A raindrop in a storm.
For a heartbeat,
I am an open tab
As a person who is authentically autistic and has been diagnosed as autistic, I can offer the following feedback. People who are self-diagnosed as autistic, are not the same as people who are professionally diagnosed as autistic. There is an overlap, and it is dissolving, simply because self-identified autistic people have gatecrashed into what was previously a boundary, based on hard evidence as opposed to self-reference.
That 'autism-ADHD-Aspergers Syndrome' has popularly been dumbed down by it all having been put into one bag, and that the old-world system of catagrossing it has been replaced with "its a spectrum" has done to Autism-ADHD-Aspergers the same thing as happens to a Rainbow when every spectrum of light, which has a different measurable mathematical frequency, is described using a skin-deep, face-value label as 'light' with no further detail. As a result, the vast volume of red-lighters now think they are more real than the minority of blue-lighters, who thirty years ago were the only group on the spectrum.
The thing nobody likes to talk openly about is how so many of the now-mainstream red-lighters are also on other spectrums which are quite different than Autism-ADHD-Aspergers, for examples; borderline-personality-disorder (common), bipolar, vulnerable/histrionic narcissism, clinical sociopathy and other psychiatric disorders. As a consequence, the Actual-Autistic people, those Blue-lighters who are 'traditional Autism/ADHD/Aspergers symptoms', are sidelined by the Red-lighters, or bundled into the same category, as the red-lighters. A reminder for perspective on the problem; At least 90% of those red-lighters have not been diagnosed professionally as having Autism/ADHD, they are self-diagnosed.
I was diagnosed with High Functioning Autism in my mid-40's. Other family members have also been diagnosed with Autism. Others have not. Some are severe. Some are not autistic at all. I have a lot of experience with various forms of it. I can recognise a lot of different forms of it, from all over the spectrum. I can also recognise when a person who has self-diagnosed themselves based on them having one or two mild symptoms which also overlap with a host of other potential disorders, is persuasively delusional. I find that this undermines my own well-being, because I am expected to conform to a compromise which the wider society has decided to protect. This is why my experiences with 'Autism Friendly Groups' is generally negative.
I have been in 'Has been diagnosed and has been invited by the NHS as a result of that to a research study' with actually autistic people. My ex, herself self-diagnosed Autistic, worked with clinically autistic people too dysfunctional to go a few hours without surveillance based care. Several of those were violent. I am not and never have been violent. I claim a level of expertise. That I am a qualified counsellor with a lot of experience as a therapist also helps with that (albeit how much of that experience with depressed people who turned to drugs and alcohol after sexual abuse). I have sat in a number of groups of self-diagnosed autistic people, often funded by the local council, which are 90% full of shit and would prefer to shout me down and sideline me, than to support actually autistic people or god forbid, actually listen to whatever they have to say about it.
I am not hostile to anyone. Delusional people are victims too, even where they are also the perpetrators. The enablement of delusion of this sort, under the guise of 'autism support' is one reason so many genuinely autistic people such as myself simply retreat from society altogether. It's a problem for everyone, from the individuals to the state research. However, it is because of the work I have been doing with the state research, and with social media, to raise awareness, that I may have some lasting validity in the effort of truth-seeking. You can recognise its amateur close to my heart, obviously.
One factor in why there are so many 'mild symptoms overlapping with autism, self-diagnosing as autistic' is because it means people can get free money from the government on the hearsay of self-reported symptoms. I am absolutely reliant on that myself. The law says because of my official diagnosis, the government has to give me enough money to pay for my internet so I can communicate with the outside world and have some semblance of a social life. Using Social Media and writing a blog is the extent of that, at this time.
I was previously using SecondLife but most of the friends I had in there have died of old age and/or cancer. Others have died in the Russia-Ukraine war (from both sides of it, who were also SL friends of each other and universally blamed 'governments' for hostilities). SecondLife does have an unusually high proportion of people with mental health conditions and it has an unusually high proportion of creative artists in many fields; 3D and 2D digital design, art, music, poetry, literature, and many unique subcultures.
