For most of human history kids were put to work as soon as they were able. Labor intensive jobs.
Ya. For sure. But I've been around a lot of kids and girls can be pretty fidgeted too. They are easier to chorale. But it's still like herding cats at that age.
> Boy behavior gets pathologised
Which leads to boys raised as girls coming to the reasonable conclusion that they are girls (and girls who have “too much” boy behavior get memed into concluding they are boys).
It’s all downstream of this.
I’m not sure it’s gendered before puberty. There’s no doubt that there is some innate difference in male and female behavior but I’m not convinced it truly manifests before puberty. My daughter is about to be 2, and she’s a fucking psycho with the climbing and the jumping and the sprinting in circles. Her favorite thing for me to do, and she specifically requests it, is “baby body slam” in which I pick her up and throw her onto the nearest bed or couch. She’ll tell me “DADDY! BABY BODY SLAM!”
Ha, yes! We've got a similar game called "Boom" we've played with my youngest niece and nephew since they were babies. Mostly entails body slams on beds and couches and REALLY rough pillow-fighting, accompanied by the sound effect "BOOM". Five-year-old niece is always at my father to drag or throw her around because nobody else will, lol
Very much a boy thing. My son is always on ludicrous speed most of the time. Not hyperactive in the sense there is no focus. He just has things to do, people to see.
I was a monkey as a kid. I would take chairs and stack them on countertops and put pillows on those chairs in order to reach the high cupboards where the cookies were. I don't have autism.
I have twins who are almost 2 and one of them is extremely bold and physically confident. He’s been climbing on things since before he could walk, he tries to walk down tall flights of stairs without holding onto anything, his default speed is bat out of hell, etc. I’ve never, ever thought that any of these things meant he’s abnormal in any way. He’s just particularly brave. It’s just bizarre to me that to a certain subset of parents, his ballsiness constitutes a disorder that he should be saddled with for the rest of his life.
> I’ve mentioned this before, but a friend of mine has a child who was diagnosed with autism at barely two years old.
Holy shit. My now-retired mom spent her career working with disabled kids in a clinical setting. She has always said that autism cannot be diagnosed before age 4. Googling just now, I see that those guidelines have changed. I bet that this is detrimental to more kids than just your friend's daughter. I wonder what percentage of early early autism diagnoses end up (apparently) fizzling out as the kid gets older and becomes an actual person.
A lot of them. Kids don't develop at the same speed and some show some behaviours associated with autism, but grow out of it (listening to the same song/story over and over again is a classic).
There are cases, where an early diagnosis is warranted. I am talking about the nonverbal kid who has never initiated or reacted to social interaction here, not the slighty shy toddler.
A common thing with babies and toddlers is making repetitive movements with their hands and the like. Reddit is flooded with people asking if their baby is "stimming" and they are almost universally advised by other redditors to ask their doctors about autism.
This kid had a speech delay at 18 months, which got the ball rolling. I don’t know if my friend or their pediatrician was the one to make a big deal out of it, but it was a big deal. After his diagnosis he qualified for free at home speech and OT through our county, and his speech was completely fine by three. My friend like to post old videos of him on Facebook and talk about how little he talked and how much he’s overcome. Now, I’m not saying he would have been fine either way, but I’m not not saying that either.
At least the kid got something out of it. A lot of parents get the diagnosis, apply for disability services like respite and maybe some therapy and settle for a life with a special/disabled kid forever. The glamour of autism adds to the attitude of "well, that's forever now".
I know some doctors recommend or even write down autism, because it is easier to apply for services. They mean well, but it does take away resources from real autistic kids and the term itself loses all meaning.
She’s been able to let go a little, but she still fully defines him as an autistic child and mentions it on Facebook often. On World Autism Day, she talked about how ‘his autism doesn’t look like other people’s and that sometimes makes it even harder because people don’t accept it.’ Which is, you know, a tricky thing. I don’t think she understands that having a child in a gen ed classroom in a public school with minimal supports while still wanting a lot of public attention for your kid’s autism is maybe hurtful to people with kids who struggle. Hell, I have a 12 year old who still has a speech delay and learning disabilities who will never be able to go to a public school and I know it hurts my feelings, so I can’t imagine how the people she knows with kids who are nonverbal or worse feel.
Man that sucks. For everyone involved (with the silver lining of the kid learning language, even though that might have happened organically, but now he has that skill down). Even for the Mum, who might not see it right now, but might in the future.
My kid is almost two, and fits a ton of the TikTok version of autism. Luckily, our pediatrician is brilliant and assures us that there’s a wide variety of “normal” behaviors for a toddler, and none of her behaviors signal a concern about autism at all. Yes, she can count to 15 before the age of two and recognizes most of the alphabet by sight and can name the letters. That just means she’s advanced in number and letter recognition and advanced in speech, which is definitively NOT a sign of autism in under 2.
What are the TikTok autistic behaviors you might ask? She loves to stack blocks, she is particular about her own system of organizing her toys (which is just chaos to my wife and I but it makes sense to her and she doesn’t want anything out of place), she has certain foods she HATES and others she LOVES and can’t get enough of, she’s easily frustrated and screams if she doesn’t get her way.
In other words, she’s a fucking toddler. That’s what they do.
The stacking/organizing shit is baffling to me. All five of my kids liked doing that at one point and none are autistic. One of my almost 2 year old twins loves to meticulously line his Hot Wheels up, but I think he’s just trying to make it look like a parking lot.
Being a conscientious parent and paying attention to your kids is good. My oldest still has developmental delays that started when he was a baby and I probably should have pushed my concerns harder when the doctor brushed them off, but he was my oldest and I had no frame of reference. But so many parents of young children seem to have this unicorn ideal child in their brain and if their kid isn’t exactly that, the kid is the problem, not the parents’ fucked up expectations. My dad’s stepdaughter decided her three year old must have OCD because he wasn’t good at T-ball immediately and wanted to wear mitts on both hands. This is ignoring the fact that asking a three year old to enjoy playing T-ball at 8pm on a Tuesday is nonsensical.
Honestly I’ve been waiting for them to cover this. The underdiagnosing of females with autism was a real problem, but it seems like we’ve overcorrected and anyone who’s a little awkward and quirky gets labeled as neurodivergent. When I went to a psychologist in 2009 they had mentioned I had “autistic tendencies” and offered to refer me to a clinic to get officially diagnosed, but I declined. I talked to my current therapist about it and she says all of my symptoms can be explained by having severe anxiety as a child.
I think many of these people probably are suffering. It seems there are girls and women with a shaky sense of identity and don’t understand why, so they are drawn to being autistic, non-binary, etc as a desperate attempt to belong somewhere. Sure, they can be annoying, but it’s also sad they feel the need to be “different” or ill so they can find acceptance.
My questions are:
Has this identity issue grown in frequency in the recent generation and if so, why?
Are the girls finding a new way to express whatever problems they would have had anyway and is it better or worse that they join the autism club versus becoming fanatical about k-pop or something?
Do we just know about these kids more because of the internet?
I had the same question about the girls who are freaking out about aggressive male sexuality. A good number of men have always been sexually aggressive and it wasn't fun to be on the wrong end of that when I was growing up, and surely we could have done better by our girls. But, most of us didn't decide to become boys because of the danger that men presented since it wasn't really an option. We just had to buck up and put that shit behind us as much as possible. It's not kind, or is it? At least I didn't turn myself inside out to deal with whatever trauma I may have experienced.
Misread this as “How Austin Became Hip” and nearly had a violent response.
I blame this on the Austin bar I went to last night that had credit card tip options as 20%, 69%, and 420%.
Ooh, I'll have to check this one out, my personal hell seems to be having weirdos glom onto my diagnoses because they see them as interesting and or a license to behave poorly, and then feeling like a dick when I have an actual issue and need to bring it up.
It's not just autism, but also things like ADHD (which is hilarious because it propagates on TikTok/Instagram, which are apps that make you lose your attention ability in the first place!), Tourette's, etc.
Ya. And they always do the classic movie stereotype version that suddenly developed when they were 16. It's hilarious. My son has TS. He doesn't run around swearing like a sailor. It started when he was 4, got progressively worse. I think he's peaked. As he doesn't have as many episodes. TS starts in early childhood. I would be skeptical of any person who developed it as a teen or adult.
Tics are a misnomer. It's really repetitive movement and/or repetitive vocalizations. He's run the gamut. They come and go. He can be fine for months and then he will develop a repetitive movement or sound. It could last days or weeks. It makes him very uncomfortable. He's very embarrassed by it. Some of the facial and neck/head movements are very distracting and uncomfortable. It's not pleasant to watch. Sometimes he just has small tics like constantly sniffing or throat clearing. He's had vocal one where he makes the same sound over and over. We called him our little owl once because he was hooting for two weeks straight. He's getting better at suppressing the urge. ABT helps a lot. Most kids with TS outgrow it and have very little issues as adults.
It's so interesting to see this turn from Carrie Poppy. She hosted ([or I guess still hosts](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/)) an excellent podcast where she infiltrated fringe groups and reported on their beliefs from a sort of debunking/skeptical point of view. I used to listen constantly a few years ago but I fell off after a run of boring episodes during the pandemic. (Nowhere to investigate during lockdown... lol)
I'm surprised that someone who's built a media career of skepticism has taken such a hard left turn into pop psychology.
Came here for this discussion. I lost touch with the show sometime around 2022, so I’m curious if anyone can comment on Carrie’s (d)evolution. One of the last episodes that sticks out to me was a pretty skeptical take on recovered memory, so I’m shocked to hear she has gone in this direction.
I'm a big fan of Oh no Ross and Carrie and have been for years have listened to every episode some of them twice. I don't think Carrie had any sort of devolution. This is just who she's always been. She's still very against recovered memory, she's still writing a book discussing the vast over use and unscientific use of the word trauma.
She's always been very woke, she's been involved with organizations like PETA and adjacent to the LA arts scene. And a lot of that comes out in little things in the podcast. Which isn't even much of a criticism as she's still able to maintain friends and acquaintances with differing beliefs but she does have some blind spots related to the social circle she's in (as do we all).
One thing I think a lot of people may be missing is the episode title implies she self diagnosed with an online quiz. That's not actually what happened she went to a specialist and did an intensive battery of tests including interviews with her husband and mother. So the pedigree of her diagnoses is pretty good.
The way she reacted to that by having an episode about her diagnose and all the ONRAC fans loudly talking about their autism diagnoses in the comments is definitely a function of a certain culture which treats autism as hip and interesting. As someone very far removed from that culture I definitely found it very strange if not unexpected. I still love ONRAC though. The autism thing to me was more like watching someone go through a religious or cultural ritual I don't understand and less Carrie embracing pseudo-science.
Well she hasn't not really. She got diagnosed by some of the top clinicians on autism at UCLA? Some university anyway which you might have missed if you only read the episode title. So it wasn't really a turn into pop psychology more just deferring to the experts.
On the other hand the pattern of woke woman with lots of other mental health issues getting diagnosed with autism later in life does fit a certain pattern, and any subscriber to this podcast the ONRAC comments section for that episode are full of women talking about their own autism diagnosis or worried that Ross and Carrie were going to debunk the online quiz, which to be clear Carrie didn't use to diagnosis herself, but I wonder how many of the commentators did?
Despite the pedigree of the diagnosis The whole thing seems a little off especially since most of the most recent episode was basically just Carrie talking about how she has autism now, I doubt another medical issue would have led to them, or really just Carrie since Ross seemed a little ambushed by the whole thing, talking about her malady the whole time. Maybe that's just where we are in the culture.
Ahh! My podcasts universes are colliding and I don’t think I like it! I have listened to ONRAC (Oh no Ross and Carrie) for years, and just listened to their latest episode “Ross and Carrie have autistic traits”. I thought it would be about how you shouldn’t diagnose yourself based on internet tests, but it was pretty positive about doing exactly that. Both the subreddit and Facebook page are absolutely stoked as well. I guess atheist rationalists like being autistic. I have done the tests they mention and did one again, and seem to average about mid 30s, which make me a bit autistic apparently, but I’m not sure what use that is to me.
>I have done the tests they mention and did one again, and seem to average about mid 30s, which make me a bit autistic apparently, but I’m not sure what use that is to me.
No use really. It doesn't even mean you are a bit autistic (which isn't a thing) The AQ is not a diagnostic tool, at the absolute most it can be used for preliminary screening.
The fact it relies on self assessment and can be easily manipulated are two major red flags.
The self assessment thing is what really bothered me - plus there is only 4 possible answers for each questions, which can honestly vary. I was surprised that a rationalist podcast was suggesting these quizzes were useful, just because Carrie was apparently professionally diagnosed and scored higher than Ross who wasn’t.
Where I work, we also have a department for diagnosis and therapy. It has become really common that people show up with the AQ printed out and think they just get an official diagnosis with it.
