 Look, I like a good autism joke as much as the next Joe, but at what point does it turn into an outright insult? Gamers, youtubers, streamers, pretty much in any online forum or group in the mainstream seem to be using autism as an insult or using autism as an insult in a very incorrect and stereotypical way. Um, if you disagree, you're either autistic or an incel or both, which means you're right wing. They'll all insult others, they'll insult themselves for doing something particularly wrong, not understanding something or generally just being an idiot. You look like you have autism, bro. I realize that in our current climate, the art of comedy, the art of jokes, seems to be under threat and a lot of people online seem to be talking about that said threat. I'm very much personally in the camp of, you know, jokes are good, comedians are great, if you don't like them, obviously don't listen to them. I think nowadays the line is somewhat blurred, some people seem to be using comedy as sort of a proxy for not necessarily taking accountability for the things that they say, but I feel like that's a very large minority of individuals. And as I said, I love a good autism joke. I love humor, I quite frequently use very sort of on the nose, perhaps cutting edge kind of humor that or even how how would people say it nowadays, edgy, edgy humor. Within my own sort of family and frame groups and it's kind of understood that it's a joke and all that, but when it comes to online, it's a little bit different. I like a good joke, but only when it makes sense and it isn't just a proxy for saying something as stupid, silly or immature. Or even a placeholder for more inflammatory terms that people have understood as not a good thing to say, like the R word. Let's dive into some of the ways mainstream online communities use autism negatively, but also diving into the ways people may make more accurate jokes if they really, really, really wanted to. It's okay, but normally you would not be going 65 down the wrong way over one way streets. I think this is a pretty simple one to start on. It's probably the most used form of autism in the mainstream circles. It is an insult. Someone does something strange, you call them autistic. You're annoyed at someone you call them autistic. You do something wrong, you insult yourself, you call yourself autistic. It's a very sort of casual way of using something that is a part of many people's identities as human beings. A registered disability even for jokes, for sort of another way of expanding your vocabulary. I feel like this is a pretty easy one to convince people of, like, not using it in this context. Because you're generally using autism as a negative thing, which it necessarily is not always the case. The absolutely butchered that sentence, just like your mama. That sounds awful. I would never butch you, mother. It's disgusting, even. Another way that autism may be used is to describe doing something incorrectly, doing something wrong. And if you have any sort of awareness of autism, if you have any sort of education, if you're an autistic person, you will know how silly this characterisation is. If someone was to say perhaps in one of their gaming streams that you are doing something wrong and they call you autistic because you're not doing this particular movement within a game properly, or you're not sort of doing the puzzle right or something of that nature. It doesn't really make sense because if you were autistic, you would probably have a pretty large interest in that game and try to perfect it and try to learn the ins and outs of it. So stereotypically, it should be more used in the context of doing something almost to a T, almost perfectly. Rather than doing something correctly. This is kind of playing a little bit to the stereotypes of autism, in that sense, yes, I understand. But in terms of general autism statements, I feel like it's a little bit more true to go with the latter rather than the former. I mean, just go and talk to an autistic person about something that they're interested in. You will see how intelligent they are, how meticulous they are, how perfectionist or almost perfectionist like they can be when it comes to engaging with their interests. I mean, if you come across like your average Joe who plays a video game, they might have like some awareness of actually playing the game. Oh, I've got something about that. Oh, oh, something in my eye seems to have gone. Probably no, it's probably going to come back as I continue to blink. Or as I say, yes, autistic people are more likely to be the type of person to understand all the law behind a certain game, to understand all the content creation, you know, they might play the game whilst listening to a YouTuber who's talking about the history of the game or a specific kind of complex technique that you can use in said game. Autistic people are much more likely to do that rather than just kind of haphazardly play a game and do it badly and do it incorrectly. It's also used to describe weirdness, to describe an eccentric individual. Someone who does not particularly follow the norms in terms of fashion, in terms of speaking, in terms of personality, someone that you can kind of point out and go that, you know, that's an odd person. Interesting. Yeah, I like it this way. And that's stupid. I think we can definitely be different. And I would argue more often than not, we do tend to be quite different from the average person because we've got a different brain, different neurodivergency and such. But it's always phrased as a bad thing. You know, it's never necessarily phrased as someone being eccentric or weird in a good way. It's always used in the negative. Like, that person's weird. Like, I want to stay away