Before you joined WP, what did you expect users would be lik

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Before I joined WP I didn't think you guys would have as much insight into your condition to be honest. I didn't think you guys would have many opinions or own ideas.

Seems I was mistaken though.

You didn't think that autistics would have insight into autism?

And you didn't think that they would have opinions on...ANY thing in general? Or do you mean just not opinions on autism?

Either way it seems like an odd thing to expect.

I wasn't surprised that anyone here had opinions or "ideas of their own"......

That's a bit disturbing you would think that to be honest...

But I was surprised that there is fighting and alienating bullying here, autistic person upon autistic person. I had imagined we'd all be compassionate to each other, knowing that the non-autistic world out there is often not and we need to stick together.

But one of the first things I saw was the old chestnut of diagnosed people having fights with "self-"diagnosed people and basically making them feel like they're a pile of fraudulent pieces of sh!t. At that time I hadn't yet sought an evaluation but "suspected" enough to realize I should seek one, but reading that sh!t I nearly turned right around and walked right out the door.

I had expected the intellectual level of the people here to be high, in general.

I was right.

I didn't know what to expect.

I thought they'd be younger. Which makes me think - where are the teenagers and young adults? The kid and teen sections are deserted, and most members seem to be over 30. Really thought there'd be more people my age (by this I mean, say, 13-25) but I can count the numbers of active teens I see on my hands, and can only think of one under 13. Where are the autistic young people?

I had no idea I was so young until recently.

I think the age distribution depends upon the individual Subforum

Within Love and Dating, people in their 20's seem to predominate.

within PPV, older people seem most common.

Within General, there really doesn't really seem to be one dominant age group.

This^.

(you must mean "PPR").

Quite a few long time high profile WP members are only now reaching 25.

^^^^^^
This

Really didn't expect so many old people (sorry I'm an as*hole) though - it's definitely interesting, no denying that. Both in how similar and different things were. Never thought I could relate to things people older than my parents were saying so I do like how mixed the ages are. I'm mainly on the general and there's some subforums I doubt I've ever posted on so maybe they're all somewhere I don't go - like if they're all in love and dating that explains it.

Was on another aspie site before I discovered this one. So had some notion of what to expect.

Yeah I'm old....

But I got spunk!

I didn't know what to expect. It was just another forum I had joined. I had already been in other aspie groups so I didn't see this place as any different.

When I first joined here in 2006, there were a bunch of young members here even teenagers but we all grew up or they left this place. I can remember a member here named icecreamgirl and she was only 15 and that was a few years ago. She would be 19 now and hasn't been active here since 2012 I think.

There have been teens (like Makalaya the Aspie) who come and go,and come back. but are now almost no longer teens.

MonsterCrack is only 16 but is very conspicuous on the PPR (the exceptional teen who goes there).

There is a middle school math fanatic named Rudin who shows up on several forums and makes a big splash on "math Science and computers".

I guess its the Media that makes it sound like only children are autistic, and never mentions the fact that autistic/aspie children grow up to be autistic/aspie adults. So actually one could be forgiven for assuming that everyone on an autistic website would be a child or a teen.

That's not what I was saying. Don't take what I was saying out of context. I was saying there's a disproportionately large adult:young people ratio on WP. That wasn't what I wasn't expecting. Don't know about you but I've seen barely any autism in the media, all of which I heard on WP beforehand and then I saw it.

Also seen more ones with adult autistics than children, I suppose due to privacy reasons. The only stuff I've seen on the TV are the autistic gardener (6 adults with asperger's) and born naughty (2 kids with pathological demand avoidance, 1 kid with autism). So I've actually seen more adults than kids in the media.