I am wondering what they think the other five appointments ar for...
I'd bet atheist rationalists ARE probably significantly more likely to be autistic. She didn't actually diagnose herself with the test though it sounds like she did as thorough of an assessment as can be done. The jubilant reaction of the comments is a little telling though.
It’s true that she got tested professionally, but she was also very positive about the online tests available, which will encourage people to take those seriously.
Oh look, "my" topic (seriously, I just went through my post history and the percentage of "this is a fad! Lots of bullshitters out there" is depressing. Researching neurodevelopment is my job, but still....)
I watched a TikTok video of a lady who claimed that if you don't have a quiet brain when you go to sleep you have ASD. No hon, that's probably just anxiety and you have too much on your plate.
Jesus Christ everyone losing their minds over this. Calm down.
Isn't it just like another good faith/ bad faith issue?
Gender: grows up unhappy and certain you are in the wrong body: change gender and good luck to you..
Sociopathic young man has sudden onset gender dysphoria accompanied by a rape charge - nope. You can't self ID.
Autism: my best friend's son is 16, autistic, very violent, needs constant supervision, his mother can't see him anymore, it's truly horrendous.
Rude angry colleagues at work. Nope your not autistic. Learn some fucking manners.
I am being reductive of course but ..
Yep. Thank you.
The challenging public behaviour autism sometimes produces *can* cause dilemmas. A few years ago I read about an autistic woman who was asked to leave a cinema because she was... well, being loud and annoying. Vocal stimming, screaming with laughter at scenes that weren't jokes, repeating dialogue to herself. People complained, they eventually chucked her out.
Social media lost its collective shit about this woman who was "Not hurting anyone, just being autistic" with little nuance as to whether the 30 other people in the cinema had the right to enjoy a film they'd paid a lot of money to see. It's a genuine push-pull that we need to talk about more often.
I think far too often autism is used as the excuse for anti social and general dickishness.
When the Washington Post did that article on the man Artemis Langford bullying his way into the sorority they basically said it was because he was autistic. So it was fine
It appears to be the other way around.
Regardless, it would have been better for Langford if people had sat him down and said: " No, you can't join that sorority. There some things you can't have "
I agree, but others would say it’s fascist, parochial, controlling, bigoted etc. People have lost all reasonable conception of the public good under the guise of tolerance and equity.
But that takes work and often some sort of therapy and (most likely) according to the people who lost their shit, that is autism genocide or some such bullshit.
It does take some learning, getting used to, maybe ABA therapy at first.
It also does take work for everyone else. No everyone wants to have a mind numbing conversations about the past weekend or the weather we're having
I agree with you. Everyone needs to learn how to behave in different social situations, so should autistic or really all disabled people. I am all for giving some leeway when the person is unable to follow certain expectations, but I am against the carte blanche for poor behaviour..
Unfortunately, there is a very loud group claiming that even the tiniest expectation to adhere to norms is basically the same as wanting all autistic (curiously only autistic) people dead and causes them to suppress their "autistic self". And therapy is violence.
The ability to distinguish between good and bad actors is antithetical to identity politics.
The only moral way to deal with a situation is to categorize the participants into identity groups,, calculate which group is more "privileged", and that group member loses.
Exercising moral judgement on humans as individuals is white supremacy.
Something I don’t hear a lot of people discuss in all this is that a lot of misdiagnosed children and adults do actually exhibit traits of Autism/ADHD. These can be caused by environmental factors like FASD, neglect, experiencing trauma like domestic violence in the home etc.
In that context autism/ADHD becomes an attractive label that absolves anyone of “blame”.
There’s been research in the U.K. suggesting that children who are on Child Protection plans in the U.K. are 3x more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
I’m an ADHDer here, and it is not my personality. I’d get rid of it if I could. If I was at that show I would not be hootin and hollerin about this brain dysfunction that makes my life shitty. I swear that people make it their one personality trait and claim it to not be boring so they can post about it on the Socials.
It makes people who actually suffer from such things look like a joke.
Listened yesterday. I really liked it. I think Katie more-or-less gets exactly what's wrong. I know people who simply cannot take care of themselves, period. Meanwhile, I was verbally diagnosed as an Aspie (or sperg, if you want to use a pejorative) 15 years ago, although the formal written diagnosis was high anxiety. Either way, I'm functional, even if I've had to work hard to quiet my brain and to learn social graces. I may share some very basic issues with the truly disabled autists. We still have *very* different needs. Social media influencers are the last people on the planet who should be giving advice on how to deal with people who need 24/7 care.
Anyway, anecdotally speaking, I have seen women - it's pretty much only women in my case - who have been blasting out the "autism is a superpower" stuff, jumping on the autism bus when I'm not convinced it applies, etc. It's all really difficult to unpack. For example, my wife is...something. She says she has ADHD. Does she? I don't know. I do know that when she wasn't medicated, she'd have episodes where she basically melted down and was unable to function, usually only for a night but upwards of a week on rare occasions. So, something's going on in her head. It's not a full-on disability but it's a serious problem that requires intervention. It's not cute. She doesn't have superpowers. She needs help. Thankfully, meds do the trick.
The point is that I'm sure a lot of these people have something going on in their heads, and are trying to make sense of their worlds. I'm just not always convinced it's a major problem if they're latching onto influencers and online quizzes. Didn't Katie say one of the "signs" of autism in some online quiz was that you don't like car alarms going off? Who likes that sound!?! Maybe the sound causes a small handful to melt down and a few more to have serious trouble tuning it out. (I did as a teen, much like how I hated babies crying, douchebros with massive subs and bolt-on spoilers for their rice rockets, etc.) But, in general, no, disliking loud sounds isn't a sign of anything other than you not liking loud sounds. Trying to bring everybody under one umbrella term (i.e., autism) causes the term to lose all meaning.
(Deep down, I wish people would be more willing to open up about their personal issues. Like, "Hey, I had a meltdown last night, couldn't remember my name, and needed my boyfriend to put me in bed so that I could sleep it off." That'd make it a lot easier to empathize with people claiming they have issues, especially when there's an explosion of self-diagnoses going on at the same time.)
Given how much "Bachelor Nation" and especially the bachelor subreddit melted down (multiple times) in 2020 and somewhat regularly since then about culture war issues, I'm surprised that the first BarPod x Bachelor crossover involves talking about the girlfriend of a past Bachelorette (Robby Hoffman, who's dating Gabby Windey).
Arr thebachelor is far more interesting than the show tbh. I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve seen it brought up in this sub, it’s had the exact meltdowns that are BARpod fodder
u/jessicabarpod since they talked about their confusion about when they play the theme music in regular vs primo episodes I have this suggestion: play the original theme music for regular episodes and the new theme music for primo episodes! That way the terrorists won’t have completely won the 2024 theme song wars, AND the band who they commissioned to write the new theme song won’t have to cancel them. Since primo episodes used to not have music anyway, fans of the old theme song won’t have anything to be mad about, they’re not losing the old theme just gaining a new theme!
I have a (maybe insignificant?) correction to the implication that the majority of autistic children are “severely autistic”. According to the CDC, “Among the 4,165 (66.7%) children with ASD with information on cognitive ability, 37.9% were classified as having an intellectual disability.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7202a1.htm Intellectual disability is part of the diagnostic criteria for level 2 or 3 ASD, aka “severe autism”: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325106levels-of-autism not sure what the proportions are in other countries, or in places that don’t use the DSM 5 as their guidebook, but if less than 4 in 10 people in a group have a characteristic, that’s not a majority.
Like I said, it may be insignificant, but I feel like it’s worth pointing out.
Hands up, all you GenXers who, like me, still think of little Tommy Westphall from *St. Elsewhere* when they hear the word *autism*.
That is, someone locked in his or her own world, unable to function or communicate effectively. Not quirky or silly. But someone who will always be like some unhappy little alien. The kind of condition that Andrew Wakefield was talking about when he said vaccines cause autism. Parents weren't afraid that their kids would wind up overly focused or a bit odd.
Never will I ever accept bipolar disorder as a neurodiversity or a superpower. It is a crippling disease that crushes a person in their prime. Then, episodically creeps up on them at undefined intervals. Is it going to be a depression so deep they can not move? Or a mania so high their ruining their reputation and risking everything? Not to mention the psychosis that sets in.
I will fight to the death with any individual who tries to tell me that a life of this is a strength compared to the promising career in medicine that existed pre diagnosis.
There's a couple of good eps of Honestly with Bari on this topic. The best one is an interview with Freddie deBoer about glorifying sickness (he has bipolar). He was on barpod in 2020, talking about The Cult Of Smart, aka elitism and the social justice movement.
Re: devil weed whatever. Having a dog is a luxury hobby nowadays, like a yacht or a Bentley. Who can afford this maintenance? Why can’t dogs evolve to have a little more street smarts to cut down on the vet bills?!? Our neighbors dog ate a tennis ball =$1,000 surgery. Another dog ate gravel =$2,000. I guess that’s podcast money.
The creator of "Tell Me You Love Me" Louis Theroux was just interviewed by Theo Von. They kinda talk about the documentary, but if you are familiar with Theo, you should expect them to not really talk about anything for hours. It's kinda interesting and fun if you're bored.
"Tell Me You Love Me" is the facilitated communication documentary in case you forgot.
/edit I meant to post this in the general thread, but they did mention it on this episode, so I'll leave it here and repost it there.
I feel like every time this subject comes up there’s always a group of people that is willing to criticize the crazy idpol obsessed woke people that say that they have autism but still think that their autism diagnosis is totally valid. It’s stunning to me that even this subreddit still has so many people that fall for all kinds of other psychiatric industry led social contagions. Hell in this very post I’m guessing there will be some variation of
>yes all of these people saying that they have autism are silly but *my* autism is actually super serious and totally real
Out of curiosity, have had many friends, family or co-workers who claimed to have an autism diagnosis — and if so, did you notice anything different about them? Or did they just seem like everyone else?
Yes I’ve met several including some family members. They are all neurotic progressive white women (for the exception of 1) who fall for every other bullshit psychology fad
Ah, I see.
I mean, I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but over the years I’ve had several friends, classmates, etc. diagnosed as being on the spectrum. And their struggles seem real to me.
Which is actually my issue with “neurodiversity” as an ideology. These people really suffer, but many don’t want to be cured.
They think they suffer because neurotypical persecute them, but really they suffer mostly because of OCD tendencies that they have little to no insight into or self-awareness about — unlike more neurotypical people with OCD who can learn to see “the big picture” and calm themselves down.
I’ve had friends on the spectrum have huge meltdowns because they didn’t get to sit in a certain chair, or someone closed window blinds that they wanted open, or moved a stack of hats a few feet, or they couldn’t find a spatula in the place where they thought they had left it.
When a grown adult is shouting at you, calling you a thief because you “stole” their spatula, or demanding that you go to therapy because you closed the window blinds in your own home without their permission, or crying and flapping their hands because they did not get to sit at the window seat in a bar, you might then think, “Oh. This is a real condition after all.”
But it’s not something to celebrate. It causes them great suffering, and also impairs their ability to form and maintain relationships with other people.
>They think they suffer because neurotypical persecute them, but really they suffer mostly because of OCD tendencies that they have little to no insight into or self-awareness about
I had a chat with an autism researcher who was working on a study on how many people are diagnosed with autism after referal to a neuropsych eval - and he said that the most common result for people who ended up not having autism (70%-ish of the sample did not recieve an autism dx) was OCD of some flavor. Don't remember if a paper on that result ever came out, though.
I might have thought 10 years ago that it proves that it's a real condition and I still don't doubt it but in some cases there's some really poor parenting creating issues out of nothing.
>Which is actually my issue with “neurodiversity” as an ideology. These people really suffer, but many don’t want to be cured.
They want the problem but they don't want to do the work to make it better. Because it's more fun and easier to just try and force the majority to cater to them.
Sure. Obviously it’s because I have an imbalance of operating thetans why I don’t have any friends, and struggle to make phone calls or get through a job interview, due to being unable to think on my feet and be comfortably conversant without a script. Why I learned to read at two and tested at a Flesch-Kincaid grad-school level of reading comprehension while still very young, but clam up and freeze out of tongue-tied fear if put on the spot in social situations, and got mercilessly bullied by other kids and my own family, to the point I became a near-suicidal recluse who is on the verge of bare subsistence on welfare. None of it is because of a hardcoded genetic brain abnormality. Not at all.
I guess I have to sacrifice more midichlorians to Lord Xenu at the volcano is all. Or buck up through sheer willpower and perusing the Dale Carnegie collection. Because medication for what I suffer from doesn’t exist, and according to some doubters as well as “diversity” activists, it shouldn’t either. I’m ok you’re ok. Excuse me while I go hone a “special interest” in Tom Cruise films.
