Watching autistic characters on TV as a masking strategy?

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Here's one approach to navigating "the NT social world out there" that may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, even paradoxical - which has at least worked for ME - and it's THIS:

Watch a lot of programs with autistic characters; then ask yourself if you've exhibited the same traits.

If you HAVE noticed yourself exhibiting those traits, then you have a baseline or template to cut them out - should you be inclined towards the masking strategy (as a high-functioning and high-masking autistic for a long time, it's worked for me; also helps that I've got a small circle of enlightened friends who've helped me along the way, without abusing me like others). It also helps that, after you've noticed some cringey behaviour from such a character on TV, pay attention to the non-verbals that the NTs around them give off - rewind and pause if necessary. This will help stimulate behavioural changes and masking for yourself.

Or - as I've noticed several times for myself - you may notice certain behaviours from an autistic character on a TV show that YOU KNOW you would NEVER do yourself!! ! (Or that you used to do, but you stamped out since.) If so - then give yourself a pat on the back for this - perhaps. What I mean by that is, and I don't think I'm the only one, I find that depictions of autistic characters on TV are not really accurate; this is possibly because they're invariably played by non-autistic actors. Just look at the character of Sam Gardner on the series "Atypical".

While Sam is clearly on the spectrum, he is played by Keir Gilchrist, a neurotypical actor. While Gilchrist largely does credit to the role, I mean he's mostly within the right parameters, I'd rebuke the producers and writers somewhat with some of the misunderstandings that his character Sam experiences. For instance: there's this scene where some mean kids in the school hall are using the word "p****" in the obscene sense and Sam asks whether they're taking about kitty-cats which, of course, elicits some derisive laughs and reactions of "what a weirdo". Then one of the boys says "Hey man, don't give him a hard time, he's 'not all there.'" to which Sam replies "What do you mean?! I'm right here!!" and they laugh derisively again.

Well, I can tell you that when I was 17 (back in the early 90s) I may have been clueless but I wasn't THAT clueless!! I certainly knew several idiomatic and obscene expressions, including those, and never had those kind of misinterpretations.

I wouldn't say they made me mask anything, but I've seen autism-like behavior on TV and I've thought "That was a stupid thing to say/do," and then I've resolved not to make the same mistake. But I don't do it to hide anything, I do it to become a better person.

For example, Doc Martin was dragged into handing out awards at a school ceremony, and as he was keen to get back to his patients and get something important done, he streamlined the process and was handing them out at a rate of about one per second, cutting out all the pointless ceremonial crap in between. Everybody was very shocked and annoyed with him for that.

Watching that reinforced my feeling that pointless ceremonies mean a lot to mainstreamers, and that if I'm going to take part in them at all, I'll probably do well to show a bit more respect for that than Doc Martin did, even though ceremonies mean very little to me. But I don't think that's masking. If somebody asks me point blank what I think of ceremonies, I'll give them an honest answer.

^
Mind you, the people around him were pretty disfunctional themselves. And he was a very good doctor apart from his blunt bedside manner.

He didn't mask much at all, and when he did it usually backfired.

^He was a great doctor. And I think his bedside manner was much better than Dr House's.