 We're gonna watch a video from Foster on the Spectrum, which is ranking autistic characters in brackets. They don't all suck. Veronica, don't make me come in there. I'm gonna count to three. One, two, five. Hello, weirdos. My name is Foster, and today we are going to rank a bunch of autistic characters based on the characters themselves, whether or not I have a crush on them or their sisters. But of course, also based on how the shows themselves represent autism and what kind of narratives they try to spread about autistic people. If you're new here, I am autistic. It would be very random for me to be doing this if I was not autistic. The only other thing I wanted to tell you before we get into it is that while I was googling autistic characters to try and make this list, two of the people also search questions were who has the most autism and who is the most autistic person. So let me know if you know the answer to that, because apparently a lot of people have been googling to try and find out who the most autistic person is. So this is the tier list. All you need to know about it is that S tier at the top means the best, and D tier at the bottom means the worst. I don't know why that's how it works, but that is how it works, and we have to... I think it's... If I'm not wrong, that kind of ranking system is from video games. Pretty sure. I don't know. You have characters that you play, particularly in fighting games. They rank them based on what their fighting ability is like or something. Maybe it was like pieces of items from games. It's definitely derived somewhere from games, I think. But yeah, it would be a bit strange if... What was one of the search terms? What is the most autism? What is the most autistic characters? Yeah, it would be a bit different of a video if it was ranked by how strongly autistic each character is. Who has the most autism? What's the spectrums like Pokemon going to catch up with? Yeah. We have to accept that. So we're going to start with Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. I will be transparent and tell you that I have only seen parts of this show from behind my brother's grandpa's good chair where he would sit and watch it. Because I'm pretty sure this show was made for white men over the age of 38 at least, so I haven't seen all of it. And you may be thinking, hey, actually the writers and producers of that show do not say that Sheldon is autistic. That's not confirmed. As a matter of fact, they've even said that he's not autistic. Here's the thing about that. This is the only character on the list who is not confirmed to be autistic. However, the reason I'm still including him is because everyone knows he's autistic. And I'm not saying... I mean, it's pretty clear what they're trying to describe Sheldon as. Like his mannerisms, the things that he's interested in. Like just how the other characters interact with him. It's very clear that he's different in some fashion. I think them saying that he's not autistic is more of like a... Because I imagine there was a lot of people within the community who have probably had a little bit of a backlash against the show for representing autism in sort of like an unfavorable light. So I imagine that it's kind of a reaction to the backlash maybe just so that they can cover the books. That's just my thoughts. No, I like that show. I'm not male. I don't mind. It's all right. It's kind of like mind dribble. I don't know how to describe it. It's just kind of like watching soaps in the UK. It's just kind of dribble. Something on the background. Anything with a laughter track tends to be dribble in my experience. Not everything, of course, but... I think there's a few shows that are like the IT crowd, maybe. Yeah, yeah, Sheldon is a character, 100 percent. And it's kind of interesting as well, because it does really sort of highlight just how it's like the way that they present Sheldon in the shows, like the way that the characters, when the characters interact with Sheldon, he's kind of painted as being in the wrong or doing something quirky or out there. And so the show kind of like like the perception that they have of Sheldon is that, I don't know, they paint him as being in the wrong, whereas he's just kind of like being an autistic person. And, you know, like the other characters in the show are just not really understanding it. I'm not getting him. I don't know. I don't know how else to describe it. I think maybe that's the best way of saying it. I love the IT crowd. Yeah. Yeah. It's not dribble to me. Sorry. Sorry. I mean, it's, yeah, it's not my favorite, but I can watch it. It's like backgrounds for me. You know, I like the science involvement, that's pretty cool. Not saying that because I want him to be autistic. I actually really want him not to be. I would love to not have him on my team, but he is here. The producers of this show took every one of the most stereotypical, unnecessary, unrealistic stereotypes about autism. And then they just, like, jammed them into Jim Parsons. And so now we have to welcome him to the community, whether they want him to be here or not. I know I don't, but he's here. Do you know what I mean? Like, everyone just knows that he's autistic to the point where, like, if I'm like, I'm autistic, people are like, save a zinga. There are no other headcanons on this list. All of the rest are confirmed autistic characters. But let's talk about Sheldon. Sheldon sucks, dude. He's a misogynist. Sorry if you like any of these characters, by the way. Feel free to disagree with me. They're just