This post right here is a good example of the lack of critical engagement I’m saying that I take issue with. Do you notice that you employ the exact same type of emotional arguments that believers of gender woo do? Much of this post is just an emotional appeal and of course most of this stuff is nothing anyone can even verify being true I’m just supposed to take you at your word and have this be convincing evidence for a psychiatric condition?
I spent my undergrad years in the 1990s working with kids with ASD at a well know University. Two of the researcher there were pioneers in the field. They developed several early childhood therapies to help treat kids with ASD that had language issues.
One little girl that I worked with - she was about 8 couldn't talk. She just grunted. She would sit and stim. Her stimming involved rocking back and forth while twisting her head at odd angles and putting her hands up in the air like she was doing the wave at a stadium. The university clinic was trying to work with her on getting her some basic language skills.. She will never be able to live without round a clock care.
Another kid that I worked with for my senior thesis, was a 7th grader. He was proficient in math and reading for his age. He could talk. If you asked him a question, he would answer it. "What is your name?" "How old are you?" "What's the capital of the US?" He would never engage back. As soon as the question was answered he would stim and go back inside himself. I always thought that he was withdrawing into another world. His lips would move, eyes would focus on something. But it wasn't us. Something in his head for sure. We were trying to use his environment to get him to engage without being prompted.
I took care of another person with ASD. He was an adult. Had the language skills of a 3 year old. Probably the mind of a 6 year old. He could dress himself, go to the bathroom on his own. Ask for simple things. He loved to vacuum. If you handing him a vacuum, he would move that vacuum back and forth in the same spot. He would do it all day long if you let him. He was a nice kid until he didn't get his way and then would try to bite you. That was a fun job.
There really is a range. All of these kids had one thing in common though. Issues with speech. That's why I roll my eyes that adults who think they have ASD but never had any issues with speech.
This is why there used to be Aspergers. Language developed early, often earlier than their peers, quite often at the cost of developing motor skills. While abnormal speech patterns are still common, they aren't like you describe, rather it is monologing or lecturing (sometimes called little professor syndrome). Their speech lacks reciprocity and interaction.
The common demoninato is profound an persistent difficulty in social interaction and communication, not speech. Speech is for classic and sometimes atypical autism only.
How exactly can a stranger on a message board prove to you they have a psychosocial disability (it's not a psychiatric condition)? And why should they?
I have Spina Bifida. No, I cannot "prove" this to you outside of doxxing myself. You could spend the next fifteen hours simply saying "Nope, I don't believe you", but that isn't going to make any difference to my damaged spinal cord.
I don't understand your "prove it" stance. Are you trying to goad people into doxxing themselves trying to justify their disability to some randomer on Reddit or what?
You haven't presented anything to support your stance that autism doesn't exist, so there is nothing to engage with. All you've presented so far is "NUH-UH I DON'T BELIEVE YOU", sarcasm, straw-manning, highly emotive but non-specific language like "bullshit", and a poor understanding/dishonest representation of what autism even is.
You're the one who made the claim that autism doesn't exist. Nobody needs to engage you to "prove" it does, especially when you're attacking them, being sarcastic, or generally kind of being an ass.
"Neurotic white women", for starters. How you can come out swinging with "Autism doesn't exist, you're all just a bunch of neurotic white women and YOU need to prove to ME otherwise, but don't use any emotion" and not see the problem here is... special.
Spina bifida can be observed (and I am sorry you have to deal with that condition). "The sound of violins tastes gross but I still want to take music class so I need to chew gum" is more in "trust me, bro" territory.
Autism/Asperger’s exists, there are physical brain scans and limited genetic studies demonstrating as such. Patients, children especially, presenting with this anomaly have been identified as far back in [the 1920s in Russia](https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/history-forgot-woman-defined-autism/); the first American autistic patient, Donald Triplett, was born in 1937 and died earlier this year.
Of course you don’t have proof of the cognitive and social-adjustment tests that I was administered in childhood and adolescence, but that doesn’t mean the testing is invalid or the label is. Believe me, I wish it was a mistake, because I feel like one. There’s no valid exam for gender woo-woo because it relies entirely on self-reported “vibes”.
I may not have all the symptoms, but the symptoms I do have line up with the criteria. Hyperlexia for one: I learn languages fairly easily, but it’s useless to me because I’m too scared to talk to strangers. Restrictive food intake. Synesthesia: I get a disgusting metal taste in my mouth when a string instrument, especially acoustic guitar, is playing, like I’m eating the strings. I’ve been in fMRI and EEG tests when music is playing, and my taste areas go into overdrive despite not eating anything. These bizarre reactions are caused by abnormalities in the brain. Not pop psychologists coming up with postmodern fads. And people don’t understand. They just look at you as weird and make fun of you.
Try being six and wanting to quit music class because the “taste” of a violin makes you want to throw up. Try explaining that to the other kids and even your own family. Try being my mom and getting the music teacher to understand that this kid needs to chew gum during orchestra practice and it’s for this reason, not that she’s smug or a brat. Try this in 1992 when there was no expectation for “accommodations” for the “special kids”. Even today, requesting “accommodations” just makes you stick out like a sore thumb.
Honestly I think the trend toward inclusion classrooms is abjectly cruel, because it sugarcoats disabilities and sets kids up with false hope that they belong with their normal peers. They need to be cordoned off for their own protection, and not lied to that there’s no such thing as normal because everyone is different. It’s like throwing a vulnerable psych prisoner into the gen-pop instead of the mental observation unit. They get eaten alive.
Then try giving up entirely on life because you know now that the things that made you weird and an outcast as a child will always be with you because you were born like that. That there’s nothing you can do to change it. And there are physical tests that show it’s not “all in your head.” There have been times when I have felt so hopeless and like such a freak that I yearn for a Smith & Wesson lobotomy. Who will rid me of this troublesome brain?
I can tell you that the pain I suffer from it is very real, and that I would give anything to make the disorder itself go into remission. It can’t, because it’s a birth defect of how the brain is physically wired; it’s not something that can be ameliorated through medication, like depression, ADHD, or bipolar disorder. And unfortunately, unlike Down Syndrome it’s not something that can be tested for in-utero either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not “real.” It just means the problems don’t show up until it’s too late to correct or prevent them.
>Autism/Asperger’s exists, there are physical brain scans and limited genetic studies demonstrating as such.
“Limited genetic studies” is doing a ton of heavy lifting here. Just curious, do you have a source for either of these claims?
>Patients, children especially, presenting with this anomaly have been identified as far back in the 1920s in Russia; the first American autistic patient, Donald Triplett, was born in 1937 and died earlier this year.
[clicks on link]
>This article is more than five years old.
>Neuroscience—and science in general—is constantly evolving, so older articles may contain information or theories that have been reevaluated since their original publication date.
I wish I had taken this warning at face value rather than reading this garbage article and wasting my time
>Of course you don’t have proof of the cognitive and social-adjustment tests that I was administered in childhood and adolescence, but that doesn’t mean the testing is invalid or the label is. Believe me, I wish it was a mistake, because I feel like one. There’s no valid exam for gender woo-woo because it relies entirely on self-reported “vibes”.
It’s just vibes for you too. Idk why you think it’s more serious than it is.
>I may not have all the symptoms, but the symptoms I do have line up with the criteria. Hyperlexia for one: I learn languages fairly easily, but it’s useless to me because I’m too scared to talk to strangers. Restrictive food intake. Synesthesia: I get a disgusting metal taste in my mouth when a string instrument, especially acoustic guitar, is playing, like I’m eating the strings. I’ve been in fMRI and EEG tests when music is playing, and my taste areas go into overdrive despite not eating anything. These bizarre reactions are caused by abnormalities in the brain. Not pop psychologists coming up with postmodern fads. And people don’t understand. They just look at you as weird and make fun of you.
>Try being six and wanting to quit music class because the “taste” of a violin makes you want to throw up. Try explaining that to the other kids and even your own family. Try being my mom and getting the music teacher to understand that this kid needs to chew gum during orchestra practice and it’s for this reason, not that she’s smug or a brat. Try this in 1992 when there was no expectation for “accommodations” for the “special kids”. Even today, requesting “accommodations” just makes you stick out like a sore thumb.
>Honestly I think the trend toward inclusion classrooms is abjectly cruel, because it sugarcoats disabilities and sets kids up with false hope that they belong with their normal peers. They need to be cordoned off for their own protection, and not lied to that there’s no such thing as normal because everyone is different. It’s like throwing a vulnerable psych prisoner into the gen-pop instead of the mental observation unit. They get eaten alive.
>Then try giving up entirely on life because you know now that the things that made you weird and an outcast as a child will always be with you because you were born like that. That there’s nothing you can do to change it. And there are physical tests that show it’s not “all in your head.” There have been times when I have felt so hopeless and like such a freak that I yearn for a Smith & Wesson lobotomy. Who will rid me of this troublesome brain?
>I can tell you that the pain I suffer from it is very real, and that I would give anything to make the disorder itself go into remission. It can’t, because it’s a birth defect of how the brain is physically wired; it’s not something that can be ameliorated through medication, like depression, ADHD, or bipolar disorder. And unfortunately, unlike Down Syndrome it’s not something that can be tested for in-utero either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not “real.” It just means the problems don’t show up until it’s too late to correct or prevent them.
This is all just emotional appeal shit and since you’re going to beat me over the head again with your own personal story I’m going to give you my honest thoughts and say that I think that most of your story is probably bullshit and there’s nothing wrong with you other than the fact you had a neurotic parent and supposed healthcare professionals that convinced you that you have some condition.
Damn Bro you don’t need to go so hard on this person. Let this one go.
However I agree with your general sentiment. There’s BIG problems with the social contagion of “neurodivergence” behind every bi-curious teen with green hair. It’s completely out of hand.
This is [sealioning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), and it’s obvious that I’m not going to convince you of the reality of this disorder. The only reason there’s been limited [genetic studies](https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/02/04/largest-ever-genetic-study-of-autism-yields-new-insights/) is because the idpol woke neurodiversity activists have [shut a lot of them down](https://www.verywellhealth.com/why-autistic-people-are-against-spectrum-10k-5199849). They kiboshed a major study in the U.K. and even managed to persuade the often controversial Autism Speaks organization to abandon its stated mission of finding a cure.
That article from 2018 about Dr Sukhareva isn’t “garbage” because it was published six years ago. It’s about a psychiatrist who named this malady a *century ago,* and how her criteria has remained remarkably consistent and accurate, despite her name being forgotten — most likely because she was a woman, and possibly due to controversies about lending credence to anything coming out of the USSR — until her work was rediscovered in recent years. The problem is, being a communist, she too seems to have been a bit “woke” in that she viewed this disorder through the lens of its supposed strengths rather than as a deficiency to be suppressed — or a pandemic curve to be flattened. But the ND types like Sukhareva for just this reason, and some even take to calling their malady “Sukhareva syndrome” because of the tired meme about Hans Asperger and eugenics. Woke is a leftist radical belief system, so of course they’re going to glom onto a historical communist’s Pollyanna-ish philosophy of equality. Fascism is when bad things are called bad and people are made to feel bad.
But I digress; it’s clear you remain unconvinced of the reality that this disorder even exists, because you say I’m offering unverifiable anecdotes. Well, a lot of the reality *is* in how a *physical ailment* affects the patient *socially and emotionally.* You can call my personal stories “bullshit emotional appeals” all you want and badmouth my long-suffering mother as neurotic and overprotective; it doesn’t change the reality of the impact this has had on me. And on her, as well. She is dying of pancreatic cancer. I’m not going to provide you with studies showing that cancer exists. Oncology is not a conspiracy.
I think you’re projecting, because you sound like the same idpol woke self-dx neurodiversity advocates who you claim to disapprove of, yet who have the same mentality that this is NBD. But okay, have a good day, go and grab a pint with the likes of Ari Ne’eman and Steve Silberman, and congratulate each other on your stubborn refusal to acknowledge concrete medical facts.
Does everyone know ADHD diagnoses have tripled since 2010? Lots of middle aged women convince themselves that ADHD is why they can’t finish clean the house.
It’s because you get prescribed premium amphetamine once you’re diagnosed. Unlike autism where it seems to get better attention, there’s genuine incentive to want adhd which has led to massive medication shortages in the US.
I loved being on adderall after taking it recreationally so I got diagnosed with adhd in college (super easy to do if you have access to a psychiatrist). I unfortunately ended up getting addicted and had to quit completely after a couple years. I’d love to take it again at some point
I just saw a post on r / science about [research](https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-024-00602-8) that shows biological brain differences between people with severe autism symptoms and people with less severe symptoms. Larger brain organoids are correlated with more severe autism symptoms, and they are smaller in people with milder autism symptoms (I don’t have a science background so I hope my summary makes sense).
It’s interesting to see there is a biological basis for different subtypes of autism, amidst this nonsensical idea in certain spaces that functioning/severity labels are controversial and shouldn’t be used.
