maybe i am not an aspie...

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I think having depression and anxiety is pretty acceptable to a lot of people. Prozac was the drug of choice there for a while. I hadn't even really heard of Asperger's until I met someone with it and I work in DD services so not really sure if it is well known enough to be cool or not.

I have gotten the idea that it is not "cool" to be an emotional or emotionally expressive person in nerd/geek/dork groups. Maybe the fAkerS think that anxiety + depression = too emotional to be "cool". But then, the idea of "being cool in a group" is not exactly central to the autistic mindset and worldview. I don't know if I have ever been "cool", but if so, then I didn't ever know about it.

I'm glad that the fAkerS cannot fake AS well. I would be annoyed if they could fake AS better than I could fake NT.

How can you tell if they are faking? I have never noticed this before (but this is because: I hardly know anyone at all on the spectrum as it is, and also because I am completely oblivious to some things.) I am curious: what is it that they do that makes you think "fake"?

How can you tell if someone is faking AS?


EDIT: Oh, LL beat me to it.

I have never seen this either, and I would also like to know. Would they be vigorously flapping their hands and segregating their peas while trying and failing to inhibit their automatic NTisms? Like reading between the lines to miss the lines themselves and assigning non-existent states of mind to others? Would interactions with them be the same-old sick-and-tired NT-onto-ASD Project-O-Matic 3000, complete with telling you how you think and feel, how you should think and feel, and how to help you become more like them? I really don't know. I'm only uneducatedly guessing.

People can fake anything. The motivations for faking AS might be the same for faking anything else.

The faker is getting something out of it.

I thought about this and all I can think of are actors. I know Dustin Hoffman used several people (not all of whom were autistic) for reference in Rainman. Sigourney Weaver had some assistance from Ros Blackburn in portraying an autistic woman. I haven't looked up how things were handled with other films, however, but I am not aware of any autistic actors playing autistic roles. Oh, except: Apparently Temple Grandin said that Claire Danes' portrayal of her was an accurate portrayal (if I remember what I read correctly).

Of course, there is a difference between portraying a character for a film and trying to present an autistic front all the time. I also suspect most people would not study as intently as an actor intending to pull off a role. I also don't really have an opinion on how accurate or consistent the portrayals are. It's just something that crossed my mind.

Fakers get attention, and attention is something that many NTs thrive on. "Fame" is something almost universally aspired to which is nothing but a lot of attention from a lot of people.

Also, it's quite easy for someone to believe they have "something" (Due to an affirmation bias and/or possessing SOME similar characteristics and/or other reasons) and act in a way consistent with that belief. For example, I believed I had sociopathy so I purposely tripped grandmas crossing the street, yelled at and beat my wife because she didn't immediately make me a sandwich after I came home from work and stole candy from little children. And... I ENJOYED IT. j/k

A more common example is that people believe they're "losers" and act and believe like one (They can't do anything good, never try at anything, etc.). It happens far too often.

Last edited by swbluto on 03 Sep 2011, 10:56 am, edited 2 times in total.

lol

I don't how well *you* can act, but the average NT would probably be better as faking AS then the average AS person would be at faking NT. It's similar to the question of whether someone "normal" could act "paranoid schizophrenic" better than someone "paranoid schizophrenic" could act normal (Let's say they have tangentiality and word salad features). The answer is indubitably yes. However, they can only imitate the superficial outward characteristics (Like the "sound", "look" and behavior of aspies); the perception and way of thinking would certainly be beyond almost every NT's ability to imitate.

Anothing thing I can never understand about NT's... that a being greedy over money... fashion, bullying, etc.

they believe they are losers... so they want to have aspergers to... excuse their loserness? I am not a loser! I can crochet a mean plarn bag! AND i have publishes a science book... well... self publish... and no one has bought it yet... but who would run out to buy a book about raccoon biology? I need to write about more animals.

Yeah... I cannot understand people who have such a low self-esteem that they try to excuse it with a mental disorder... NT's are weird... O.o

I'm personally greedy because I want freedom, the freedom to do as I please. And power. I want the power to do as I will, and power traditionally is associated with security, which is generally more desirable than insecurity.

I was also thinking of dressing Goth this coming quarter. Why? I'm guessing because it's ultimately due to getting attention, but I originally thought it's because I want to introduce fashion to the historically fashion-less Computer Science department at my school. (The only identifiable "fashion trend" in the CS department is geek chic, which is lamely homogeneous.)