people dressing up as autistic, so it'll be OK. But yeah, I hate him. He has the. I don't know. I think I saw something about, like, the the person who plays Sheldon Cooper. I don't know what his name is, but I think he wanted to to give, like, a better. I think I saw something like maybe an article or something where he was, like, basically trying to represent autism properly. But the show the producers wanted to, like, use him for laughs or something. I can't remember. Save a zinga. Have you guys seen that meat canyon video of Sheldon Sheldon Cooper? Jim Parsons. I don't I'm not very up on the whole celebrity stuff. He has the fakest description of Savant syndrome, where it's like, oh, he remembers everything that he's ever learned, which isn't a thing. He is a genius. He knows everything about every subject, like, girl, get over it. I don't want to hear about him. I have no interest in Sheldon Cooper. He also just, like, hates women. Remember that time that he said that one female scientist had a penis made of science because you have to be smart in order to be a man? Yeah, fuck Sheldon. He's going straight to DT. Yes. OK, next on the list, we have Sheldon Cooper from Young Sheldon, who is the same guy, but when he was younger, he's a soon to be misogynist and he still has the, like, Savant, I know everything, whatever. But also, for some reason, I like him more. So he's going to go in seat here. And you're probably going to. I don't know. I kind of I've met people who are sort of like I've met a lot of autistic people who kind of autistic men, to be honest, who are sort of like like Sheldon in the way that they kind of conduct themselves and think like they're very sort of blunt and they kind of want to know everything, like their opinion is always the best one. And it's very hard to convince them otherwise. I have met people like that. But like it's definitely not representative of all autistic people for sure. I don't know. Have you have you guys ever come across someone Sheldon Cooper like? I'd be interested to know. You're going to notice as I go through this list that a lot of the characters I'm going to mention have a special interest related to science or a job related to science. And I just want to say that's like not all autistic people like science. But I do. I love science. And that is why I've been using today's sponsor, Blinkist, to listen to the key insights from over five hundred five thousand books and podcasts that are all nonfiction from a much newer show. And that is Norma from Dead End Paranormal Park. And what is the opposite of trust? Mistrust. It's fair. No, it's definitely mistrust. So Norma is a character whose special interest is this theme park and the woman who this theme park is based around. And that has been her special interest for 15 years. And the show takes place during a summer when she is given the opportunity to work at this theme park. And things get like creepy and crawly. It kind of has vibes similar to like Gravity Falls or Star Versus the Forces of Evil and all of those things. It's the like the the image that is showed like the graphic style. It's very much like you guys seen the regular show. I don't know. I think I think that's the kind of style stylistic kind of approach to it. I think we also saw a video from Toon Ruins like at the start when I started streaming. I think I reacted to a Toon Ruins video on was like Steven's Universe. There was like a couple of characters on there like Peridot or Peridot and Pearl were the characters that they highlighted as being like good sort of autistic representation. It's interesting. Wasn't there like also like a Thomas the Tank Engine one maybe Thomas the Tank Engine character who was autistic that they brought out? I think that was something that I saw in the news. The regular show, yeah. I love that show. It's funny. Also, the meat canyon of a regular show is funny as well. Meat Canyon is just hilarious. Things if you're familiar with them as for the autism representation itself, Norma is very literal. It depicts her sensory issues, special interests, obviously. She also has social anxiety and like panic attacks quite frequently. While I was watching the show with my boyfriend every time that she would do something autistic, he would look at me like this to see if I noticed that she was autistic. There was one scene that I found very relatable and that was very interesting for me to watch. And that is the fact that in one episode, all of the characters are transported to their fear worlds, which is like a world where all of their fears are real or their worst fear is real. And for Norma, that relates to social rejection. And she says, and I quote, my fear world is the real world. And that was one of my favorite things I've ever seen, I think, because for so many years when I was undiagnosed, people would assume that I just had like social anxiety and social anxiety is completely valid. But it's just what happens when you think you're bad at socializing and then get very anxious about it. That is not what was happening to me. I have very substantial real life difficulties with communication and was frequently unsuccessfully communicating things. It was never just my thoughts or things that I was worried about. It was real life. It was repeated real social rejection in real life. It was repeatedly being misunderstood, repeatedly not having anyone understand you, repeatedly being laughed at. It is really tough and it's hard to, like, try and describe to people who aren't autistic what, like, the experience of secondary