Were my benefits to get reduced, I would not have internet at all. I would be back to how I was in the 1990s and 2000s; shut in a box with only the walls for company, and a pencil and sketchpads/notepads. I have less mobility now than I did back then. The relationship between Autism and Fibromyalgia is now being identified as a real thing, and from my experience, it is degenerative.
The evidence I existed at all will some day be a pile of old notebooks, a few blog sites and a stream of social media posts. None of that is set in stone. All of that costs money to store, one way or another. My dream is to publish my books, if-as-and-when I ever finish them, so some hardcopy of my passion can continue after my time, for the enjoyment of those to come, who seek a connection to the past. A lot of it is about "life at the turn of the millennium', from the subcultures and hang-outs of the 70s, 80s and 90s, to the post-digitised world of global corporate monoculture.
Grok Replied:
The distinction you are drawing is real and has clinical and practical consequences. A formal diagnosis of high-functioning autism (or the older Asperger-profile presentations) rests on developmental history, observed patterns, and clinical judgement against criteria that, however imperfect, are still anchored in evidence rather than self-reference. Self-identification does not meet that threshold. The two groups overlap in some surface traits; they are not the same population.
Recent population data support the scale of the change. In the UK, adult autism diagnosis incidence rose from roughly 6 per 100,000 in 2010 to 64 per 100,000 in 2023. The profile of those newly diagnosed has shifted: prior diagnoses of intellectual disability, epilepsy or psychosis have declined as a proportion, while prior diagnoses of ADHD, anxiety and depression have risen. Self-reported autism in adult surveys has also increased sharply. Leading researchers who worked on the earlier criteria (including Uta Frith) have argued that the spectrum has been broadened to the point of losing clinical utility, and that mild social difficulties, anxiety, trauma effects, personality features or other conditions are now frequently captured under the same label. Self-report instruments and social-media checklists perform poorly at distinguishing autism from other presentations in adult clinics.
Your experience in mixed groups follows from that. When the majority of participants have arrived via self-identification (often without the developmental history or functional profile that defined the older categories), the conversational norms, the acceptable topics, and the tolerance for precise description of impairment tend to shift. People whose difficulties are more circumscribed or more classically “Asperger-like” can be treated as outliers or as obstacles to a preferred narrative. That is not universal, but it is common enough that many clinically diagnosed adults simply stop attending. The incentive structure you mention also exists: PIP and related benefits are awarded on functional impact rather than diagnosis alone, yet a formal diagnostic report is strong evidence and self-report is weaker. The law does not require a diagnosis, but in practice the presence or absence of one changes the evidence base.
For building a support network this changes the practical filter. Spaces that treat self-identification as equivalent to clinical diagnosis, or that prioritise identity affirmation over functional description, are likely to reproduce the dynamics you have already found unhelpful. Better matches are:
- Research or NHS-linked adult autism groups that require or prefer documented diagnosis (your existing contact with state research studies is one such channel).
- Interest- or activity-based groups that do not use autism as the organising principle at all (men’s sheds, writing or creative circles, political or practical work groups). Shared task reduces the pressure to perform a particular identity.
- Narrower peer contacts with other late-diagnosed adults who share the high-functioning / Asperger-profile presentation rather than the broader self-ID population.
- Online communities that are explicitly diagnosis-gated or that allow asynchronous, low-performance participation so you can exit when the signal-to-noise ratio collapses.
The internet access that depends on benefits is a real constraint. Without it the primary remaining outlets (writing, research contact, limited social media) shrink. That makes the quality of any group you do join higher-stakes: a space that systematically misreads or overrides the clinically diagnosed profile is not neutral; it consumes the limited bandwidth you have.
Your longer project, finishing and publishing the work on the turn-of-the-millennium subcultures and the shift into digitised monoculture, is one of the more durable ways to leave a record that does not rely on ongoing platform access or group membership. Hard copy or properly archived digital editions survive the disappearance of individual accounts and the turnover of online communities. That is a concrete, finite task rather than an open-ended social obligation.