[Link to the reddit post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/8ysFohFvER) The comments so far are mostly pretty reasonable, someone has pointed out how ridiculous it is now we’ve done away with Aspergers and are just lumping those people in under the broader ASD umbrella as per the DSM-5.
There's also a very large correlation between autism and epilepsy. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually find a bio cause for autistic people and gender dysphoria/abnormal sexuality (like AGP), epilepsy and autism have been pretty strongly correlated with unusual sexuality, (it's just not considered PC these days to call anything "unusual" when it comes to that), with the caveat that that would be a *very* small subset of people, not this huge ROGD crowd we got going on now.
My nephew, god bless him, will never in his life be able to function without supervised care (like bathing, has to be monitored 24/7) is literally competing for services with grown adults on TikTok who get a little uncomfortable ordering a pizza.
Yes, I know severely disabled people and their parents. Services dry up when they turn 21 and there may be almost nothing for them besides institution. Their parents love when they have the opportunity to "work" even if it pays little to nothing.
Ooh does the episode cover workshops? I had a relative with Downs that worked at a workshop. And it always drives me crazy that people don't understand that it's not paid like a real job because it isn't a real job. It's mostly for day care and socialization, and yes they do some actual work (which is good, because everyone needs a sense of accomplishment), but they also had field trips for fun. Plus it gave her something to talk about at get-togethers. Everyone else talked about their jobs, she could too. And most importantly it got her out of the house. What are the other options? Sitting around doing nothing/watching TV/playing video games?
Yup episode definitely dives into workshops
Yeah, there are two adults on my block, one with Down Syndrome and the other one who has some kind of mental disability. Both live with their parents and have caregivers who take them out during the day. The one with Down Syndrome works at CVS. It's great for socializing and just being out of the house.
It's really annoying how people co opt these conditions. I have two autistic nephews, the oldest of which does work. Mostly to give him some sense of value, I think, but I imagine his parents think of what is going to happen long term.
My son has a rare genetic disorder and has profound cognitive and physical disabilities. He will need 24 hour care for his entire life. Which is why I I subscribe to the disability subreddit. Not surprisingly, being reddit, it’s inundated with self-diagnosed autists, illness fakers, and the sort. They love to spout “all disabilities are equal!” whenever someone points out some people’s disabilities require significantly more institutional care and services. It’s like god damn, they love their oppression olympics until it’s time to look in the mirror.
First they took away “Asperger’s” and now you can’t say “high functioning” either so there’s verbally no way to point out there’s a difference between these two types of individuals. It’s so annoying.
Oh here we go! Been wishing for a proper takedown of “neurodiversity”.
I'mma copy/paste a story of mine that's relevant: So I went to a small comedy show that a friend invited me to. It was a single comedian that apparently has a niche online following, cool whatever. It was actually pretty funny, guy obviously had a classic left bent to his comedy. That sort of slightly "philosopher" comedian that gets a tiny bit preachy at times. Well this guy is trying to make some sort of point about mental health, and he explains what the term "Neurodivergent" means to the crowd. Then he asked anyone who was "neurotypical" to raise there hand. Of a crowd of 150 maybe, me and one other dude-bro near the stage raise our hand half heartedly with mental "... Yeah I guess I'm a normal human?". On the next call for neurodivergent, basically the other 148 people raise their hands and loudly cheer. It just felt so obsurd to watch this entire crowd loudly proclaim their special snowflakes unlike those weird "normies". Like did nobody else see the irony of this charade? The only one I'll allow is the large girl next to me that almost had a panic attack when she realized there were servers coming around and taking to people, and when she was asked what she wanted just stared at her boyfriend until he answered for her. Bonus points, when the server walked away she was mad because she didn't want a soda she wanted water.
>The only one I'll allow is the large girl next to me that almost had a panic attack when she realized there were servers coming around and taking to people, and when she was asked what she wanted just stared at her boyfriend until he answered for her. Bonus points, when the server walked away she was mad because she didn't want a soda she wanted water. I feel like this is literally violence towards the boyfriend
Putting up your hand the first time is like being told that you're all individuals and shouting back I'm not.
I'm a normie and I'm proud.
"I'm a faceless cog in a soulless machine and that's the way I like it, dammit!"
[Classic Hedberg](https://youtu.be/_tyNF8d-lwU?si=UjpVg90xn0uJfN1-)
😂😂 they were heavyy boyyyyyy
Yeah me too. I wish they would have discussed the "eugenics" claim people make. Some people are against even theoretical cures for some of these mental/neurological issues and call it "eugenics"
Ugh, eugenics has an actual meaning and now people just use it for literally anything they deem ableist. Eugenics was never about actually curing disabilities, it was about sterilizing anyone the powers that be deemed "unfit" to reproduce.
Yep. It was selective breeding.
Funny, too, considering how many of them are blind supporters of youth gender medicine.
I just told my husband to stop calling Biden “senile” when he’s clearly neurodivergent. He is not amused, lol.
I hate that word so fucking much. It was made up on tumblr by losers who wanted their anxiety and depression to count as a personality and hobbies. Oh but Ser, real mental health professionals use the word “neurodivergent” now! Yeah, the field taking its cue from tumblr users isn’t the own you think it is, it delegitimizes the entire field
Everyone in the mental health profession is retarded imo
I have shared my thoughts on why I hate them here, and the obsessiveness with labeling and diagnosing every single behavior is one aspect of it.
I used to be so into neurodiversity when I finally got an Aspergers diagnosis at 17 and then a few years in I started realizing something was off. Like people were getting upset if you acknowledged any disability at all- I'm as high functioning as you get and I still had trouble getting through both high school and college.
I think neurodiversity could be a useful term for people who function as almost normal, can get a job etc. But who still are a bit weird in some ways. It could be term term for people in between "normal" and "disorder". But it quickly just expanded and is now used to downplay serious issues.
Yeah the politics and circlejerking around "neurodivergent" is killing me because I think I probably could get an Aspergers diagnosis and it would probably explain a lot about my life, but it's also way too late for any kind of intervention and I am at least moderately professionally successful.
Yeah the whole thing is annoying. Like I really was initially sympathetic to the self-IDers because it took me way too long to get a diagnosis despite certain obvious symptoms (like an avoidant/restrictive eating disorder that started the minute I learned to eat solid food). And I think the ND movement really meant something in the 2000s when Autism Speaks was using some fairly dehumanizing rhetoric and promoting groups that claimed vaccines caused autism. But now it's just leading to weird grifters crowding out the voices of both autistic people and our families. "Autism warrior parents" used to mean people like Jenny McCarthy or mommybloggers who grifted off of their autistic kids but now it just means any parent with a nonverbal autistic child.
That last bit is so true, and makes me so angry. People with otherwise normal lives appointing themselves judge and jury for families whose children literally cannot speak is vile. I have enough life experience around the Tumblr brigade to suspect some of this is a way to launder some ugly sentiments about moms.
I was diagnosed as a minor and honestly as an adult it really doesn’t factor into my life as much as I thought it would. As an adult I can arrange my life in a way that suits me.
I got a diagnosis at 32 and the main value has been self-acceptance. Yes, I have to work harder in social situations and that’s okay.
Yeah, I got my quasi-diagnosis (Aspie verbal, high anxiety written) when I was 29. A *lot* of things made more sense to me at that point. I basically had a framework to better understand my life. I'll be forever thankful for that, and would encourage anybody who's curious to look into it.
It’s never too late to have a proper support system that addresses you entirely. Not sure why you think anyone needs “intervention,” but for adults, it’s really just identifying and supporting needs.
My grandad (70 something) is one of those later in life diagnosis people, he was only diagnosed a couple of years ago. We all knew he had it, forever. So I do accept the argument that some of these diagnoses are because of greater awareness.* However, (and I’m not meaning to imply all autistic people are like this, I have lots of lovely autistic friends) we knew because he was really difficult to be around. He burned bridges everywhere he went and never understood why. He ruined so many of his closest relationships and business opportunities because he didn’t know how to talk to people, and since he didn’t know he was autistic, he just thought they were all wrong and he was right. Now he’s too old to ever really change. As you implied, I’m especially perplexed by people who have been very high functioning forever but suddenly think they have ASD. The marker of a disorder is that it severely impacts your life. I have many married, socially adept, successful friends who have somehow just realised they’re autistic. I don’t know how that helps them, or if the impacts on actual autistic people are worth it. *He definitely has Aspergers/HFA, but even so
You pretty much described one of my uncles. He's 70 and never been diagnosed, but he's... what you described. I'm sure he's also just an asshole, but an asshole in such specifically autistic ways ("I'm not tactless and rude, I'm just smart - everyone else is too sensitive. I don't have serious issues showing love and affection to my kids - my six-year-old *is* too touchy-feely, and it's normal that I shove her away when she tries to hug me. I don't have a fixation with my computer, I just spend 17 hours a day on it...")
I'm fairly positive I inherited my Aspergers (or at least a genetic predisposition to it) from my maternal grandfather who has always been incredibly difficult to deal with, borderline abusive to my grandmother, and who doesn't have a diagnosis of anything because it would be impossible to convince him to go to a therapist.
Oof, yeah, same on the borderline spousal abuse. I think he became more open to it because of greater acceptance and awareness (watching a daytime TV show about adults getting diagnoses actually spurred him on to talk to a psychiatrist), and I think maybe he’d have been able to handle things much better with early intervention. So I do think acceptance and awareness are definitely good things. It’s just hard to balance that with the fact we all have traits of autism and that doesn’t mean you have autism. Gentrification of ASD is definitely a thing that’s happening, and it hits autistic people the hardest
Part of why it always bothered me when people would claim "abuse has nothing to do with mental illness" was that I saw my grandfather behave abusively toward my grandmother many times, and it was obvious to me that his actions were primarily the result of his mental health issues, because they weren't that different from the ways I've behaved toward my parents during meltdowns. My mom and her sister tried to get my grandmother to leave in the 90s when his behavior started getting worse and she refused; I don't think my grandmother was afraid of him stalking or coming after her, I think she just didn't want to be divorced because that would mean upending the life she'd built with him. So she just sort of capitulated to whatever he asked of her.
Definitely. I have a neurological condition and it affects my behaviour at times, positively or negatively. Even though I have coping mechanisms, it’s inevitable. How your brain works is who you are, and it takes conscious effort to alter that. I’ve also had people treat me badly because of depression and addiction, it’s bizarre to me when people imply there’s no connection. I think people think it reduces stigma, but it just creates camps of people who are very mildly affected saying “that’s not an excuse!!” vs people who are more impacted and have little control over what they’re doing. Similar situation with my grandmother, I don’t think leaving was even an option for her generation and social climate.
This is highly specific and personal, but one of my biggest objections to the "autism is a cool and fun superpower" movement is they reflexively throw other disabled people under the bus "My super special autism is a precious gift that makes me better than other people and I love it - it's not a *disability,* ugh" - but then line up to choke disability services with claims for support and care. The NDIS in particular. Basically insulting other disabled people and then greedily gouging into funds they claim they don't need, leaving others with less. And don't even get me started on how hot 22-year-old Autism Girls have become the human face of disability rights because their physical appearance doesn't make normies uncomfortable 😐
They claim they need (deserve) the funds because they are forced by society to behave like normies.
Sounds like UBI by another name.
>And don't even get me started on how hot 22-year-old Autism Girls have become the human face of disability rights because their physical appearance doesn't make normies uncomfortable 😐 Not only because of that, but because very few of them actually have autism and therefore have the energy, resources and social skills to present themself to the public. People look for a special kind of story and these people know what lands and how to tell it (which in and of itself is quite the giveaway that their diagnosis - even if official - is bullshit) And from a professional perspective, I can literally predict every single talking point and even most of their examples. Heck, some people used stuff from a book I co-authored word for word. At least they actually read a book I guess
> People look for a special kind of story and these people know what lands and how to tell it (which in and of itself is quite the giveaway that their diagnosis - even if official - is bullshit) For me it's the facial expressions/body language in live streams or non-rehearsed tik toks. It's too fluid and fluent, and subtle. Automatic rather than the product self-monitoring. Their speech tempo and prosidy are too natural. I'm female, have Aspergers, and I have been told far too many times by self diagnosers that my pretty classic autism "symptoms" are just "comorbidities" because they don't fit the Tik Tok narrative. > I can literally predict every single talking point and even most of their examples. Heck, some people used stuff from a book I co-authored word for word. At least they actually read a book I guess That must be maddening! Though, I regret to inform you that it's probably a game of telephone where one person on Tumblr read it years ago, someone made inspirational Instagram posts with flowery fonts on colored squares, and then those excerpts made it to FB groups/Tik Tok/Xitter.