school or high school, if you're American, is like for an autistic person. Because it's such like a transient thing. It's not like it's always going on all the time. But it's like there's there's any sort of interactions that you have with people. It's kind of what you're trying to say is not really received properly. And you're not really like understanding the greater context of things, especially when it comes to like confrontations or like drama. It's just like crazy. But the real world thing, like that being scary real world, honestly, like secondary school is was like a hellscape of chaos and anxiety and just feeling awful. So I could understand why they did that. So that's that's pretty cool, actually, that. And like the fact that it was like social rejection that they highlighted. I think that's quite impactful because that is something that we do. We do tend to experience a lot more than other people. It's not fun. Half that all the things and it was all real. Like people with social anxiety struggle a lot. And I completely understand that because anxiety is its own thing. But the whole point of like anxiety to the point that it's diagnosed as a condition is that it's not something you should be afraid of. It's not something that you realistically have a need to be afraid of. And that wasn't true for me. And it was really hard to go so many years without anyone understanding that, even though they could see that I had all of these issues. So I really liked this part of the show where they talk about the fact that you just have to actually live your life like that. And it isn't just the thoughts in your brain. It's not something you can be mindful about or just change your perspective because it's something that actually materially is happening. That is one of the most relatable. Yeah. And it's even more annoying, like when you confide in like adults, like parents, teachers, friends about the experiences that you're having. And they basically like I don't know. Their advice is to like follow your intuition on things. And I don't know if you guys have the same experience, but whenever someone says something on the lines of just follow your gut or go, it feels right or be yourself. It just it was just not like it was like the most annoying thing to hear because I wanted actionable steps on like how to better interact and socialise with people because it just wasn't working. It's like they kind of assume that you're just not you're not trying. Like it's just some it's something that you're doing to yourself or you're like worried, you know, it's very hard not to be afraid of anxiety. Yeah, that's true. Hello, Eric. Welcome back. How you doing? Yeah, it's it's it's tough, like and it's not very relatable, I think, to most people. And so like the advice that people give is just just just just more annoying, more like isolating more than anything. When people tend to give that advice, because it's like I think most most like neurotypical people from what I understand about like the psychology of it, they kind of transiently pick up social skills. Like they just kind of learn stuff from trial and error from like a very, very young age. You do this, what you would describe as subquarticle processing where things just kind of come naturally to them. Relationships and emotions and social situations just kind of come naturally to them because it's kind of like an inbuilt code to some degree. But when you're autistic, it's like you need to like understand things logically and think like, OK, this is the reason for this. And this is how I do this. And I have to integrate these aspects in order to do this. And it's like this very kind of like cortical in your head to kind of book learning kind of mentality. It's like learning stuff from a book and trying to apply it versus learning for experience like most people would. Do you know what I mean? Relatable things for me about Norma. I also just think she's very literal. She's very funny and I'm going to put her in S tier. Number four on our list is Sam Gardner from A Typical. One of the things about this show that I've heard get the most praise is their representation of special interests. Sam's special interest is penguins and Antarctica. And they kind of show how he views his entire life in terms of how it relates to penguins, which is really cool. It's also something really cool about the show is that if you watch it, you might learn a lot about penguins, which we would love to do. So that's another thing I mentioned in my last video that they do touch on serious topics, not super often. I think it's like it's interesting that they were posing in that way because that's usually when because I've been in SCN teaching for a while and my mom's very much into that. That's fear, you know, being like the head of a part of England for a while. And a lot of the ways that you can sort of engage autistic kids, especially like when it comes to education or like social stuff is by integrating their special interests into what they're doing. So it's very strange that they came across doing that as part of the series. I haven't actually watched A Typical because I don't tend to like content which is like designed to talk about autism or has like the main topic about autism. Because I find it kind of hits a little bit too close to home. It kind of if they do do it wrong, it kind of upsets me. So I just tend to avoid it. But yeah, I mean, that's I think that's cool. Like the way that they touch that. But I think Foster was going to talk about like the more serious stuff. Let's