Is WP attracting too many of the wrong people

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It seems that there are a lot of self-diagnosed people who claim that they don't fit in anywhere. I wonder is some of those people are just emo and dislike people around them for whatever reason which is why they have trouble making friends. Lots of people without ASD have had trouble making friends in their lifetime. Nothing in life is easy for everyone.

IMO- no cuz most adults over 25 are undiagnosed cuz AS was like totally unknown before the mid 1990s and still relatively unknown until around 2000ish. I believe that most people who self diagnose are like myself- once they found out about AS, they realize it fit them to a T. I think a good percentage of self diagnosed people would clearly test on the spectrum as I did when I finally got tested.

And also many openly say they aren't not sure if they are on the spectrum or not but feel this is a good forum to discuss their social issues, vent, etc.

IMO, you shouldn't judge someone just cuz they don't have the official Dx and even if they're not Aspie and just "emo", they are here cuz they relate to us.


Allie Kat

No one labels themselves as autistic unless they're experiencing distress and odds are they've put some serious thought into it. There's no point to questioning anyone's self-diagnosis given this information, especially not by random people on the internet who have access to none of the facts about these people beyond what they post on the forum (and many of which have either not been read or just been ignored).

I didn't have to get pushed as far as Todesking to get a diagnosis - I was already pushing for an official diagnosis when I self-diagnosed, I just got tired of equivocating on something that was fairly obvious to me.

I would suspect that many people are self-diagnosed because there seems to be a lotta "mild" aspergers going around here. So many people claiming to have mild aspergers. NTs can face difficulties in social situations and distress due to other reasons/conditions. Just cause someones NT doesnt mean they cant be ackward. Theres the thought, what is wrong with me? Then they read about aspergers and think they have aspergers.

I knew someone who had self-diagnosed themselves and it turns out they had a bad case of social anxiety

Only a few in 1000 are supposed to have AS, so a number of self-diagnoses on here are probably wrong.

I don't think people misdiagnosing themselves is a huge issue, I think the major issue to be concerned about is the misinformation going around about what Aspergers actually is.

Why are there so many of these kinds of topics on here recently? It seems to me to be trying to create elitism - you're either a "real" aspie and belong to (even an online) community like Wrong Planet, or you're an imposter who should just go away, deal with your issues and leave the communities to "real" aspies. There's an ugliness to it. An us-and-them exclusion, which is ironic as many AS folks feel excluded from the NT world - only to perpetuate it to people who can't "prove" themselves aspies. Bizarre.
Many people are undiagnosed for many reasons. I know for me, I've had so many people tell me my whole life that I'm unsuitable for anything from social clubs to jobs because I'm different. They tell me I can't do anything, that I must be sick or damaged. Getting an official diagnosis would be just one more excuse for people to tell me I'm too different for that job/group/whatever. It creates discrimination, and I already have enough of that from all the other ways I'm different.
Also - getting diagnosed is expensive. I don't know about others, but money is not something I have a lot of as I can't keep jobs long. Plus a diagnosis involves speaking to the adult aspie's parents, and I don't even speak to my mother.
Topics like this just make people do exactly what I'm doing, in my view - getting all defensive and justifying myself. Sad.

^ I agree.

I wonder where the exact limit lies between the NT world and the Spectrum. Genetics and seeing people around me equally suggest there is no such limit that one can easily figure out, only a bunch of traits exhibited to different degrees that a specialist supposed to assess and make a diagnosis about according to a chosen diagnostic system. So, it might easily happen that someone finds out he has AS, and would probably fail on a professional assessment. In this case, I suppose he has every right to find comfort here, take advices, and also give some, because he can relate to the problems people with AS dx usually encounter with.

Regardless of whether or not a self diagnosis is correct, if it brings new clarity to someones life then I don't question it.

IMO- I don't even think an official diagnosis is all that important as an adult. If you feel that you're having issues with socialization, I feel that WP is a good place to vent or get feedback, Aspie, NT, or otherwise.