Telling non-aspies not to engage me - suggestions?

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Information cards -- that could work. Particularly with complete strangers. I would hesitate to use them with people I semi-know or see often in familiar situations, as I'm struggling with disclosure issues too, but I can see using this when truly out there among strangers. It could well work for the OP as he says his work environment is accepting of his spectrum identity already.

Hmmm...he's not picking up on obvious non-verbal social cues. Could he be on the spectrum?

I would veer away from, "shy" if you really are not interested in interacting with him. I've noticed many guys take that to mean, "I want you to put more work into this", "this is a game, you have to figure me out", or some such.

So you expect to hang around people and have them all completely ignore you? Why not just not be around people ever...I mean it seems a little ridiculous to expect to hang around people without them engaging you at all. I mean why hang around people than? There isn't really a polite way to tell a room of people 'hey I am going to just stand here silently and don't any of you dare engage me.'

Oh you could just wear a bicycle helmet out in public, and a pair of way too big gloves to fidget with....from my observation most people don't engage people doing that.

Why are you being so bitter toward the OP's question? You're mocking the problem.

Guess what? Particularly in an overcrowded city like mine (don't know about the OP but personally my situation needs a "do not engage" strategy too) people NEED to employ a system of both respecting other people's privacy even out in public, and also preserving one's privacy.

Because life can get very intrusive and very ridiculous without it.

I live in a city of 10 MILLION PEOPLE.

Just because I'm in a public place does NOT in fact mean that it's perfectly okay for eight people serially to come up and interrupt what I'm trying to do there, be it a hobby or just some peace and quiet. That actually happened last week. I got nothing done that I set out to do that day in my place I wanted to just be.

I have to go to a public park because if I want to enjoy a bit of green grass and trees, some water lapping at a bank and some wildlife, I have to go somewhere public because I don't have a freaking back yard.

I still have the right not to be bothered.

I took their question to mean these are specifically social situations he's talking about...not just being out in public. I mean for that I personally will make myself as unapproachable as possible when I don't want people coming up to me. Headphones are fairly good for that. But I figured they meant entering social situations and expect people to ignore them...and in those situations people will only ignore you if you act like an a**hole then again they may also outwardly express their anger, or if you act weird enough people don't have any idea how to approach you. Hence the helmet and gloves would work great.

I did something similar once. My daughter was taking lessons for an individual sport; the parents would wait/watch/support crew in the snack bar/cafe/table area. I accidentally had left welding goggles on my forehead & was working on programming an electronics project with a laptop (think: little board with blinky lights sticking out of my laptop in a semi-dark table area). Not a person bothered me that day even once, not even the coach. It was pure bliss, as I usually tried so hard to be socially acceptable and interactive for my daughter's sake. I actually considered going full on steampunk for a moment...

There are many times when I've had to be around people but really wanted them to leave me alone. Headphones / visible ear buds & a book help immensely. Actually, just a book works as many people are not "readers" (as they term it). They'll interrupt someone reading on a tablet or phone, but dead tree is sacrosanct. While I realize your comment was sarcastic, it is possible to send intentional visual social signals to people that you don't wish to socialize *without* appearing hostile or antisocial. Looking & acting like the popular image of a wallflower introvert often works to a fair degree...