have a look, see what they say. Super often, but they do talk about how inaccessible college is and how ableism exists. They show Sam getting arrested for being autistic. And all of those are really important things. I have also heard A Typical be widely criticized as well. And two of the main things I've seen it criticized for is, one, the fact that Sam Gardner is super creepy to women and will not respect their boundaries. And in the show, there are usually never any consequences for this. He grabs a woman's ponytail and won't let go. That is assault. He also breaks into his therapist's house and leaves the chocolate-covered strawberry there because he has a crush on her. Once again, no consequences for this. He has super involved parents, but they don't tell him to stop doing shit like this. So generally, I think the show in my mind is pretty neutral. Like, I don't think it's the worst or the best. I will give it some bonus points because Sam has a sister. I'm a sister on you, like an egg. Dear God, I wish I was an egg. Anyway, something about being creepy to women. Next on the list, we got Queen from Heartbreak High. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, what is the kind of representation that this person is supposed to be? Are they supposed to be like an ASD one representation? Because I feel like, I don't know. It doesn't really fit. That doesn't really feel like something that would happen. Maybe not. I don't know. Because I think, like, in the grand scheme of things, even for an autistic person, like, I was I was pretty to myself. I didn't really talk much. But I still engage with people socially to some degree. I never did anything like that. You guys know, like, what what the kind of the design of the character was supposed to be like. Because I haven't really watched it myself. I'd be interested to know what you think. Queenie from Heartbreak High. What's Sam? What's the name of her? What's the name of the actress? I know the actress, Chloe Hayden. Yes, I've had autistic men hyper focused on me. Yeah, it took me to actually. Yeah, I think I think some some people can they really just don't know what to do when it comes to romance. And I think all of this like mannisfair alpha male stuff really just doesn't help at all. Yes, Sam is unclear. Like now study can wait, Queenie. Sex can't. Oh, OK. I didn't know that. So I'm talking about Chloe Hayden's character in the Australian reboot of the show Heartbreak High. And I can't wait to talk about it. A lot of you have mentioned this character to me as well. And let's get into it. Turn your fucking music off. So if you're not familiar with Queenie, one of the things that stands out about her most and that most autistic people are very excited about is, one, the fact that she is played by an autistic actress. And two, the fact that that actress is Chloe Hayden, who has been a big part of the online autism community for like a decade. She has been an autism advocate for so long and they cast her to play Queenie, which people are super excited about, including me. Now, in terms of Queenie, the character, and also, yeah, I'm definitely gonna mix up Queenie and Chloe because they sound too similar. But in terms of Queenie's character, I love her. I think she is very badass. I like how they cover special interests and they show not only the fact that she's obsessed with this fandom that she's a part of, she's obsessed with this book and she makes fan art of it and she's loved it for so many years. She knows so many things about it. She gets so excited about it. All of that is great. But they also show how having something that important to you can lead to a lot of disappointment. And I like that. I like that they actually tried to show something interesting with an understanding of autism rather than just making the autism itself be the interesting thing. They're also one of the only stars on this list. If not- That's what I'm saying. I like stuff where it's not like, autism's not like the central part of the show because I feel like it could go really bad. But if they have like an autistic character within an already established show, I think that's a great thing. I really like that a lot. I think as well, like I did see some clips from that Chloe Hayden put out about Quinny, like talking specifically about like, like interpersonal dynamics and stuff, which I think is really good because, I think because of the demographic of the actual show, I think it would be seen by like a lot of people who are going for like secondary school and high school. So I imagine that it's had quite a positive impact. I mean, I can't say for certain, but I would hope so, you know. It's not really my type of show, but I might give it a go actually because I have heard some good things about it. And if the representation is Chloe Hayden, I imagine it's gonna be pretty good. Might have to give it a go at some point, but you know what I think? Yeah, I'm sure they'll get onto the good doctor soon. If not the only one that shows a skill regression, Chloe, after having a meltdown becomes temporarily unable to speak. And I thought that was done really well. I also thought the meltdown scene was done really well. It didn't make me super uncomfortable the way that, first of all, non-autistic actors pretending to have meltdowns done, but also the way that a lot of shows do. Another thing that is super underrepresented in autism media is masking and that is touched on here. She talks about what it's like to mask for autism symptoms and why people don't know immediately that