This feels like another recycled playbook: take vulnerable people, create doubt, then sell it as “concern.” People deserve support, not weaponized stigma.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
949 points (97.8% liked)
Science Memes
20058 readers
3250 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
But supporting people is hard and I don't want to do it. Why do that when I can just exploit them instead?
But how come?
Supporting people is rather easy actually. Being compassionate, caring and listening the other person and being supportive is generally rather easy and oftentimes just words are enough to encourage or console them. That stuff is so easy it can be even faked on autopilot without any effort.
But at the other hand, taking advantage of others/exploiting them just feels bad and even if it's possible to get used to it. It's kinda exhausting to constantly look over ones shoulder for the inevitable repercussions from the person being exploited and to avoid being exploited by anyone else?
Even if taken from the perspective of trying to exploit people. Helping them become better is a more profitable long term investment.
"I thought I was autistic. It turns out I'm retarded."
This is my darkest fear.
Names and addresses.
abigail (the person below, philosophy tube on nebula & youtube). did so on her video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S5w18sjYLk
so many companies/entities mentioned are headed/linked to the same bunch of people. I watched it few weeks ago, sorry couldn't specify the timestamp. but also heads up, 2 hours video.
It's funny since if you think you're autistic and it turns out you're not the consequence is literally nothing; your life continues the same as it was before.
Also let's be honest; Christina Buttons is 100% an AI generated character.
Her hair is fantastic.
It's probably also AI generated if I'd have to venture a guess
Well what are their names?
Yeh this is not doxxing if they are literally attempting to shape national policy. If you want to be left alone you should leave the fucking laws alone
They are a clear and present danger to people and must not be spared criticism and shaming for their actions.
More like "I thought I was autistic. I know I am autistic."
Yes, I'm actually autistic. Seriously!
IMHO, in a way, it's the desperate, desperate, oh so desperate need of people who can't deal with the uncertainty of Probability and Statistics and thus require everything to be a clearly defined something, no variance, no deviations.
It's the same reason why some people simply can't accept the Theory Of Evolution: the idea that "countless" (not literally, but figurativelly) random variances will yield incremental changes which over time add up to major change is just beyond them, so better have a single (or a handful) of fantastical all powerful beings of unexplained (and never questioned) provenance be the designers and agents of creation of all we see.
As I see it, shit like this is mainly stupid people compensating (in the Psychology sense of the word) for their own inability to comprehend the World as is and without mentally simplify it down to a handful of little labelled boxes.
Yeah I think we all have that little voice at some point that goes what it atoms aren't real, what if things are exactly as they appear? What about germs? What about the "globe"? What about "other" ""people"" and— and then you think about it a bit and it unravels very very quickly, but it's good to be able to throw your entire mental model into doubt sometimes.
I wonder if some people aren't able to build a satisfying mental model for some reason. I don't think it's just a matter of intelligence either, but something more emotional.
i think cycles of abuse play a factor. just like who makes life the hardest for trans people are people saying shit like "DON'T YOU THINK IF I COULD JUST LIVE MY LIFE AS A MAN I WOULD" or who often is the hardest on lesbians are married women saying shit like "well when i was younger i thought maybe i was attracted to your aunt susan but then my parents sat down with me and had the talk i'm having with you. you're just cofused. you'll come around in time. but until you come around you're not leaving this house"
i think some of these awful ablist people got bullied in middle school for liking pill bugs, collecting baseball cards, or reading tolkein and now "they got through it" so they think other "weird" kids should, too. meanwhile us neurodivergent people think maybe we should try seeing if the world must truly run on blood
Hmm kind of sour grapes mixed with "I turned out fine" and then universalising that to a global proscription
Isn‘t autism and many other psychological conditions under and over diagnosed at the same time? A friend of mine got her diagnosis at the age of 31 (under diagnosed) and her doctor talked with her about social media bringing more people to her, which think they have autism, but don‘t (over diagnosing).
I don‘t want to talk anyone out of their diagnosis or give them doubts. As long as there are tests there will always be false negatives and positives and so if you test more it will influence the outcome.
PS: The article is probably bullshit.
Yeah, and there does seem to be an increasing number of people who self-diagnose medical conditions such as autism, and then use them as excuses for their own shitty behavior.
Or sometimes that of others. I had a relative try to excuse Elon's bullshit as autism. No, aunt Grace, autism does not make people throw out Nazi salutes.
