Talking to other aspies

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I usually like talking to other Aspies. We can find similarities and infodump about our interests. I don’t have to hold myself back like around neurotypicals. All of my close friends are aspies or at the very least “nerds.”

What do you think? Do you (generally) prefer to talk to neurotypicals or Aspies (or neither) and why?

I haven't experienced greater ease in talking to autistics as opposed to non-autistics. If there is no common ground, it will be just as awkward. The only thing to note is that at least no one finds it weird when we don't have that much eye contact or when we stim, etc. Other than that, I sometimes find it easier to talk to certain non-autistics, because I find that autistic people, even when they mean well, tend to be lacking in empathy, warmness, and politeness. Myself included.

I find it much easier to talk to fellow Aspies

I've only ever met one other person with Aspergers and he was very easy to talk to.

Sadly havent gotten the chance to talk to one yet.

they're all around, but concentrated in certain places more than others.

Guess I just don't talk to ennough people in general

well, we are all different people regardless of diagnosis. I usually get along with aspies (my best friend is on the spectrum) but i've met aspies i didn't get on with or didn't have a lot in common. like this girl i lived with this yr - she was obvs not very verbal and was hard to chat with her. also she seemed to not like me.

if you are into gaming then you might find a local club that is likely to have a higher concentration of 'em.

go to your local university library on a regular basis and check for the guy/girl staying in the same spot and coming to it at a similar time with the same coffee and roughly doing the same thing

I've known two guys over the years that i believe to be Aspie.

One shared the same special interest of collecting and restoring a very specific type of antique. I met him through a forum dedicated to that pursuit. He was in his late fifties, single and lived with his elderly mother. He was on disability SSI. He lived a few hours from me. We would talk at length about restoration techniques, fashioning custom tools to assist in the process, etc. We could talk literally for hours on that same topic, to which anyone else would have screamed. It was effortless to talk with him about that shared special interest. Interestingly we almost never talked about any other subject and neither of us cared to. I lost track of him after the forum fell apart and I didn't have time due to starting a family to devote to the interest.

Another guy I talk to and go out to lunch with, both on rare occasion, is easy to talk with. He also was single and lived with his Mom until she died. He's quirky and eccentric and bounces from job to job since he seems to unintentionally offend coworkers. He speaks with an expansive and expressive vocabulary as I do. I consider him an acquaintance since I bump into him only 2-3 times per year.

In both of the above cases I had/have never masked with either person and right from the beginning. I felt no need at all.

That you know about! There are many who may not even know it themselves, and many who are uncomfortable telling anyone. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 45, and before that, I knew I was odd and had certain problems, but had no inkling at all that it could be autism. When I told most of my friends about my diagnosis, I discovered that I already had two autistic friends; both diagnosed in middle age like me. There are couple of others who, once my disclosure opened up discussion, I strongly suspect may be on the spectrum or have a similar developmental condition (which we discuss openly, and one is seeking a diagnosis.)

If the diagnosed friends hadn't told me, I wouldn't have been able to pick them out from our circle of friends, nor would I have said that they were more "like me" than any of the others. I thought it odd at first that there would be three or possibly more of us in such a relatively small group of friends, but really it's no surprise. The non-autistic (as far as we know) people in the group are all very open-minded, forgiving and implicitly accepting of diversity; we were attracted to the same group of people because we felt more accepted by them, inadvertently bringing us together.

Occasionally, we'll have conversations about autism and share advice, but for the most part, our friendships haven't changed much since we discovered this link between us, and we're as different from each other as we are from the non-autistic people in the group in most respects.