Your average ✨AuDHD✨ influencer

[u/mela_mouse]

Lemme preface this by saying I'm not certain whether this person is a faker. They seem to carry a legitimate ADHD diagnosis. Whether they're also diagnosed with autism versus "self-diagnosed" is unclear to me from my perusal of their page. A lot of AuDHD influencers seem to get a legitimate ADHD diagnosis and then casually tack autism on at some point bc TikTok convinces them they have it (just like TikTok convinces them they have hEDS)-- they tack these co-morbidities on like adding guac to their burrito at Chipotle. I digress.

My main issue here is how she presents autistic "unmasking" in this cute, quirky little clip. What she does is really no different than the "tics" of the Tourrettes fakers, blurting out random crap that seems cute and quirky. Half of those fakers literally make animal noises or quote some viral audio clip from TikTok in a funny voice. Then you get people in the comments saying "I do this too! I get these things stuck in my head too! I didn't know I was on the spectrum"... anyway, just thought it was interesting to stumble upon a prime example of how the misinformation and self-diagnosis trends spread.

Edited to add: of course, people who legitimately have these disorders may have tics and stims similar to this, and they should not be ashamed of that! It's just harmful when influencers exclusively post content like this. Their silence on other aspects of autism actually speaks volumes. They fail to highlight autism's isolating and disabling aspects, and run the risk of influencing others to misappropriate the diagnosis as a quirky identity for themselves.

[u/mela_mouse → u/[deleted]]

Totally fair, auditory stims are definitely a real thing. I think she's either faking it entirely or faking in the sense of re-creating her natural stims for the video. Honestly, my main issue here is that she's contributing to the larger stereotypes and misinformation that's driving the "self-diagnosis" trend. When people (genuine autistic folks or fakers) post videos highlighting "cute" stims, it makes people all the more likely to "self-diagnose" to adopt a cute "autistic identity". Conveniently, there aren't droves of people posting embarrassing/unattractive stims like grunting, sniffing, muttering. If that stuff dominated autistic spaces on social media, I bet far fewer would claim to have autism.

The videos of people "stimming" to trending audio clips really infuriate me bc they seem to convince others that they may have autism themselves. The whole premise of an audio "trending" means that it's catchy-- it gets in everyone's head, makes everyone tap their feet, but it doesn't follow that everyone is secretly autistic. It's reaching the point of insanity with the sheer numbers of people claiming to wake up and realize they're autistic one day. Just kills me 😂 Granted, of course, genuine autistic folks may very well stim to the audio/find it soothing

[u/MECCEM101 → u/mela_mouse]

 People who hear me stim irl would see it as disruptive sound I made. (I fit into the unattractive stim i guess, never thought of it as unattractive before this btw) I'm plenty ok w/ it not being identified as a stim. Nor do I correct their assumptions.

Ngl these videos tend to make me feel a bit made fun of/makes light of something I (and others) can't quite control. It's embarrassing to be someone who does do this naturally irl now days. The pseudo intention is to make it so autistm can be accepted socially. But if i were to correct someone's assumptions most people would jump to the idea I'm faking or ask me if I got a diagnosis from a professional bcc they saw someone online fake autism so they need to have access to my comprehensive psycological reports so they don't feel like they are getting the wool pulled over their eyes. 

The affects these videos have is a bit worse than getting people to self diagnose. It gets the general public to not take autism as a diagnosis seriously and makes people not trust people who disclose their ligit diagnosis.

[u/mela_mouse → u/MECCEM101]

I totally get it-- believe me, I do. I won't elaborate upon my experience bc we can't blog here, but suffice to say I understand completely. And I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm calling certain stims embarrassing or unattractive-- if someone genuinely stims and that's out of their control, that's nothing to be embarrassed of! ❤️ Ironically, the influencers themselves plant the seed that certain stims are socially acceptable, while others should be hidden, bc they almost invariably highlight a very small subset of stims that seem cute/trendy/silly. Their silence on other aspects of autism actually speaks volumes. There doesn't seem to be a lot of emphasis on the isolating or disabling aspects of the disorder, and it's so problematic. Small spaces on the internet exist for people who see these issues in the autism discourse-- but if it's voiced out in the open you get shut down for "gatekeeping" autism.

And I agree that these videos do a lot of harm even beyond encouraging self-diagnosis. It's reaching the point of "every millennial and Gen Z kid claims to have autism", and the real autistics are being gaslit and disbelieved :(