from them. Not necessarily, oh, that person's strange. This, but this is weird. This is unique. I like this. It's a subtle kind of difference in the way that people use it. And it just seemed like with a lot of these points that I'm listing off, it's generally a negative thing. Like it's used in a negative way. Being autistic is cool and quirky and different. And nobody wants to be normal. So why is both being weird and being normal equally a bad thing? It doesn't make any sense. Tell me why that makes sense. Is it just because it's the extremes of each, the extremes of normality, the extremes of difference? What is it exactly? Or is it just dependent on whether someone considers themselves to be normal and regular, talking about someone who's eccentric, or somebody eccentric talking about someone who's regular? Who knows? The internet is very strange. Autism is also used to describe somebody who is particularly nerdy or geeky. Somebody who kind of likes playing board games and card games and likes computer tech. Doesn't go outside and get sunlight very regularly. Somebody who's kind of in their own world doesn't really date, doesn't, you know, has a very sort of tightly knit friend group. This is kind of like the characterization of like a nerd or a geek or, you know, someone who really enjoys going to see particularly sort of particular movies just because it's like a part of their fandom. It's a part of their daily routine to research into each different separate aspects of a particular fictional world. Whilst this might be an accurate characterization on one hand for some people, it's very much overrepresented in the creators that you see online because I think there's a lot of people out there who do like and enjoy things which aren't necessarily nerdy or geeky. I think the majority of people probably don't look geeky or nerdy. I think most people just look normal in a sense. If someone in the comments is going to be like, oh, use the word normal, horrible, how dare you. You know what I mean. I'm just, I'm struggling to find another more socially accepted term. Just being a part of the autistic community and seeing sort of the crossover with other said communities within like sort of the LGBT kind of diversity disability advocacy kind of communities that autism is a part of. You may get an idea of what exactly autistic people are like, but you're not necessarily getting the full picture there. That is a portion of people, of course, and autistic people vary just as much from people who aren't neurotypical from each other as well. And if you if you spend enough time searching for like Jim and autism content, you will realize that, you know, whatever section of the internet you're talking about, there's going to be an autistic person who is a part of that sector. Just saying like all autistic people are like calling nerdy, geeky people autistic. I think does people deserve this? I don't necessarily see that as like a bad thing. Of course, like, doesn't get so cool. Like they tend to be a bit more chill, a bit more fun to talk to, a bit more kind of, you know, interesting, passionate about their interests. You know, it's not representative. It's the same thing about autistic people being good at maths. Calling something autistic just because it's a bit kind of niche, and a bit kind of gecky, gecky. Geardy. It's a new term there. Geardy. Are you a geard? I think I might be a geard. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds almost as peculiar as you look. This can be all solved by just looking at who exactly the world's strongest man is. Tom Stolman. Where's he like, 6'4", 6'9", jacked out of his mind, world's strongest man. Also autistic. Just pointing that out there. BJJ, world champion, although he might not, may look a bit more stereotypically geeky, that Mikey Musineski, I can't remember the, how to pronounce the last name. Obviously looks a bit kind of nerdy and geeky, but is an absolute machine, an absolute combat psychopath, when it comes to Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You've got to remember that these characterizations, these are very much stereotypes, and they're not representative of every single individual out there. So let's talk about some of the correct uses, and I do want to put a big stamp, a big caveat to this. I'd probably try to avoid this in the online spaces, just in general, if you're not a comedian. If you really want to make autism jokes, I'd highly recommend you kind of stick to these things, just because they make sense, and they're actually funny to me when people use them. Really depends, you know, if someone's using it as like an insult, it's kind of like, oh, if someone's kind of just labeling something as autistic, so it makes sense. It's kind of funny, you know, it makes sense. I can appreciate a good joke, if it makes sense. The Thomas police is coming through, everybody move out of the way, he's scarring through YouTube, ready to lay down some very polite corrections. I understand, I get it. Like, I was once sort of using terms very flippantly, because it was just kind of part of the culture. You know, you say gay a lot when I was in school, it's like, well, that's gay, you're gay, you know. People have sort of moved on from that, and so it's a little bit childish, and I'm hoping that perhaps in time, autism will also receive the same treatment. Because it's not okay, it's not good. Come on, you're not even putting any effort into making jokes. So let's look at some ways that you can use it more intelligently. Doing something repetitive for long periods of time. A particular game comes to mind that I very much enjoy, and I do love my repetition indeed. RuneScape, the act of skilling. Some people take this idea of skilling, sort of