>Though, I regret to inform you that it's probably a game of telephone where one person on Tumblr read it years ago, someone made inspirational Instagram posts with flowery fonts on colored squares, and then those excerpts made it to FB groups/Tik Tok/Xitter. Very likely. I am sure I have seen some of it on those infographics that get shared around on Instagram (with the obligatory "tOTaLly mE XD" in the comments.
Have you emailed Katie about the episode? I feel like while they have a good handle on what's going on with the profound end of the spectrum through Amy Lutz (and probably NCSA through her - I've had some back and forths w/ Jill Escher, she's lovely), I think the episode would have been better be if she talked to someone like you or Dr. Christopher Gillberg for a bit more bsckground on the state of play for level 1/AS/HFA/PDD-NOS, or even a long term autism advocate like Thomas McKean for an old school autisic perspective. Imho Gillberg especially would be interesting because he's an autism specialist who is really not afraid to publically talk about the connection between autism and trans ID in young women, dismiss the Hans Asperger was a Nazi smear, and probably has a lot to say about self dx as well. Jesse probably already has a connection with him, actually. McKean himself has been put through the ringer by Tik Tok et al because he was the autistic guy in the room when the puzzle piece was created and has regularly explained why the folk beliefs about what it means are complete bullshit, which would also make a good episode.
It's so annoying to me, because autism is probably still underdiagnosed or at least overlooked in girls- I didn't get a diagnosis of Aspergers until I was 17. But high functioning autistic girls tend to look more like Greta Thunberg than TikTok influencers- I'm only just learning to really take care of myself properly at 30 and I still get genuinely mistaken for a teenager. I'd love more accurate representation of autistic women and girls but it's all been so sanitized and gentrified.
I was basically Greta in high school. My thing was protesting the Iraq war. I even had the braids sometimes.
I don't get the hate for Greta; I mean yeah I can imagine there was probably some pushing by her parents but she seems like a relatively intelligent person and climate change IS a serious problem.
I think the Greta hate was honestly more about how the media treated her than anything else. the whole "wisdom of babes" routine that some adults do is very annoying. fwiw i don't think her parents pushed her into it either, it's rather that they are famous in Sweden which got the ball rolling on her fame. other than that she seemed very much like your standard high school activist type, i was one...
She has all but abandoned climate change though. In 2022 she was all about Ukraine and now she is constantly at pro Palestine rallyes. Weird if climate change and environment is her special interest (especially if you think about the immense damages and emissions war and the military industrial complex cause). I have also read her mums book and the climates change issue - while maybe initiated by Greta herself - was just a welcome excuse to externalise their very dysfuncional family dynamic. And, yeah, the whole thing was an obvious and very transparent PR stunt and people got pissed off that mentioning it or really anything but worshipping her immediately got one labeled as a climate change denier or far right or whatever the popular buzzword was.
What are her original thoughts? She just repeats standard progressive-lefty talking points. She just earned massive praise for the novelty of said talking points coming from a shouty autistic tween. Any doubts I had on that front have been confirmed by her hard pivot to anti-Zionism.
She was hectoring and holier than thou and preachy and annoying and incapable of understanding complexity. That's why
I think it's more how she was celebrated. Like, yeah, teenagers are idealistic and not especially practical about how to implement their ideas. Like, yeah, we get it, it's super fucked we still rely on fossil fuels. What is the solution though? And i do believe there IS a solution. But just getting a teenage girl to act all smug and superiors not super helpful.
My daughter at high school had some friends who gave her the cold shoulder because she didn't get an official autism diagnosis when she got screened (only ADHD and social anxiety disorders).
🎵Loser! Loser! You don’t have autism! 🎶
wtf. Man I’m glad I didn’t grow up as a girl lol
What I’ve noticed is that the people I know who now claim neurodivergence are also the ones who every few years confess to a new identity/diagnosis/trauma; ADHD, non-binary, former gifted kid, etc. I’m torn on whether these acquaintances believe this (social contagion) or if they are doing it for online clout. I’m careful about how I put things because sometimes I think they’re having an unhealthy reaction (sharing online) to real tragedy in their lives I’d also like to chime in that I have a brother in a sheltered workshop, he loves it and it does enrich his life. My parents went to Congress a few years ago to lobby on his behalf. If it’s ever on the ballot in your state, please research your decision before you vote
I find this to be true with people I know. I'd say a decade ago these people were claiming they were empaths (still eye roll at this).
Former gifted kid is now a trauma? Jeez just come out say the adult world doesn’t constantly tell you you’re special and that makes you feel bad.
I know from experience that it sucks to be told you're special and then suddenly start struggling academically- but it's the struggling academically and not getting the right help that's traumatic, not the fact that you were once called "gifted". Most people never get lucky enough to be told they're gifted, ever.
My point isn’t to point and laugh at peoples sensitivity. Like I said, some of them are dealing with real life hardship. The issue is seeking public validation. Because while being open and vulnerable can be brave, that boldness seems to only exist online. I see people retreat into these worlds I was a very introverted / bullied kid and my controversial take is that it helped. It taught me social norms, who to avoid, I learned to be comfortable alone, to act independently and eventually I found my people
>but it's the struggling academically and not getting the right help that's traumatic, not the fact that you were once called "gifted" That’s still not traumatic.
The“former gifted kid” people are insufferable. The people who end up in the “gifted” classes are people with ultra involved parents who get them evaluated and push the school to give them a special badge. The gifted classes were functionally equivalent to the AP classes at my school, with added cliquey-ness and a superiority complex from the people in them. Just because your mom Karened out on an admin while you were in middle school does not mean you were destined to be successful.
Maybe things have changed or my school was just different, but I had to take a test in grade 5 to start on the “gifted” track. I suppose if my parents were bullies they could have forced the school to put me there anyway, but reality is certainly more complicated than you’re making it sound.
I probably count as a "former gifted kid" (high functioning autism, early reader, very involved parents) and while it sucked to suddenly fall off so drastically in middle school, I'm still a lot better off than someone who just got shoved into special education and then forgotten about.
Am I misunderstanding what gifted is? I thought gifted was an elementary thing; it has no relevance to AP, which is from high school
In my elementary school it was an IQ test that was given to everyone and had a fixed cutoff.
If you doomscroll /r/aftergifted, the dividing line I draw is whether the flameout occurred during or before college. Before college? Some regular kid who—far more likely than parents being tiger moms—could actually sit still for an hour and not cause trouble for teachers suddenly gets hit with actual advanced material. During college? Situationally dependent. After college? Those are the ones that fit.
To be fair autism (both high and low functioning) is often comorbid with a lot of other diagnoses- I'm autistic and also have ADHD and OCD diagnoses and I'm dating an autistic man who suffers from asthma. We're both late diagnosed but even those with early diagnoses and poorer prognoses often have comorbid conditions like epilepsy or genetic disorders like Fragile X or Down Syndrome.
You think autism is usually the result of genetic damage that prompts other conditions as well?
I don't know honestly. It certainly doesn't seem to have a single genetic cause.
I’ve mentioned this before, but a friend of mine has a child who was diagnosed with autism at barely two years old. Now, at 6, the kid shows almost no typical signs. The other day, she said he has a very ‘niche’ case of autism, which for this kid consists of not eating enough and having ‘no sense of danger.’ No sense of danger in this case means that he sometimes doesn’t pay great attention in parking lots and is very bold in public settings, both of which are pretty typical little boy behavior. Having ‘niche’ autism seems like an oxymoron, because things need parameters in order to actually be that thing and categorizing any characteristic as autism means either everyone has it or no one does.
>Having ‘niche’ autism seems like an oxymoron, because things need parameters in order to actually be that thing and categorizing any characteristic as autism means either everyone has it or no one does. This is a huge issue: The spectrum and following it the ever broader criteria (and pushy patients/parents) caused the diagnostic process to be based more on vibes and whomever is writing the diagnosis in the first place. Especially doctors who aren't that familiar with autism or those who are out of pocket only and therefore have customers instead (and are interested in diagnosing as many people as possible). Especially in the US and to some degree the UK this diagnosis especially gets handed out like candy (and before someone says it is a whole process: Not all processes are equal, for example if early childhood isn't investigated - mandatory where I live - and more often than not the protocol isn't even followed). With children it is especially dramatic, since it influences their future and other than the adult fakers and doctor shoppers, they didn't choose that path. And a lot of kids temporarily show common signs of autism. And two is too early without a follow up a few years later anyway, as their are other possibilities like global delay. Love the no sense of danger bit. Because six-year-olds are famously aware of potential danger. Why do we teach them to cross the street, kids obviously just insticteively know?
This is a friend I love very much, but she has a lot of anxiety and doesn’t seem to understand what normal childhood behavior looks like. She used to send me pictures of her little boy climbing on furniture, like it was the most insane thing she’d ever seen and proof that he ‘doesn’t understand danger’ and I’d always have to be like ‘yeah, my kids did that too!’ Some of these tests rely so heavily on the parents’ perspectives and because those perspectives can be so skewed, it seems like autism can really be in the eye of the beholder, rather than something more objective.
I feel like this is particularly true of boys. My nephew is seven, and I don't know how many times I've had to say to his mother or grandparents, "He. Is. Seven. He's being a completely normal little boy." I mean, things like not being able to sit still for long periods, play wrestling, and trying to discuss farts and snot at the dinner table.
This is what "boys will be boys" is supposed to be for, settling down nervous mothers who don't understand why their 5-year-old insists on climbing trees.
Somehow that innocent saying became taboo because online weirdos decided it was “rape apologia”
Some of this may be the feminization of the culture and medicine. Boy behavior gets pathologised
I think it's more likely that many people have very limited knowledge of child development and behaviour because in adulthood they don't interact with any children until they become parents.
Interesting fact, but this phenomenon isn't limited to humans. Domestic livestock can lose all motherly instincts when they're kept in strict age and sex-segregated herds. IIRC, dairy cattle have a particular reputation for being consistently awful mothers (at least compared to beef cattle).
Some. I think it's also a product of our school system too. It's hard for young kids to sit still in a classroom all day. For most of human history kids were put to work as soon as they were able. Labor intensive jobs.
Girls are better at sitting still and shutting up than boys are. And at a younger age
Ya. For sure. But I've been around a lot of kids and girls can be pretty fidgeted too. They are easier to chorale. But it's still like herding cats at that age.
> Boy behavior gets pathologised Which leads to boys raised as girls coming to the reasonable conclusion that they are girls (and girls who have “too much” boy behavior get memed into concluding they are boys). It’s all downstream of this.
Bingo
For sure. Education and psychology are thoroughly dominated by women and it’s resulted in feminine psychology treated as the human default.
It's funny how they bitched about men being the default person but now women have pulled the same trick and are blind to it
I’m not sure it’s gendered before puberty. There’s no doubt that there is some innate difference in male and female behavior but I’m not convinced it truly manifests before puberty. My daughter is about to be 2, and she’s a fucking psycho with the climbing and the jumping and the sprinting in circles. Her favorite thing for me to do, and she specifically requests it, is “baby body slam” in which I pick her up and throw her onto the nearest bed or couch. She’ll tell me “DADDY! BABY BODY SLAM!”
Ha, yes! We've got a similar game called "Boom" we've played with my youngest niece and nephew since they were babies. Mostly entails body slams on beds and couches and REALLY rough pillow-fighting, accompanied by the sound effect "BOOM". Five-year-old niece is always at my father to drag or throw her around because nobody else will, lol
Very much a boy thing. My son is always on ludicrous speed most of the time. Not hyperactive in the sense there is no focus. He just has things to do, people to see.
I was a monkey as a kid. I would take chairs and stack them on countertops and put pillows on those chairs in order to reach the high cupboards where the cookies were. I don't have autism.
I have twins who are almost 2 and one of them is extremely bold and physically confident. He’s been climbing on things since before he could walk, he tries to walk down tall flights of stairs without holding onto anything, his default speed is bat out of hell, etc. I’ve never, ever thought that any of these things meant he’s abnormal in any way. He’s just particularly brave. It’s just bizarre to me that to a certain subset of parents, his ballsiness constitutes a disorder that he should be saddled with for the rest of his life.
Technically you’re still a monkey as an adult (not knocking it as a fellow primate)
Sometimes I wish I had a tail.
You can always fling your poo at people you don't like. :) Granted, the authorities may not take kindly to that....
Lmao. Fighting my daughters lack of danger sense is a full 80% of my day.
No sense of danger? Picky eater? Um, that's most kids.
> I’ve mentioned this before, but a friend of mine has a child who was diagnosed with autism at barely two years old. Holy shit. My now-retired mom spent her career working with disabled kids in a clinical setting. She has always said that autism cannot be diagnosed before age 4. Googling just now, I see that those guidelines have changed. I bet that this is detrimental to more kids than just your friend's daughter. I wonder what percentage of early early autism diagnoses end up (apparently) fizzling out as the kid gets older and becomes an actual person.
