What do NTs mean by "autistics live in their own world"?

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Maybe they mean we are absorbed into our own thoughts and tend to withdraw from the outside world. We pay more attention to our own thoughts and feelings. We have a more developed "inner life". As a consequence of this, we might look distant to others.

I've always seen it as an asset. In spiritual parlance, an indweller can be revered.

It's just a direct translation of the word 'autism (auto+ism)' with consideration to its history and philology, and because it was translated many years ago it simply conveys the sense the English word carried back then and NOT how the Japanese saw autism at the time. Once it was translated it got stuck.

This sort of things happen all the time when a word is imported from another culture, especially when it's a technical term like this one.

Having said that it's now also popular to call it ASD in Japan too because the idea that it's a spectrum is widely recognised.

^ Yes. How can it possibly be that our thoughts are more important than the splendid pinnacle of evolution right in front of our eyes that is trying to engage us in small talk?

I would say it is a way for people to try to grapple with trying to understand what the live an autistic person is, considering their social isolation and abnormal thinking. Though this statement carries with it a significant potential for mystification of the person, providing the false narrative that we are divorced from reality, and hamper further investigation.

JBW and Darmok:

Agree.

Though, because for years I lived in male-dominated school and work environments, I thought it was because I was female. Makes more sense now that I've been diagnosed ASD.

Yup, I think this is the best explanation.

LOL, exactly.

They mean not paying attention to their social games.

People use to describe me this way all the time, when I asked what this means they told mE it's because I space out a lot and just have my own way of things in the way I talk and act.

In my case, even long before I was ever bullied I used to go off and play by myself: in pre-school it was in the corner of the gym and in elementary school in the winter I found a secluded snowbank and would design buildings, including a combination shopping mall/residential building. If only that skill was nurtured rather than be seen as "anti-social".

People that have labeled me as being my own world, I was playing video games being off by myself than interacting with people and participating.