Often it's the same people who dismiss legitimate challenges other people face due to medical conditions yet have one of their own (self-diagnosed) they use to excuse shitty behavior.
What you're describing isn't really an over-diagnosis thing though, it's more that visibility has increased and the stigma has been reduced, so more people go to a professional to have it investigated.
Over-diagnosis would be people who actually get diagnosed with autism but end up not having it.
I think the criteria and diagnosis evolving as the science gets better also has an impact. The idea that only young boys have autism was the prevalent one not that long ago, but we know better now so now more people are being diagnosed with it since we understand it better.
I'm trans and wasn't diagnosed as a kid because i had high masking autism ("girl autism") instead of the "boy autism" they were looking for.
I disagree, I think the anecdote of an adult over 30 years of age being diagnosed is a fair example of under-diagnosis. And since your comment was more on the over-diagnosis side, I think it’s fair to point out. That the visibility and lowered stigma contribute to the over-diagnosing. It can’t be helped. Medical professionals are subject to the same biases of visibility that the rest of us are, even if they should know better.
Also some patients are certainly self-diagnosing based on freely available information, be it valid or not, and sharing their diagnosis as if it was a real one. When others encounter these claims, their instinct typically isn’t to argue or accuse someone of being a fake autist so they update their own mental models with a “this is what autism looks like” and the trend continues.
Ah, I misinterpreted you then, that's my bad. :)
It is exactly what I am describing. In any test you will have false positives. Then the broader you test the more false positives you get. This was also a thing during Corona in Germany. At the start of the pandemic only people with symptoms should get tested, because with low case number and even a very good test and test procedure you can easily get more false positives than true positives. This is true for every test where true positives are rare. The math is pretty simple here.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Autism (neuro divergence in general really) under capitalism, is the engineering equivilent to being a sacrificial gear in a gear box. You have your purpose, you do it well when placed in the proper gear set. But you wear out faster than all the other gears, not because you are a bad gear, but because the system itself was designed to crush you rather than crush the bigger more expensive gears. It was built for their longevity and success, not yours. This is them giving the squeeky wheel or "gear" "the grease" in a fucked up way.
They are trying to gaslight different groups into thinking they are just a regular normal gear, and they need to just work harder, even if it means the gear breaks quicker as a result. We are cheaper to replace than we are to repair, and that is the logic that makes capitalism unworthy of human participation, it is inherently anti human in all spectrums.
I don't think this is a Capitalist thing explicitly.
Being significantly outside the norm in visible ways is often a problem in any human societies, mainly depending on which traits one has which are most different from the masses and the time and society one is in. I mean, a highly intelligent woman with knowledge of herbal remedies in a 12th century European village would likely be deemed a witch, in a Native American tribe would be a healer and in present day society either nobody would notice or think her as old-fashioned "with all those teas".
I expect that Neuro-divergence, being behavioural, is one of the hardest to accept as "normal" things in any human societies since humans are generally social beings. I mean, in present day in most of the West even Introversion (which is much more prevalent) is often perceived as a problem that people must overcome ("You need to go out more") rather than just another perfectly normal way of being.
As I see it the neuro-divergent are just unlucky of living in an age of cities were it's pretty hard for people to just live away from the rest most of the time and being out of the norm behaviouralliy ratther than say, in terms of body shape or having a preference for unusual foods.
PS: Now that I think about it, the whole insane "grift everything" culture of the current Late Stage Neoliberal Capitalism probably makes life way harder than it need be for people whose more variant traits negativelly affect social interaction, since in so many areas where merit in that domain was usually enough, now one must "pitch" and "network" a lot to get ahead.
My point was that we live under capitalism, therefore this is one way capitalism handles neuro divergence. We can go day and night about what we think or know about other times and systems and how they treated "others" but i was merely pointing out the propaganda that is marketing under capitalism, and how they use it to make us self regulate ourselves out of commonality and acceptance, to save money on the next quarter, at the cost of human life.
Is it just capitalism that alienates and destroys the lives of people who are different? No, absolutely not. However, this specific article is a prime example of how capitalism (today) handles neurodivergence by gaslighting us against our own existence via marketing and propaganda. Corporations hate paying for accomodations, it effects their bottom line. And thats the point i was making. This is how capitalism views us, this is how it handles us, this is how they weaponise our existence, for power and profit.
I understand your point and mostly agree. However i just dont have anecdotal experience living as a herbalist in the darkages, lol. And i dont believe whataboutism addresses the issues we face specifically from the system we live under right now in the present.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›