Autism has become a culturally dominant force that's displaced other kinds of neurodiversity almost completely. All kinds of people have to "mask" aspects of themselves to get along. Black people have to talk white, Asian people have to present themselves in a way white people think is assertive. Gay people have to stay closeted. Just try academia when you grew up in a working class family.
The "simulator" paradigm pretends to promote empathy but it actually does the opposite.
I understand where you're coming from, and I would even agree with the denotation of every sentence in your first paragraph, but I think you're missing a lot.
Being "culturally dominant" is not a good thing for autistic people: it's not autistic voices that dominate, but mostly eugenics groups, with the occasional well-meaning (but usually uninformed) activist group trying to oppose the narrative. If you're familiar with the kind of "anti-racist" corporate training that's mostly just white guilt with a few racial stereotypes thrown in, then you know how far "well-meaning" can take you.
While we can draw many analogies to autistic masking, autistic masking is qualitatively different to the examples you've listed. We have other words for the other things (e.g. "talking white" is a special-case of "situational code-switching", and "staying closeted" is a special-case of something that I don't know a name for). You're skirting (and, I think, crossing) the line between analogy and appropriation in your first paragraph. (See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45440873, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441925)
I'm not really sure what you mean by your "actually does the opposite" remark in the second paragraph, unless you're automatically treating this interactive description of autism made with care, by someone with personal experience of being autistic, as the kind of rubbish that's made by "well-meaning" ignorants for low-quality corporate training.
People with other flavours of neurodivergence have produced similar "simulators" (a kind of RPG, really). You might be familiar with Spoon Theory, originally devised to describe the psychological burden of living with lupus? That simulator is a TTRPG. I suspect that this simulator was made by someone who'd be classified as neurodivergent in respects not classified as autism.
I don't think masking is necessarily the right word, but when people start self-diagnosing themselves they often miss the correct problem in favor of what's popular on their social media feeds.
Right now, Autism and/or ADHD are the two that are most prevalent on social media. Many people, especially younger people who spend a lot of time on Reddit, TikTok, or other sites, see these diagnoses trend with vague descriptions about what they entail. When they encounter struggles, they recall those vague descriptions, make a connection, and assume their life problems are due to the diagnosis.
It's not uncommon to read accounts of people who describe their symptoms as textbook social anxiety or depression who will nevertheless insist they have "AuDHD" as self-diagnosed via their social media consumption.
It can actually be hard to break them out of one preferred diagnosis and get them going down the right path to address the problem.
An example: Someone develops an eating disorder, but they read on Reddit that forgetting to eat and having low energy for schoolwork can be a symptoms of ADHD. They self-diagnose as ADHD and avoid addressing their very obvious eating disorder problem. They might even get insulted when someone suggests they have an eating disorder, insisting that the other person must not understand ADHD.
This pattern isn't unique to autism or ADHD. It's common to all trending internet diagnoses. You will find communities where everyone convinces themselves they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Doctors who treat those two conditions are currently rejecting referrals at a high rate due to extreme self-diagnosis via TikTok. The people self-diagnosing with those conditions usually do have something wrong, but they've latched on to one explanation that doesn't fit and they won't let go because they think it explains everything about them.
I, personally, just really really hate how many people use "neurodiverse" as a synonym for "autistic". I am not neurotypical but am very much not autistic, and I'm far from the only one.
Indeed using the term "neurodiverse" only makes sense if you also want to include, for example, psychopaths (another form of neurodiversity) in the group that you want to describe.
> All kinds of people have to "mask" aspects of themselves to get along. Black people have to talk white, Asian people have to present themselves in a way white people think is assertive. Gay people have to stay closeted. Just try academia when you grew up in a working class family.
The "simulator" paradigm pretends to promote empathy but it actually does the opposite.
Why do you feel this way? Do you not think having to do those things is tiring and exhausting for the affected people? Do you think the simulator’s author would disagree? If someone wrote a simulator for trying to code switch as a Black person or an Asian person and didn’t include all the ways that autistic people have to mask, would you feel they were also not promoting empathy?
I’m not sure what accusation you’re referring to? I think you may have read me inversely from how I intended to be read. Based on what the poster is saying, I assume he would disagree with my statement strongly, but at the same time what he says seems to imply it. I find that seeming contradiction interesting. I think it is interesting to me because in the past I had similar opinions to the poster but I eventually noticed the contradictions and updated my worldview, as perhaps he could consider as well. Non-contradictory world views seem to make better future predictions.
"It almost sounds like you're implying X would be easier..." looks like a claim that they want to reach situation X. With some uncertainty thrown on top.
In the case of "cultural and ethnically homogeneous society", there are two ways to get there: Either slowly melting pot over hundreds of years minimum, or drastic bad actions that destroy people's lives and strip culture instead of sharing it.
And since anyone alive today will be long dead by the time the first one possibly happens, it looks like a claim that they would be in favor of the second one.
So yeah, that would cause strong disagreement. It's a revolting thing to be associated with.
But it's not because the literal thing you said is wrong. The literal thing you said is correct. It is easier to not have to worry about those differences.
And there's no contradiction in any of that. What specific opinions are you calling contradictory?
Ya, I'm curious about this as well. I'm not a morning person, and certainly am always just-scraping-by until about 1 pm. But is this some mild autism? Or is this just how I am? Or is there even a sensible distinction between those two phrases?
Everyone seems to self-diagnose as slightly autistic these days. “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.”
I think this is maybe related to imposter syndrome. “There are people who can easily do this thing that I struggle with. Maybe I’m not qualified./Maybe I’m autistic.”. This thought process assumes others aren’t struggling and also tends to look to those who excel rather than the average so it’s biased anyway.
Ya, I tend to agree. In fact, even if I _do_ have something, I think I'd rather not know. Whatever it is, it isn't too severe, so a diagnosis would mostly be helpful for getting medication. I have my own coping strategies and am able to navigate through life pretty much like everyone else, imperfectly but still making it. Having a diagnosis would not help me in this situation. I know some people feel that having a diagnosis can make a difference, and perhaps it is more important if you have something in an extreme form. But idk if I have something, and even if I do, I don't think the label would help me
> “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.”
I would love to live in a society in which everyone is allowed to have personal quirks and their own personal stuff to deal with without being judged for it and without needing a label like “autism” to excuse it.
I have a friend who was diagnosed as an adult with Autism. 40 ish years into their life and they finally got a name to attach to their “quirks”. And the thing that they found most frustrating (and which I find sympathy for feeling that frustration) is the number of people who now treat them completely differently and with much more grace and respect.
On the one hand, of course we extend extra grace and accommodations to a person with a given disability because we expect people without the disability to behave differently. On the other hand, they didn’t just magically get the disability when they got diagnosed. They’ve had it their entire life, and needed that grace and accommodation their entire life. But only it’s only now, half way through their life with their shiny new diagnosis that people give them that grace and accommodation. Is it then any wonder that people who haven’t been able to get that official diagnosis are still trying to at least get people to accept an unofficial diagnosis? If we were better at not needing the labels in order to accommodate, maybe we wouldn’t also have so many “self diagnosed” people. Or ironically maybe we’d have more officially diagnosed people because we wouldn’t be having a moral panic over fakes.