gaining experience in the most optimum way possible, to a very extreme degree, which requires them to basically click in time to a metronome. Look at the tick counter on the bottom. You start the three tick action, plus click the rock one step away in the same tick. Tick number two, your character will start knife logging, plus move at the same time. Tick three, you'll get your rock and it will reset. In order to like harvest resources at an ungodly speed. Using tick manipulation for gem mining, connect up to 120k an hour XP or 1.3 mil GP. I've tried it, I can't be bothered with that stuff. I prefer to just let my character just click on a tree and let it just like chop down, you know, sit back, relax, watch a YouTube video. On the topic of kind of inside knowledge, sort of specialized techniques, researching and understanding fringe topics in detail that people don't really know about. For example, one for myself. I know a lot about mosquitoes. You want to ask me a question about mosquitoes? I can probably give you a good old answer to that. You want to know about the different segments of a mosquito, guys? But I think that's important, because this is something that we do tend to do. We do tend to get very, very kind of somewhat obsessed, somewhat kind of focused on one particular thing and learning every single thing about that thing. We can't just watch the TV show. We have to watch documentary length YouTube videos on dissections of said movie or episode and comparison videos on which episode is the best and why and all sorts of different things. If you're autistic, it's probably going to fill up your entire day to some degree. There's going to be some aspect of that interest in your life and you're just going to over time accumulate so much knowledge sort of around this very niche topic. So it makes sense if you call someone autistic because they've been researching and understanding a very fringe topic in very extreme detail. There is also an aspect of being a little bit socially awkward, bits of offbeat, misunderstanding social things, large parts of it in terms of like the medical literature is around social communication. So something's kind of a bit awkward. I guess you could call them autistic, but I mean, to be honest, thinking about it, I can't really imagine a situation where that's not being used as a form of insult like to someone. I mean, if suppose if you're talking about yourself, you know, you could say like, oh man, I'm just really not good with girls. I just walk up to them and they say hi and they say hi back and the voice is just so alluring and it just throws me off, you know, as you know, and they're like looking into my soul from my eyeballs. Our pupils are doing a dance together, locked in. I just lose words. I just can't speak. Bit sheepish, like, yeah, it doesn't work, does it? Maybe I'll remove that one. I'll leave it in just to see you seeing me trying to think of ways to give people more accurate jokes, even though I don't want them to. Another probably apt way of using autism is when you don't understand someone's sarcasm. Makes sense, autistic people tend to struggle with sarcasm just because it's related to a lot of indirect behavior, the tonality of how you say things, the contacts, the body language, the facial expressions that you make and obviously it's very dependent individual to individual and not everybody always understands when someone's being sarcastic, but a lot of autistic people tend to find it quite hard. So maybe in situations where you just don't like large groups or noisy environments, I actually may use that. I think that's something that a lot of people can empathize with. It's noisy, busy places. Man, I can't go for like five seconds without someone brushing against me. It's incredibly disturbing. I hate it. Noisy environments obviously due to sensory differences. A lot of us have auditory hypersensitivity. Makes sense. You could use it in that case. And also if you are very, very stuck in your ways, not stuck in your way, stuck to a routine whereby everyone kind of has to kind of craft themselves around your routine. You know, perhaps you're a bodybuilder. You know, you have a very stable routine in terms of eating, in terms of going to the gym, in terms of sleeping. 8 o'clock in the morning, I'll have fish and a rice cake. But 10 o'clock, I'll have fish. But 12 o'clock, I'll have fish and a rice cake. Kind of makes a little bit sense. Well, these are some of the ways that you could use autism. And I'm not saying that these are like free passes and just use them. But I'd really encourage you if you really, really, really, really, really like losing the word autism. And you just don't want to stop using it, even though you are talking about a protected group of individuals who have in law a disability. You could try and use it a little bit more intelligently and not sort of propagate using it as an insult or using it incorrectly. At least do that. At least do that for me. Go on, go on. Just, I'll give you a cup of sugar, okay? Give you a little sweetie. Give you a little sweetie. Would you like a toffee? So I hope you have enjoyed this video. And if you want to, please consider subscribing, liking, do all of that YouTube, your East stuff. I have memberships if you want to check out. I mean, I probably don't even have to ask you. I'm just, I'm just so brilliant. So, you know, incredibly humble, just so humble. I hear from everybody at all the time, really. Like, Thomas, you're so, you're so humble. I don't, I don't know how you do it. You know, it's, it's taken a while to get to this point. It takes a lot of diligence, hard work, you know. Anyone can do it, you know, being, being that humble. See you on the flip side on the autism side. Ka-cha-ho.