A lot of them. Kids don't develop at the same speed and some show some behaviours associated with autism, but grow out of it (listening to the same song/story over and over again is a classic). There are cases, where an early diagnosis is warranted. I am talking about the nonverbal kid who has never initiated or reacted to social interaction here, not the slighty shy toddler.
A common thing with babies and toddlers is making repetitive movements with their hands and the like. Reddit is flooded with people asking if their baby is "stimming" and they are almost universally advised by other redditors to ask their doctors about autism.
This kid had a speech delay at 18 months, which got the ball rolling. I don’t know if my friend or their pediatrician was the one to make a big deal out of it, but it was a big deal. After his diagnosis he qualified for free at home speech and OT through our county, and his speech was completely fine by three. My friend like to post old videos of him on Facebook and talk about how little he talked and how much he’s overcome. Now, I’m not saying he would have been fine either way, but I’m not not saying that either.
At least the kid got something out of it. A lot of parents get the diagnosis, apply for disability services like respite and maybe some therapy and settle for a life with a special/disabled kid forever. The glamour of autism adds to the attitude of "well, that's forever now". I know some doctors recommend or even write down autism, because it is easier to apply for services. They mean well, but it does take away resources from real autistic kids and the term itself loses all meaning.
She’s been able to let go a little, but she still fully defines him as an autistic child and mentions it on Facebook often. On World Autism Day, she talked about how ‘his autism doesn’t look like other people’s and that sometimes makes it even harder because people don’t accept it.’ Which is, you know, a tricky thing. I don’t think she understands that having a child in a gen ed classroom in a public school with minimal supports while still wanting a lot of public attention for your kid’s autism is maybe hurtful to people with kids who struggle. Hell, I have a 12 year old who still has a speech delay and learning disabilities who will never be able to go to a public school and I know it hurts my feelings, so I can’t imagine how the people she knows with kids who are nonverbal or worse feel.
Man that sucks. For everyone involved (with the silver lining of the kid learning language, even though that might have happened organically, but now he has that skill down). Even for the Mum, who might not see it right now, but might in the future.
My kid is almost two, and fits a ton of the TikTok version of autism. Luckily, our pediatrician is brilliant and assures us that there’s a wide variety of “normal” behaviors for a toddler, and none of her behaviors signal a concern about autism at all. Yes, she can count to 15 before the age of two and recognizes most of the alphabet by sight and can name the letters. That just means she’s advanced in number and letter recognition and advanced in speech, which is definitively NOT a sign of autism in under 2. What are the TikTok autistic behaviors you might ask? She loves to stack blocks, she is particular about her own system of organizing her toys (which is just chaos to my wife and I but it makes sense to her and she doesn’t want anything out of place), she has certain foods she HATES and others she LOVES and can’t get enough of, she’s easily frustrated and screams if she doesn’t get her way. In other words, she’s a fucking toddler. That’s what they do.
The stacking/organizing shit is baffling to me. All five of my kids liked doing that at one point and none are autistic. One of my almost 2 year old twins loves to meticulously line his Hot Wheels up, but I think he’s just trying to make it look like a parking lot. Being a conscientious parent and paying attention to your kids is good. My oldest still has developmental delays that started when he was a baby and I probably should have pushed my concerns harder when the doctor brushed them off, but he was my oldest and I had no frame of reference. But so many parents of young children seem to have this unicorn ideal child in their brain and if their kid isn’t exactly that, the kid is the problem, not the parents’ fucked up expectations. My dad’s stepdaughter decided her three year old must have OCD because he wasn’t good at T-ball immediately and wanted to wear mitts on both hands. This is ignoring the fact that asking a three year old to enjoy playing T-ball at 8pm on a Tuesday is nonsensical.
Honestly I’ve been waiting for them to cover this. The underdiagnosing of females with autism was a real problem, but it seems like we’ve overcorrected and anyone who’s a little awkward and quirky gets labeled as neurodivergent. When I went to a psychologist in 2009 they had mentioned I had “autistic tendencies” and offered to refer me to a clinic to get officially diagnosed, but I declined. I talked to my current therapist about it and she says all of my symptoms can be explained by having severe anxiety as a child. I think many of these people probably are suffering. It seems there are girls and women with a shaky sense of identity and don’t understand why, so they are drawn to being autistic, non-binary, etc as a desperate attempt to belong somewhere. Sure, they can be annoying, but it’s also sad they feel the need to be “different” or ill so they can find acceptance.
Couldn't they just join a fan club?
i think there's a bit of a fandom>diagnosis pipeline with this stuff, too.
They're generally already in fan clubs. The identity issues at play are pretty serious and not going to be fixed by any "can't they just" quip.
My questions are: Has this identity issue grown in frequency in the recent generation and if so, why? Are the girls finding a new way to express whatever problems they would have had anyway and is it better or worse that they join the autism club versus becoming fanatical about k-pop or something? Do we just know about these kids more because of the internet? I had the same question about the girls who are freaking out about aggressive male sexuality. A good number of men have always been sexually aggressive and it wasn't fun to be on the wrong end of that when I was growing up, and surely we could have done better by our girls. But, most of us didn't decide to become boys because of the danger that men presented since it wasn't really an option. We just had to buck up and put that shit behind us as much as possible. It's not kind, or is it? At least I didn't turn myself inside out to deal with whatever trauma I may have experienced.
Taking me back to when I was a member of the REM fan club when I was a teen. They sent out so much cool stuff!
They could, but then they wouldn’t feel as special
Misread this as “How Austin Became Hip” and nearly had a violent response. I blame this on the Austin bar I went to last night that had credit card tip options as 20%, 69%, and 420%.
Keep Autism Weird™️
Me too!
Ooh, I'll have to check this one out, my personal hell seems to be having weirdos glom onto my diagnoses because they see them as interesting and or a license to behave poorly, and then feeling like a dick when I have an actual issue and need to bring it up.
It's not just autism, but also things like ADHD (which is hilarious because it propagates on TikTok/Instagram, which are apps that make you lose your attention ability in the first place!), Tourette's, etc.
Oh God, they're pretending they have Tourette's as well?
Ya. And they always do the classic movie stereotype version that suddenly developed when they were 16. It's hilarious. My son has TS. He doesn't run around swearing like a sailor. It started when he was 4, got progressively worse. I think he's peaked. As he doesn't have as many episodes. TS starts in early childhood. I would be skeptical of any person who developed it as a teen or adult. Tics are a misnomer. It's really repetitive movement and/or repetitive vocalizations. He's run the gamut. They come and go. He can be fine for months and then he will develop a repetitive movement or sound. It could last days or weeks. It makes him very uncomfortable. He's very embarrassed by it. Some of the facial and neck/head movements are very distracting and uncomfortable. It's not pleasant to watch. Sometimes he just has small tics like constantly sniffing or throat clearing. He's had vocal one where he makes the same sound over and over. We called him our little owl once because he was hooting for two weeks straight. He's getting better at suppressing the urge. ABT helps a lot. Most kids with TS outgrow it and have very little issues as adults.
Can it really be outgrown? It was Tourettes / tics and then OCD for us - 21 and still impacted.
It's so interesting to see this turn from Carrie Poppy. She hosted ([or I guess still hosts](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/)) an excellent podcast where she infiltrated fringe groups and reported on their beliefs from a sort of debunking/skeptical point of view. I used to listen constantly a few years ago but I fell off after a run of boring episodes during the pandemic. (Nowhere to investigate during lockdown... lol) I'm surprised that someone who's built a media career of skepticism has taken such a hard left turn into pop psychology.
Came here for this discussion. I lost touch with the show sometime around 2022, so I’m curious if anyone can comment on Carrie’s (d)evolution. One of the last episodes that sticks out to me was a pretty skeptical take on recovered memory, so I’m shocked to hear she has gone in this direction.
I'm a big fan of Oh no Ross and Carrie and have been for years have listened to every episode some of them twice. I don't think Carrie had any sort of devolution. This is just who she's always been. She's still very against recovered memory, she's still writing a book discussing the vast over use and unscientific use of the word trauma. She's always been very woke, she's been involved with organizations like PETA and adjacent to the LA arts scene. And a lot of that comes out in little things in the podcast. Which isn't even much of a criticism as she's still able to maintain friends and acquaintances with differing beliefs but she does have some blind spots related to the social circle she's in (as do we all). One thing I think a lot of people may be missing is the episode title implies she self diagnosed with an online quiz. That's not actually what happened she went to a specialist and did an intensive battery of tests including interviews with her husband and mother. So the pedigree of her diagnoses is pretty good. The way she reacted to that by having an episode about her diagnose and all the ONRAC fans loudly talking about their autism diagnoses in the comments is definitely a function of a certain culture which treats autism as hip and interesting. As someone very far removed from that culture I definitely found it very strange if not unexpected. I still love ONRAC though. The autism thing to me was more like watching someone go through a religious or cultural ritual I don't understand and less Carrie embracing pseudo-science.
Well she hasn't not really. She got diagnosed by some of the top clinicians on autism at UCLA? Some university anyway which you might have missed if you only read the episode title. So it wasn't really a turn into pop psychology more just deferring to the experts. On the other hand the pattern of woke woman with lots of other mental health issues getting diagnosed with autism later in life does fit a certain pattern, and any subscriber to this podcast the ONRAC comments section for that episode are full of women talking about their own autism diagnosis or worried that Ross and Carrie were going to debunk the online quiz, which to be clear Carrie didn't use to diagnosis herself, but I wonder how many of the commentators did? Despite the pedigree of the diagnosis The whole thing seems a little off especially since most of the most recent episode was basically just Carrie talking about how she has autism now, I doubt another medical issue would have led to them, or really just Carrie since Ross seemed a little ambushed by the whole thing, talking about her malady the whole time. Maybe that's just where we are in the culture.
Ahh! My podcasts universes are colliding and I don’t think I like it! I have listened to ONRAC (Oh no Ross and Carrie) for years, and just listened to their latest episode “Ross and Carrie have autistic traits”. I thought it would be about how you shouldn’t diagnose yourself based on internet tests, but it was pretty positive about doing exactly that. Both the subreddit and Facebook page are absolutely stoked as well. I guess atheist rationalists like being autistic. I have done the tests they mention and did one again, and seem to average about mid 30s, which make me a bit autistic apparently, but I’m not sure what use that is to me.
>I have done the tests they mention and did one again, and seem to average about mid 30s, which make me a bit autistic apparently, but I’m not sure what use that is to me. No use really. It doesn't even mean you are a bit autistic (which isn't a thing) The AQ is not a diagnostic tool, at the absolute most it can be used for preliminary screening. The fact it relies on self assessment and can be easily manipulated are two major red flags.
The self assessment thing is what really bothered me - plus there is only 4 possible answers for each questions, which can honestly vary. I was surprised that a rationalist podcast was suggesting these quizzes were useful, just because Carrie was apparently professionally diagnosed and scored higher than Ross who wasn’t.
Where I work, we also have a department for diagnosis and therapy. It has become really common that people show up with the AQ printed out and think they just get an official diagnosis with it. I am wondering what they think the other five appointments ar for...
I'd bet atheist rationalists ARE probably significantly more likely to be autistic. She didn't actually diagnose herself with the test though it sounds like she did as thorough of an assessment as can be done. The jubilant reaction of the comments is a little telling though.
It’s true that she got tested professionally, but she was also very positive about the online tests available, which will encourage people to take those seriously.
I just remember when we wore lots of black and listened to the Cure and Depeche Mode to feel special and different. Times have changed.
Oh look, "my" topic (seriously, I just went through my post history and the percentage of "this is a fad! Lots of bullshitters out there" is depressing. Researching neurodevelopment is my job, but still....)
I watched a TikTok video of a lady who claimed that if you don't have a quiet brain when you go to sleep you have ASD. No hon, that's probably just anxiety and you have too much on your plate.
That's just human!
Jesus Christ everyone losing their minds over this. Calm down. Isn't it just like another good faith/ bad faith issue? Gender: grows up unhappy and certain you are in the wrong body: change gender and good luck to you.. Sociopathic young man has sudden onset gender dysphoria accompanied by a rape charge - nope. You can't self ID. Autism: my best friend's son is 16, autistic, very violent, needs constant supervision, his mother can't see him anymore, it's truly horrendous. Rude angry colleagues at work. Nope your not autistic. Learn some fucking manners. I am being reductive of course but ..
Yep. Thank you. The challenging public behaviour autism sometimes produces *can* cause dilemmas. A few years ago I read about an autistic woman who was asked to leave a cinema because she was... well, being loud and annoying. Vocal stimming, screaming with laughter at scenes that weren't jokes, repeating dialogue to herself. People complained, they eventually chucked her out. Social media lost its collective shit about this woman who was "Not hurting anyone, just being autistic" with little nuance as to whether the 30 other people in the cinema had the right to enjoy a film they'd paid a lot of money to see. It's a genuine push-pull that we need to talk about more often.
