What is autism?

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Apologies all for the double post, but I can't work out how to highlight qoutes in white and accidentally duplicated my 1'st post while trying to do that.

This is absurd. I show several of the obvious symptoms of autism, but I am fully capable of observing the world around me. In fact, given time to plan in advance, I can frequently navigate my way through social circles just fine. I typically prefer not to, because it's a taxing experience and I don't get much out of it, but that doesn't mean I can't be a frightening social opponent when I want to be.

Autism is a neurological disorder that presents symptoms from 16-18 months old. It ranges from mild to severe with symptoms affecting ones ability to communicate with others, learn new skills, adapt to change, and sometimes affects ones motor skills and senses.

For me it is about a preoccupation with self, a need for everything to be the same and a constant struggle with self care.
I never really desired to communicate with people. Throughout the years I got a little better at it and started to want to once it was required of me. I've always had narrow interests which affected the way I learned or didn't learn. I was always in my own imagination world.

Really autism is a set of symptoms that impair your life enough to be diagnosed to receive support and have a specific age of onset, but the symptoms might not be noticeable until you encounter more stress in your life or you discover you are strongly lacking in social skills.

Autism ranges from mild to moderate to severe. The more you experience in life the more you know.
I started out being oblivious to the world, now I think I know far too much for comfort.
So you can socialise fine, just don't want to? That seems more introverted than autistic. I don't know why you would be diagnosed with autism then. Perhaps it was PDD or AS. Even for high functioning autism you need some difficulty with socialising.

Autism can also be a lack of self awareness. I'll be attacked by saying that but I'm not talking about AS. Most people here are adults anyway and have more self awareness then they did as children.

I couldn't always, and the ways I go about it involve gaming the system. It's a very different method from what neurotypicals do. Instead of just doing what feels right, I intentionally manipulate people's emotions to get whatever response I want. It's exhausting and also pretty dishonest, so I don't do it unless there's a very good reason for it.

I meant to say that less of a 'world' is perceived; do you really think you'd feel the need to do your somewhat feminine-sounding (lol) 'manipulation' thing if you could *perceive* what felt right along with how to accomplish it?

I'll stick by my argument as long as evidence points to the perception of EVENTS and THINGS (such as people) being the core difficulty we face.