You are completely right and that is what I thought while writing. But I didn't edit my thought process because it is exactly that, a process. I left it there so that it's visible. It might be shitty of me to think that way, but ignoring it will not bring change. Working through my assumptions and reaching a conclusion that it's not my place to judge (even though I still feel those things really strongly), that was the purpose of this exercise. As you can see, I didn't mention this person by name and I didn't attack them because that was not the point. The point was to work through my own assumptions. I cannot stop my brain from making judgments, but I can choose the way I act on those judgments. In this case, it was pouring out my thoughts on the page, so they leave me alone. I didn't share this process with the expectation that anyone would ever read it.

I don't want to make this world less welcoming to autistics, far from it. I want you to feel safe to be yourself. But I also know that there are people out there who will use anything they can find to get attention (and they do deserve attention and maybe some help too, but for other reasons), while undermining the efforts of actually autistic people who are trying to bring awareness on some of the harmful stereotypes that an uninformed person may use as crutches to get attention.

Those stereotypes were the only things that this person was presenting in her videos. They are harmful and superficial and don't ever take the perspective of the person described by them. On that note, you might enjoy this page a lot, it's run by a person I am very sure is autistic and I never even heard her speak. https://www.facebook.com/awakeaspie/ (please ignore the "aspie" in the name, it's probably from the beginning of the project, before it was called the AWAKE project). You will see there some examples of how those stereotypes translate in real life and how different wording can open up a world full of possibility.

I do hope you try your hand at making your own tiktoks if that's a platform you enjoy spending time on and I do hope you find and stick to the nice people over there. Nasty people are everywhere and they will spew nastiness over your work, regardless if you're autistic or NT, because that's the only way they know how to interact. So don't take it personally. That's one of the most important lessons I learned as a kid. It's not about you/me. It's about them. You do you 🧡