People you know of who you suspect are Aspie Wannabies

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Reason for this request.
As an Aspie I can be stubborn and not understand the motives of people. While I understand this type of thing happens somehow I am apparently in still in denial that "Aspie wannabee" is a phenomenon, part of me still thinks it is an urban legend and I still can not understand why a lot of people will do something that will get them bullied or do something that they see is causing other people to be bullied. While I have not seen a scientific study confirming this nearly all reliable sources from the American Psychiatric Association, a lot of reputable media confirm this. I could dismiss all of that as NT ableism but when people here confirm it time and time and time again I have to conclude I am in denial because I desperately want it not to be true.

Obviously this is not scientific. IMHO this phenomenon real or imagined is probably one of the worst things to happen to our community so sans scientific report I still need to do the best I can to understand what obvious things I am missing.


General Guidelines
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The person can not be a member of this website as it is against Wrong Planet rules and just a bad idea in general.

The person does not have to be somebody you know personally.

Obviously you are not qualified to rule out AS/ASD out so all you can do is suspect.

List how you know the person what they have done or said to make you suspect they want to have Aspergers (or Autism Spectrum Disorder) for any non valid reason be it to be cool or as an excuse, to get ILLEGITIMATE benefits etc

If you know 20 wannabes you don't need to describe them all just give a couple of examples.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 21 Jan 2014, 11:36 am, edited 3 times in total.

I will start
Moby when asked by The New York Times in 2010 "YOU HAVE ASPERGER’S? replied "No. I just like to pretend I do. It makes me sound more interesting" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

I know that Moby said in an interview that he pretends to have Asperger's syndrome to seem more interesting. I don't know of any other wannabe Aspies. I cannot understand why anybody would want to have Asperger's syndrome either.
EDIT: You beat me to it!

Maybe NTs or sociopaths trying to make excuses for their various failings in life. I can see how it would be attractive to a self-diagnosed person since AS traits often include being intelligent, overly nice to others, etc.

I suspect he was just pretending to be pretending, to sound more interesting. Meta.

Yeah, basically everyone who 1- has watched a movie or read a book portraying autistic individuals, 2 - is less than 40yo
I guess it's because of how popular culture potrays it, like savant, interesting, math genius, mysterious, so-damn-more-intelligent-than-you, nobly standing against society incomprehension, not caring about what other people think and just giving a special attention to those that matter.
If being autistic is portrayed like this, who wouldn't want to be interesting, intelligent and not caring about society?
If I told my friends I suspect I have it, pretty sure some of them would go straight to the internet to try some aspie online test wanting to be "special too".
Well, no one knows what autism really is.

People are freaking weird. I can't understand why anyone would WANT to be an aspie either. I spent my entire youth wishing I was normal. While I love who I am know and wouldn't change me for the world (ok, maybe better motor skills would be nice.) it hasn't exactly been a cake walk.

And pretending to be even though he isn't? Can some one please smack the stupid out of this guy?

Doesn't everyone have some AS ?

Dan Aykroyd that crazy, stand-up comedian, actor, singer is said to have AS ( http://www.aspergerssociety.org/articles/53.htm ) He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Aykroyd )

This shows that AS people can be very, very social, and have social insight to be successful as a comedian in a nightclub. Why does he have AS (as explained in the highlighted text in bove link): “I really haven’t had too much occurrence except on the Asperger’s side, where I have a fascination with police, and I always have to have a badge with me.“

The mere compulsion to carry an item can mean a diagnosis of AS it seems. All that is required is a single trait ?????? So, is this article's assertion correct - that everyone has AS, http://www.vice.com/read/everybody-has-aspergers-now ? The article asserts that anyone with one of the below traits has AS .... ?

Note: Mr. Aykroyd's trait is "inappropriate attachment to an object" as shown below. So, he has the 1 trait necessary to be labeled AS ???

Actually, the interviews I read that discussed it talked about more traits than the attachment to a badge. Like, special interests taking up huge amounts of his time and other relevant factors.

Also, Dan Aykroyd is far from the only autistic comedian. Rudy Simone does stand up, for example, and there are others.

theres a number of classic and aspie autistic comedians who attend the learning disability only club night;frogtastic at the manchester based comedy club-the frog and bucket,was told years ago if had had the speech,woud have been welcomed at frogtastic,the stereotype is we have no idea what a sense of humour is but the truth is so many of us have loony sense of humours that the comedy scene woud greatly benefit from,a factual comedian [ie,someone who has a genuine SOH without need for lying] in own view is welcome to comedy.

The "sense of humor" thing is part of what led us to realize my first evaluation had been done by a quack. Part of his claim was that because I could interact with others and had a sense of humor, obviously I couldn't possibly be autistic.

My therapist said the guy was nutz.

However, with regards to the topic of this thread, since an Asperger nightclub comedian is more social than all the NT people I know , then how does one discern a "wannabee"?

I don't know any.

I doubt that is of much concern to Verdandi. It ain't of much concern to me, either.

Ackroyd at says he was diagnosed with Aspergers in he early 1980's and was one of the first ones and Touretts. I do find the date of his diagnosis a little fishy. Rudy Simone is the author of Aspergirls and three other books, not a wannabee.

Ackroyd and Simone are middle aged people. This is generally described to be a teenage and young adult phenomenon. I used Moby another middle aged person because that is the one person I know about. A few celebrities makes it possibility a celebrity fad but not a mass phenomenon described by the mainstream media and posters here. It is understandable at my age I would not know or of know any Aspie wannabees for any number of reasons.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 21 Jan 2014, 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think I was and perhaps maybe still am, though I'm pulling myself out of it. I never actually claimed to be autistic, but I really wished I was for a while and would exaggerate certain things when taking online tests for example. I may also have semi-subconsciously amplified real-life traits. It would be a nice excuse for social awkwardness/failings, among other things and I would feel more unique special (stupid, I know...). Finally I started realizing that I really would not desire to be an actual aspie, and the mild traits I have that I thought were "good" parts of autism don't leave just because I reject foolishly labeling myself with something that doesn't fit. I feel like there were a few more relevant things I had to say, but they're escaping me now...