And, hehe, hate to bust your bubble, but most people would consider "publishing a book about raccoon biology" a pretty loserish hobby. But I'm not like most people and I think that's a perfectly cool hobby, just like solving calculus problems for fun is kind of awesome. (Some girl called me a loser in European History class because I chose to solve calc problems rather than gossip as a way of passing the time, as if gossiping is any more productive. )

Anyway, NTs are pretty weird. I think they're thinking more like "I'm a loser because I have aspergers." which gives them an explanation for their loser-esque outcomes/characteristics, which is an explanation that has more explanative power than "I'm a loser.". Or maybe that's just what I was thinking..... Hmmmm....

(Btw, I'm guessing I'm more likely NT than AS and I personally don't see myself as a loser. There are those that might judge me as a "loser" because I'm a 24 year old living with my parents (I'm still in college), but those people assume too much and are too quick to judge. And because I do productive things for fun as opposed to socialization, but those people are short-sighted. And there are those who might judge me a loser because I don't like talking to them because they sit there and criticize anything and everything, but those people are too judgmental.)

Sadly, this is partially true. Socially, yes, I am a loser. When I found out about AS, it made sense as an explanation for why. It shifted the blame off of me, which was a huge relief. But now, the more I look into it, the more I see that, while I do have relatively poor social skills, that isn't the primary cause of my social isolation. At the time, I didn't know better. I thought I was the only loner on the planet, until I came here. I knew a few things didn't make sense, but I was blinded by the general thought here that "it's a spectrum, and everyone is different."

Yeah, that is somewhat true. And I do have an autistic way of thinking, so it's not like I was totally wrong with that assumption. But as I was saying, my social impairment is not the cause of my social isolation. The cause is that I'm different, and I know that. I know what happens to people who are different in school; they get s*** on. To hide this, I've kept to myself and withdrawn from the whole social business going on. As someone who is naturally introverted, this is really easy for me to do.

I did use AS as an excuse for that. But, my whole point is, why should I need an excuse? Why can't I just be myself and leave it at that? This is not a rhetorical question, I want answers.



I can understand that.




Alright, you lost me here. I know what you mean, but I don't understand your reasoning.



This is kinda what I was just saying up there. I work on math problems in my free time too instead of gossiping. What is so wrong about that? Why did I think I needed a dx of AS to justify my "loserness?" I have a feeling that you know exactly what I'm talking about.



I didn't get that. I don't see what the difference is.



I don't know. I've always thought that I'm living on the wrong planet, but I'm still a few parsecs away from the Aspergia galaxy. Two wrongs don't make a right, that's for sure. The majority of my aspieness can simply be explained by my above average intelligence, but there are a few minor things suggesting otherwise. I'm thinking I'm probably more in the BAP category rather than AS, although I could actually qualify for a diagnosis.

Well, it's possible I'm just using the "lack of heterogeneity in my CS department's fashion" as an excuse to justify wearing a fashion that I like, when I probably intrinsically like the fashion choice because of an alignment in associated values and color tastes. (I've liked black and white for the longest time. Chess boards, black grand pianos and ballroom dances - all seem so classy with the monochromatic elegance.)




Well, I didn't really seek out autism because of math obsessions (Everyone has hobbies, right? So what if they're "uncommon" and "unpopular"?) but because of seeming fundamental social "incapabilities". It's one thing for an introvert to be shy and all that but if they put their mind to it, they could easily get along with a group and succeed but that didn't happen for me, despite no effort on my part to sabotage my efforts to 'get along' and no discernible deficiencies, except as can be inferred in hindsight from the outcome.



Does the difference between "excuse" and "explanation" need an explanation? No excuses, now...





I've felt like I was on the Wrong Planet, too, and up til I discovered autism, I speculated that it was because everybody else was just "stupid", or something, but this speculation quickly faded when I seemed to have the same fundamental social differences/difficulties among my more similarly intelligent peers, as far as IQ testing and other proxies would suggest.

So I'm probably BAP or WISC. Maybe. I don't really know, it really seems hard to figure it out with this constantly-shifting subjectivity. On one hand, I identify with many of the complaints on here of most other people (i.e., neurotypicals), but on the other hand, I seem to lack a lot of the key symptoms/characteristics of autism. Especially 'rigidity'.