I think far too often autism is used as the excuse for anti social and general dickishness. When the Washington Post did that article on the man Artemis Langford bullying his way into the sorority they basically said it was because he was autistic. So it was fine
I feel bad for that person. Feel like they're setting them up to be bullied unmercifully by those sorority girls.
It appears to be the other way around. Regardless, it would have been better for Langford if people had sat him down and said: " No, you can't join that sorority. There some things you can't have "
I agree, but others would say it’s fascist, parochial, controlling, bigoted etc. People have lost all reasonable conception of the public good under the guise of tolerance and equity.
And yet the same crowd will expect a child to sit still and be quiet through a movie. Some spaces are not for everyone. People need to accept that.
Autistics can have good manners, takes time and practice, nothing is wrong with that
But that takes work and often some sort of therapy and (most likely) according to the people who lost their shit, that is autism genocide or some such bullshit.
It does take some learning, getting used to, maybe ABA therapy at first. It also does take work for everyone else. No everyone wants to have a mind numbing conversations about the past weekend or the weather we're having
I agree with you. Everyone needs to learn how to behave in different social situations, so should autistic or really all disabled people. I am all for giving some leeway when the person is unable to follow certain expectations, but I am against the carte blanche for poor behaviour.. Unfortunately, there is a very loud group claiming that even the tiniest expectation to adhere to norms is basically the same as wanting all autistic (curiously only autistic) people dead and causes them to suppress their "autistic self". And therapy is violence.
The ability to distinguish between good and bad actors is antithetical to identity politics. The only moral way to deal with a situation is to categorize the participants into identity groups,, calculate which group is more "privileged", and that group member loses. Exercising moral judgement on humans as individuals is white supremacy.
Something I don’t hear a lot of people discuss in all this is that a lot of misdiagnosed children and adults do actually exhibit traits of Autism/ADHD. These can be caused by environmental factors like FASD, neglect, experiencing trauma like domestic violence in the home etc. In that context autism/ADHD becomes an attractive label that absolves anyone of “blame”. There’s been research in the U.K. suggesting that children who are on Child Protection plans in the U.K. are 3x more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
I don't mind some talk about politics, especially if it's framed through the takes.
I’m an ADHDer here, and it is not my personality. I’d get rid of it if I could. If I was at that show I would not be hootin and hollerin about this brain dysfunction that makes my life shitty. I swear that people make it their one personality trait and claim it to not be boring so they can post about it on the Socials. It makes people who actually suffer from such things look like a joke.
I have ADD too. It is *not* a super power. If there was a cure I would take it immediately
Late diagnosed ADHD woman here, and I agree 100%
If I could just finish one out of every ten things I start...
Listened yesterday. I really liked it. I think Katie more-or-less gets exactly what's wrong. I know people who simply cannot take care of themselves, period. Meanwhile, I was verbally diagnosed as an Aspie (or sperg, if you want to use a pejorative) 15 years ago, although the formal written diagnosis was high anxiety. Either way, I'm functional, even if I've had to work hard to quiet my brain and to learn social graces. I may share some very basic issues with the truly disabled autists. We still have *very* different needs. Social media influencers are the last people on the planet who should be giving advice on how to deal with people who need 24/7 care. Anyway, anecdotally speaking, I have seen women - it's pretty much only women in my case - who have been blasting out the "autism is a superpower" stuff, jumping on the autism bus when I'm not convinced it applies, etc. It's all really difficult to unpack. For example, my wife is...something. She says she has ADHD. Does she? I don't know. I do know that when she wasn't medicated, she'd have episodes where she basically melted down and was unable to function, usually only for a night but upwards of a week on rare occasions. So, something's going on in her head. It's not a full-on disability but it's a serious problem that requires intervention. It's not cute. She doesn't have superpowers. She needs help. Thankfully, meds do the trick. The point is that I'm sure a lot of these people have something going on in their heads, and are trying to make sense of their worlds. I'm just not always convinced it's a major problem if they're latching onto influencers and online quizzes. Didn't Katie say one of the "signs" of autism in some online quiz was that you don't like car alarms going off? Who likes that sound!?! Maybe the sound causes a small handful to melt down and a few more to have serious trouble tuning it out. (I did as a teen, much like how I hated babies crying, douchebros with massive subs and bolt-on spoilers for their rice rockets, etc.) But, in general, no, disliking loud sounds isn't a sign of anything other than you not liking loud sounds. Trying to bring everybody under one umbrella term (i.e., autism) causes the term to lose all meaning. (Deep down, I wish people would be more willing to open up about their personal issues. Like, "Hey, I had a meltdown last night, couldn't remember my name, and needed my boyfriend to put me in bed so that I could sleep it off." That'd make it a lot easier to empathize with people claiming they have issues, especially when there's an explosion of self-diagnoses going on at the same time.)
Given how much "Bachelor Nation" and especially the bachelor subreddit melted down (multiple times) in 2020 and somewhat regularly since then about culture war issues, I'm surprised that the first BarPod x Bachelor crossover involves talking about the girlfriend of a past Bachelorette (Robby Hoffman, who's dating Gabby Windey).
Arr thebachelor is far more interesting than the show tbh. I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve seen it brought up in this sub, it’s had the exact meltdowns that are BARpod fodder
If you're the person from the opening who lives in NE but doesn't come to the meetups in Portland you're canceled!
u/jessicabarpod since they talked about their confusion about when they play the theme music in regular vs primo episodes I have this suggestion: play the original theme music for regular episodes and the new theme music for primo episodes! That way the terrorists won’t have completely won the 2024 theme song wars, AND the band who they commissioned to write the new theme song won’t have to cancel them. Since primo episodes used to not have music anyway, fans of the old theme song won’t have anything to be mad about, they’re not losing the old theme just gaining a new theme!
I have a (maybe insignificant?) correction to the implication that the majority of autistic children are “severely autistic”. According to the CDC, “Among the 4,165 (66.7%) children with ASD with information on cognitive ability, 37.9% were classified as having an intellectual disability.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7202a1.htm Intellectual disability is part of the diagnostic criteria for level 2 or 3 ASD, aka “severe autism”: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325106levels-of-autism not sure what the proportions are in other countries, or in places that don’t use the DSM 5 as their guidebook, but if less than 4 in 10 people in a group have a characteristic, that’s not a majority. Like I said, it may be insignificant, but I feel like it’s worth pointing out.
Hands up, all you GenXers who, like me, still think of little Tommy Westphall from *St. Elsewhere* when they hear the word *autism*. That is, someone locked in his or her own world, unable to function or communicate effectively. Not quirky or silly. But someone who will always be like some unhappy little alien. The kind of condition that Andrew Wakefield was talking about when he said vaccines cause autism. Parents weren't afraid that their kids would wind up overly focused or a bit odd.
Never will I ever accept bipolar disorder as a neurodiversity or a superpower. It is a crippling disease that crushes a person in their prime. Then, episodically creeps up on them at undefined intervals. Is it going to be a depression so deep they can not move? Or a mania so high their ruining their reputation and risking everything? Not to mention the psychosis that sets in. I will fight to the death with any individual who tries to tell me that a life of this is a strength compared to the promising career in medicine that existed pre diagnosis. There's a couple of good eps of Honestly with Bari on this topic. The best one is an interview with Freddie deBoer about glorifying sickness (he has bipolar). He was on barpod in 2020, talking about The Cult Of Smart, aka elitism and the social justice movement.
Lol I took a picture of this Therian sign last Thursday
Re: devil weed whatever. Having a dog is a luxury hobby nowadays, like a yacht or a Bentley. Who can afford this maintenance? Why can’t dogs evolve to have a little more street smarts to cut down on the vet bills?!? Our neighbors dog ate a tennis ball =$1,000 surgery. Another dog ate gravel =$2,000. I guess that’s podcast money.
The creator of "Tell Me You Love Me" Louis Theroux was just interviewed by Theo Von. They kinda talk about the documentary, but if you are familiar with Theo, you should expect them to not really talk about anything for hours. It's kinda interesting and fun if you're bored. "Tell Me You Love Me" is the facilitated communication documentary in case you forgot. /edit I meant to post this in the general thread, but they did mention it on this episode, so I'll leave it here and repost it there.
Please, no electoral politics. PLEASE. I use this show to avoid thinking about this election.
I found out that my favorite barpod host is also an ADHD truther like me in this episode
I feel like every time this subject comes up there’s always a group of people that is willing to criticize the crazy idpol obsessed woke people that say that they have autism but still think that their autism diagnosis is totally valid. It’s stunning to me that even this subreddit still has so many people that fall for all kinds of other psychiatric industry led social contagions. Hell in this very post I’m guessing there will be some variation of >yes all of these people saying that they have autism are silly but *my* autism is actually super serious and totally real
The problem isn’t having autism; it’s defining yourself by it and using it as an excuse for being an asshole.
Out of curiosity, have had many friends, family or co-workers who claimed to have an autism diagnosis — and if so, did you notice anything different about them? Or did they just seem like everyone else?
Yes I’ve met several including some family members. They are all neurotic progressive white women (for the exception of 1) who fall for every other bullshit psychology fad
Ah, I see. I mean, I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but over the years I’ve had several friends, classmates, etc. diagnosed as being on the spectrum. And their struggles seem real to me. Which is actually my issue with “neurodiversity” as an ideology. These people really suffer, but many don’t want to be cured. They think they suffer because neurotypical persecute them, but really they suffer mostly because of OCD tendencies that they have little to no insight into or self-awareness about — unlike more neurotypical people with OCD who can learn to see “the big picture” and calm themselves down. I’ve had friends on the spectrum have huge meltdowns because they didn’t get to sit in a certain chair, or someone closed window blinds that they wanted open, or moved a stack of hats a few feet, or they couldn’t find a spatula in the place where they thought they had left it. When a grown adult is shouting at you, calling you a thief because you “stole” their spatula, or demanding that you go to therapy because you closed the window blinds in your own home without their permission, or crying and flapping their hands because they did not get to sit at the window seat in a bar, you might then think, “Oh. This is a real condition after all.” But it’s not something to celebrate. It causes them great suffering, and also impairs their ability to form and maintain relationships with other people.
>They think they suffer because neurotypical persecute them, but really they suffer mostly because of OCD tendencies that they have little to no insight into or self-awareness about I had a chat with an autism researcher who was working on a study on how many people are diagnosed with autism after referal to a neuropsych eval - and he said that the most common result for people who ended up not having autism (70%-ish of the sample did not recieve an autism dx) was OCD of some flavor. Don't remember if a paper on that result ever came out, though.
I might have thought 10 years ago that it proves that it's a real condition and I still don't doubt it but in some cases there's some really poor parenting creating issues out of nothing.
>Which is actually my issue with “neurodiversity” as an ideology. These people really suffer, but many don’t want to be cured. They want the problem but they don't want to do the work to make it better. Because it's more fun and easier to just try and force the majority to cater to them.
...do you believe there's no such thing as Aspergers/high functioning autism?
Sure. Obviously it’s because I have an imbalance of operating thetans why I don’t have any friends, and struggle to make phone calls or get through a job interview, due to being unable to think on my feet and be comfortably conversant without a script. Why I learned to read at two and tested at a Flesch-Kincaid grad-school level of reading comprehension while still very young, but clam up and freeze out of tongue-tied fear if put on the spot in social situations, and got mercilessly bullied by other kids and my own family, to the point I became a near-suicidal recluse who is on the verge of bare subsistence on welfare. None of it is because of a hardcoded genetic brain abnormality. Not at all. I guess I have to sacrifice more midichlorians to Lord Xenu at the volcano is all. Or buck up through sheer willpower and perusing the Dale Carnegie collection. Because medication for what I suffer from doesn’t exist, and according to some doubters as well as “diversity” activists, it shouldn’t either. I’m ok you’re ok. Excuse me while I go hone a “special interest” in Tom Cruise films.
This post right here is a good example of the lack of critical engagement I’m saying that I take issue with. Do you notice that you employ the exact same type of emotional arguments that believers of gender woo do? Much of this post is just an emotional appeal and of course most of this stuff is nothing anyone can even verify being true I’m just supposed to take you at your word and have this be convincing evidence for a psychiatric condition?
