A new study looked at over 58 million pieces of content shared from 2015 to 2025 in 1,659 conspiratorial groups about autism across 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Why would it be a problem for me to make a video saying “look I have a cool new stim”? Is stimming only permissible if I suffer socially for it? Is it a problem to celebrate stimming itself as something positive and good that helps me regulate my anxiety? I didn’t even know those little pop-it toys existed until like a year ago. I would never have known without TikTok and I now use them all the time.
As for the hitting people, I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’ve never even heard of that accusation before, and it’s certainly not what people mean when they talk about people “pretending to have adhd/autism for attention”. I’ve been in these communities before I know who they’re accusing of faking it. It’s largely women who are conventionally attractive who “dont look autistic at all” and non-binary people who “are crazy and make stuff up all the time for attention”.
Why would it be a problem for me to make a video saying “look I have a cool new stim”? Is stimming only permissible if I suffer socially for it? Is it a problem to celebrate stimming itself as something positive and good that helps me regulate my anxiety? I didn’t even know those little pop-it toys existed until like a year ago. I would never have known without TikTok and I now use them all the time.
As for the hitting people, I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’ve never even heard of that accusation before, and it’s certainly not what people mean when they talk about people “pretending to have adhd/autism for attention”. I’ve been in these communities before I know who they’re accusing of faking it. It’s largely women who are conventionally attractive who “dont look autistic at all” and non-binary people who “are crazy and make stuff up all the time for attention”.