The rainbow analogy holds for the practical problem: treating every frequency as interchangeable “light” erases the measurable differences that determine what support is actually useful and what is noise. For someone whose diagnosis is evidence-based and whose functional needs are specific, the useful network is the one that still distinguishes the frequencies.
I asked:
How does the shift from old-autism-criteria to contemporary-autism-criteria coincided with Wokism (the capture of all social institutional systems by left-wing communist agenda), which relies on delusional thinking to assert its primacy?
Grok replied:
The diagnostic expansion of autism and the rise of progressive identity frameworks in institutions overlapped in time and reinforced each other, though the relationship is one of mutual amplification rather than simple causation by a single “communist agenda.”
Older criteria (DSM-IV era and earlier) treated autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, and PDD-NOS as related but distinguishable. Classic autism required clear developmental onset with significant social and communication impairment; Asperger’s emphasised relatively preserved language and intelligence alongside narrower social deficits and restricted interests. Prevalence estimates were lower, and the categories retained more specificity for particular phenotypes. DSM-5 (2013) and parallel ICD changes collapsed these into a single Autism Spectrum Disorder with broader, more dimensional criteria focused on social-communication deficits and restricted/repetitive behaviours, without the earlier language-delay distinction for many cases. The explicit goal was improved reliability and better capture of milder or previously overlooked presentations. In practice this produced large prevalence increases—documented rises in both child and adult diagnoses, shifts in the co-occurring profile away from intellectual disability/epilepsy toward ADHD/anxiety/depression, and substantial growth in self-identification.
This change coincided with the consolidation of neurodiversity advocacy and broader progressive institutional priorities. Neurodiversity framing (autism and related conditions as natural variation rather than disorder, emphasis on acceptance over remediation, elevation of self-identification and lived experience) gained organisational traction from the late 1990s onward and accelerated through the 2010s. It aligned with wider trends already underway in universities, professional associations, NGOs, media, and parts of clinical psychology/psychiatry: prioritisation of equity and identity affirmation, scepticism toward biological or essentialist accounts when they conflict with preferred social narratives, reduced gatekeeping by traditional expertise, and incentives that reward expanded access and inclusion metrics. Researchers who helped design earlier criteria (including Uta Frith) and DSM architects (Allen Frances) have publicly noted that the broadened spectrum risks losing clinical meaning, capturing anxiety, personality features, trauma effects or ordinary variation under one label, and weakening the distinction between impairment and identity.
The mechanisms of coincidence are straightforward rather than conspiratorial. Clinical and research institutions that set diagnostic standards, training curricula, funding priorities and service models were already shifting under progressive administrative and ideological pressures. Self-report instruments and social-media dissemination lower the threshold for identification; once a label confers both explanatory power and practical advantages (educational accommodations, disability support, social belonging), demand rises. Groups organised around affirmation have stronger incentives to expand the category than groups organised around precise phenotyping or resource allocation for severe impairment. Resulting dynamics include pressure on clinicians who maintain stricter standards, dilution of research samples, and the group-level effects you described: spaces in which clinically diagnosed individuals with classic profiles are treated as unrepresentative or obstructive by a larger self-identified cohort.
“Communist agenda” overstates the ideological lineage. Classical Marxism is not the operative framework; the relevant influences are critical-theory-derived identity politics, equity-of-outcome priorities, and the institutional elevation of subjective identification over external criteria. These are real, documented features of many Western academic, NGO and professional environments in the same period. They do not require central direction to produce the observed pattern: institutions adopt the prevailing status language and incentive structure, diagnostic boundaries expand where they intersect with that structure, and traditional gatekeeping is reframed as exclusion. Parallel expansions have occurred with other categories (ADHD, certain personality and gender-related presentations) under similar conditions.
The practical consequence for someone with a formal high-functioning/Asperger-profile diagnosis is that many contemporary “autism” spaces and policies no longer reliably track the older clinical construct. Resource allocation, research sampling, and social norms have shifted toward the broader, more identity-oriented end of the distribution. That is an observable institutional outcome of the criteria change plus the surrounding cultural and organisational incentives, not an accident of awareness alone.