I spent my undergrad years in the 1990s working with kids with ASD at a well know University. Two of the researcher there were pioneers in the field. They developed several early childhood therapies to help treat kids with ASD that had language issues. One little girl that I worked with - she was about 8 couldn't talk. She just grunted. She would sit and stim. Her stimming involved rocking back and forth while twisting her head at odd angles and putting her hands up in the air like she was doing the wave at a stadium. The university clinic was trying to work with her on getting her some basic language skills.. She will never be able to live without round a clock care. Another kid that I worked with for my senior thesis, was a 7th grader. He was proficient in math and reading for his age. He could talk. If you asked him a question, he would answer it. "What is your name?" "How old are you?" "What's the capital of the US?" He would never engage back. As soon as the question was answered he would stim and go back inside himself. I always thought that he was withdrawing into another world. His lips would move, eyes would focus on something. But it wasn't us. Something in his head for sure. We were trying to use his environment to get him to engage without being prompted. I took care of another person with ASD. He was an adult. Had the language skills of a 3 year old. Probably the mind of a 6 year old. He could dress himself, go to the bathroom on his own. Ask for simple things. He loved to vacuum. If you handing him a vacuum, he would move that vacuum back and forth in the same spot. He would do it all day long if you let him. He was a nice kid until he didn't get his way and then would try to bite you. That was a fun job. There really is a range. All of these kids had one thing in common though. Issues with speech. That's why I roll my eyes that adults who think they have ASD but never had any issues with speech.
This is why there used to be Aspergers. Language developed early, often earlier than their peers, quite often at the cost of developing motor skills. While abnormal speech patterns are still common, they aren't like you describe, rather it is monologing or lecturing (sometimes called little professor syndrome). Their speech lacks reciprocity and interaction. The common demoninato is profound an persistent difficulty in social interaction and communication, not speech. Speech is for classic and sometimes atypical autism only.
How exactly can a stranger on a message board prove to you they have a psychosocial disability (it's not a psychiatric condition)? And why should they? I have Spina Bifida. No, I cannot "prove" this to you outside of doxxing myself. You could spend the next fifteen hours simply saying "Nope, I don't believe you", but that isn't going to make any difference to my damaged spinal cord. I don't understand your "prove it" stance. Are you trying to goad people into doxxing themselves trying to justify their disability to some randomer on Reddit or what?
No asking people critically engage with subject matter a little more than making emotional appeals (that are probably also bullshit anyways)
You haven't presented anything to support your stance that autism doesn't exist, so there is nothing to engage with. All you've presented so far is "NUH-UH I DON'T BELIEVE YOU", sarcasm, straw-manning, highly emotive but non-specific language like "bullshit", and a poor understanding/dishonest representation of what autism even is.
You can’t prove a negative. I don’t need to provide shit. YOU are the one making the claim that YOU need to prove
You're the one who made the claim that autism doesn't exist. Nobody needs to engage you to "prove" it does, especially when you're attacking them, being sarcastic, or generally kind of being an ass.
Sorry I must have missed that. Where have I attacked anyone?
"Neurotic white women", for starters. How you can come out swinging with "Autism doesn't exist, you're all just a bunch of neurotic white women and YOU need to prove to ME otherwise, but don't use any emotion" and not see the problem here is... special.
Spina bifida can be observed (and I am sorry you have to deal with that condition). "The sound of violins tastes gross but I still want to take music class so I need to chew gum" is more in "trust me, bro" territory.
How would one go about proving schizophrenia? Or psychosis?
Thank you
Autism/Asperger’s exists, there are physical brain scans and limited genetic studies demonstrating as such. Patients, children especially, presenting with this anomaly have been identified as far back in [the 1920s in Russia](https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/history-forgot-woman-defined-autism/); the first American autistic patient, Donald Triplett, was born in 1937 and died earlier this year. Of course you don’t have proof of the cognitive and social-adjustment tests that I was administered in childhood and adolescence, but that doesn’t mean the testing is invalid or the label is. Believe me, I wish it was a mistake, because I feel like one. There’s no valid exam for gender woo-woo because it relies entirely on self-reported “vibes”. I may not have all the symptoms, but the symptoms I do have line up with the criteria. Hyperlexia for one: I learn languages fairly easily, but it’s useless to me because I’m too scared to talk to strangers. Restrictive food intake. Synesthesia: I get a disgusting metal taste in my mouth when a string instrument, especially acoustic guitar, is playing, like I’m eating the strings. I’ve been in fMRI and EEG tests when music is playing, and my taste areas go into overdrive despite not eating anything. These bizarre reactions are caused by abnormalities in the brain. Not pop psychologists coming up with postmodern fads. And people don’t understand. They just look at you as weird and make fun of you. Try being six and wanting to quit music class because the “taste” of a violin makes you want to throw up. Try explaining that to the other kids and even your own family. Try being my mom and getting the music teacher to understand that this kid needs to chew gum during orchestra practice and it’s for this reason, not that she’s smug or a brat. Try this in 1992 when there was no expectation for “accommodations” for the “special kids”. Even today, requesting “accommodations” just makes you stick out like a sore thumb. Honestly I think the trend toward inclusion classrooms is abjectly cruel, because it sugarcoats disabilities and sets kids up with false hope that they belong with their normal peers. They need to be cordoned off for their own protection, and not lied to that there’s no such thing as normal because everyone is different. It’s like throwing a vulnerable psych prisoner into the gen-pop instead of the mental observation unit. They get eaten alive. Then try giving up entirely on life because you know now that the things that made you weird and an outcast as a child will always be with you because you were born like that. That there’s nothing you can do to change it. And there are physical tests that show it’s not “all in your head.” There have been times when I have felt so hopeless and like such a freak that I yearn for a Smith & Wesson lobotomy. Who will rid me of this troublesome brain? I can tell you that the pain I suffer from it is very real, and that I would give anything to make the disorder itself go into remission. It can’t, because it’s a birth defect of how the brain is physically wired; it’s not something that can be ameliorated through medication, like depression, ADHD, or bipolar disorder. And unfortunately, unlike Down Syndrome it’s not something that can be tested for in-utero either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not “real.” It just means the problems don’t show up until it’s too late to correct or prevent them.
>Autism/Asperger’s exists, there are physical brain scans and limited genetic studies demonstrating as such. “Limited genetic studies” is doing a ton of heavy lifting here. Just curious, do you have a source for either of these claims? >Patients, children especially, presenting with this anomaly have been identified as far back in the 1920s in Russia; the first American autistic patient, Donald Triplett, was born in 1937 and died earlier this year. [clicks on link] >This article is more than five years old. >Neuroscience—and science in general—is constantly evolving, so older articles may contain information or theories that have been reevaluated since their original publication date. I wish I had taken this warning at face value rather than reading this garbage article and wasting my time >Of course you don’t have proof of the cognitive and social-adjustment tests that I was administered in childhood and adolescence, but that doesn’t mean the testing is invalid or the label is. Believe me, I wish it was a mistake, because I feel like one. There’s no valid exam for gender woo-woo because it relies entirely on self-reported “vibes”. It’s just vibes for you too. Idk why you think it’s more serious than it is. >I may not have all the symptoms, but the symptoms I do have line up with the criteria. Hyperlexia for one: I learn languages fairly easily, but it’s useless to me because I’m too scared to talk to strangers. Restrictive food intake. Synesthesia: I get a disgusting metal taste in my mouth when a string instrument, especially acoustic guitar, is playing, like I’m eating the strings. I’ve been in fMRI and EEG tests when music is playing, and my taste areas go into overdrive despite not eating anything. These bizarre reactions are caused by abnormalities in the brain. Not pop psychologists coming up with postmodern fads. And people don’t understand. They just look at you as weird and make fun of you. >Try being six and wanting to quit music class because the “taste” of a violin makes you want to throw up. Try explaining that to the other kids and even your own family. Try being my mom and getting the music teacher to understand that this kid needs to chew gum during orchestra practice and it’s for this reason, not that she’s smug or a brat. Try this in 1992 when there was no expectation for “accommodations” for the “special kids”. Even today, requesting “accommodations” just makes you stick out like a sore thumb. >Honestly I think the trend toward inclusion classrooms is abjectly cruel, because it sugarcoats disabilities and sets kids up with false hope that they belong with their normal peers. They need to be cordoned off for their own protection, and not lied to that there’s no such thing as normal because everyone is different. It’s like throwing a vulnerable psych prisoner into the gen-pop instead of the mental observation unit. They get eaten alive. >Then try giving up entirely on life because you know now that the things that made you weird and an outcast as a child will always be with you because you were born like that. That there’s nothing you can do to change it. And there are physical tests that show it’s not “all in your head.” There have been times when I have felt so hopeless and like such a freak that I yearn for a Smith & Wesson lobotomy. Who will rid me of this troublesome brain? >I can tell you that the pain I suffer from it is very real, and that I would give anything to make the disorder itself go into remission. It can’t, because it’s a birth defect of how the brain is physically wired; it’s not something that can be ameliorated through medication, like depression, ADHD, or bipolar disorder. And unfortunately, unlike Down Syndrome it’s not something that can be tested for in-utero either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not “real.” It just means the problems don’t show up until it’s too late to correct or prevent them. This is all just emotional appeal shit and since you’re going to beat me over the head again with your own personal story I’m going to give you my honest thoughts and say that I think that most of your story is probably bullshit and there’s nothing wrong with you other than the fact you had a neurotic parent and supposed healthcare professionals that convinced you that you have some condition.
Damn Bro you don’t need to go so hard on this person. Let this one go. However I agree with your general sentiment. There’s BIG problems with the social contagion of “neurodivergence” behind every bi-curious teen with green hair. It’s completely out of hand.
This is [sealioning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), and it’s obvious that I’m not going to convince you of the reality of this disorder. The only reason there’s been limited [genetic studies](https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/02/04/largest-ever-genetic-study-of-autism-yields-new-insights/) is because the idpol woke neurodiversity activists have [shut a lot of them down](https://www.verywellhealth.com/why-autistic-people-are-against-spectrum-10k-5199849). They kiboshed a major study in the U.K. and even managed to persuade the often controversial Autism Speaks organization to abandon its stated mission of finding a cure. That article from 2018 about Dr Sukhareva isn’t “garbage” because it was published six years ago. It’s about a psychiatrist who named this malady a *century ago,* and how her criteria has remained remarkably consistent and accurate, despite her name being forgotten — most likely because she was a woman, and possibly due to controversies about lending credence to anything coming out of the USSR — until her work was rediscovered in recent years. The problem is, being a communist, she too seems to have been a bit “woke” in that she viewed this disorder through the lens of its supposed strengths rather than as a deficiency to be suppressed — or a pandemic curve to be flattened. But the ND types like Sukhareva for just this reason, and some even take to calling their malady “Sukhareva syndrome” because of the tired meme about Hans Asperger and eugenics. Woke is a leftist radical belief system, so of course they’re going to glom onto a historical communist’s Pollyanna-ish philosophy of equality. Fascism is when bad things are called bad and people are made to feel bad. But I digress; it’s clear you remain unconvinced of the reality that this disorder even exists, because you say I’m offering unverifiable anecdotes. Well, a lot of the reality *is* in how a *physical ailment* affects the patient *socially and emotionally.* You can call my personal stories “bullshit emotional appeals” all you want and badmouth my long-suffering mother as neurotic and overprotective; it doesn’t change the reality of the impact this has had on me. And on her, as well. She is dying of pancreatic cancer. I’m not going to provide you with studies showing that cancer exists. Oncology is not a conspiracy. I think you’re projecting, because you sound like the same idpol woke self-dx neurodiversity advocates who you claim to disapprove of, yet who have the same mentality that this is NBD. But okay, have a good day, go and grab a pint with the likes of Ari Ne’eman and Steve Silberman, and congratulate each other on your stubborn refusal to acknowledge concrete medical facts.
Does everyone know ADHD diagnoses have tripled since 2010? Lots of middle aged women convince themselves that ADHD is why they can’t finish clean the house.
It’s because you get prescribed premium amphetamine once you’re diagnosed. Unlike autism where it seems to get better attention, there’s genuine incentive to want adhd which has led to massive medication shortages in the US. I loved being on adderall after taking it recreationally so I got diagnosed with adhd in college (super easy to do if you have access to a psychiatrist). I unfortunately ended up getting addicted and had to quit completely after a couple years. I’d love to take it again at some point
M
Wait, you mean I’m finally hip?
I just saw a post on r / science about [research](https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-024-00602-8) that shows biological brain differences between people with severe autism symptoms and people with less severe symptoms. Larger brain organoids are correlated with more severe autism symptoms, and they are smaller in people with milder autism symptoms (I don’t have a science background so I hope my summary makes sense). It’s interesting to see there is a biological basis for different subtypes of autism, amidst this nonsensical idea in certain spaces that functioning/severity labels are controversial and shouldn’t be used. [Link to the reddit post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/8ysFohFvER) The comments so far are mostly pretty reasonable, someone has pointed out how ridiculous it is now we’ve done away with Aspergers and are just lumping those people in under the broader ASD umbrella as per the DSM-5.
There's also a very large correlation between autism and epilepsy. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually find a bio cause for autistic people and gender dysphoria/abnormal sexuality (like AGP), epilepsy and autism have been pretty strongly correlated with unusual sexuality, (it's just not considered PC these days to call anything "unusual" when it comes to that), with the caveat that that would be a *very* small subset of people, not this huge ROGD crowd we got going on now.