she's autistic. And that's really cool. I would really recommend this show to anyone who wants to see an autistic person being accepted. There is ableism. Chloe is in a relationship with Sasha. And Sasha is just wildly able. That's the scene though, so. In terms of Chloe's friends, their relationships are super cool and it's super cool to see her just being treated like a person. And then the final thing I wanted to say about Quinny is the Sia remark. So I've talked shit about Sia on this channel before and I intend to do it again. But basically Chloe Hayden, one of the things that made her kind of blow up when it comes to making autism content was the fact that she criticized Sia's movie music. That's a part of how she became one of the bigger names in the autism community. And then in the show, there is a scene where her character Quinny is talking to the ableist girlfriend, Sasha, and she says, okay, Sia. Meaning like, okay, ableist. And I love it so much. And that is 100 bonus points for making fun of Sia. And I will put Quinny and Sia, I love her. Next, we have a character from a short film. That is Renee from Disney's Short Loop. Hi, maybe we should... So this is a short film about a non-speaking autistic girl who is paired with this holistic boy on like a school field trip or a canoe trip or something. He doesn't wanna be paired with her because she's like weird in his eyes. She doesn't speak, she doesn't have an AAC device or anything, so they have to kind of learn to communicate with each other. And as they go through that, the boy that she's with starts to understand how she experiences the world as well, especially in terms of stimming and like emotional regulation. Renee is the only non-speaking character that I have on this list, just because I don't see them that often. And I am extremely glad that they are representing that side of the autism spectrum because they are so often ignored. In general... Yeah, 100%. And it's really strange actually, because like quite often when you get sort of reactionary content or people particularly from like the autism parent communities, like they very much like undermine the experiences of like ASD1 adults. Whereas if you talk to any of these like ASD1 adult like advocates and people like that, we want to see like more representation from like, you know, all aspects of the spectrum, you know? I think I have seen something which is similar to that. I might have done, I can't remember exactly where I saw it from, but I wish people would start raging on Sia. Yeah, I have lots to say about Sia. She's literary autistic and she has some issues working with anyone except Maddie, which is an autistic trait. Yeah, I haven't really got into it too much. I haven't watched much about Sia, to be honest. Probably needs to do a bit more digging into it, but I do remember people getting pretty upset and like annoyed with the film coming out. Wasn't it like boycotted? Like just completely like removed, might have been. Oh, I think that loop is a really, really cute short film. I really recommend watching it. It's super short and super cute. I'm gonna put Renee in A tier just because the film is so short. So I don't know a lot about her personality or enough to make her stand out enough to be in S tier for me. Next up is one that I think a lot of people won't be familiar with because she is a side character in a show that was not super wildly popular. This is Smackle from Girl Mates World and we're also gonna talk about Farkel and the whole autism scandal. It's a really strange situation. So basically one of the main characters, Farkel, believes that he is autistic. Doctors are like testing him and trying to figure it out and they hate this idea. They are so upset that he might be autistic because they think autism is a terrible thing. This website lists symptoms of Asperger's. The first one they mention is social awkwardness. Check. You don't do anything awkward. Ha! Well, that's just something you do and you're gonna stop doing that. He's gonna stop doing that. Oh, another thing I need to mention that I should probably mention now is the fact that one thing that can go wrong when it comes to representing different disabilities in media is that our understanding of those disabilities change over time sometimes and that has happened with autism. So in this show, they mention it as Asperger's. This may actually come as a shock to some of you because I know there are people in my comments who still say, hey, I have Asperger's and I really like your content. Just so you know, Asperger's does not exist. Basically what happened is it's an autism spectrum disorder. It doesn't exist anymore as a thing that people diagnose you with, but if you have it on your record as being diagnosed with Asperger's, it still does stay there. So it's not talked about a lot now. It's kind of been melded into this idea of the autism spectrum disorder complex have been one, two, and three, yeah, they are right on that. It's not something that's used nowadays, but it still kind of stays on people's records if I'm not wrong. Yeah, what you guys saying about Sia? I'm going to have to make a defend Sia video. It's a shame about Sia because I loved her early songs. Also, I think the reason I was initially drawn to her are to music styles because she is autistic and I relate to her. Interesting, very interesting. I would defend Sia till I die because I feel like people attack her like I have been attacked my entire life. I do think that there is a tendency of the autistic community to become inflamed and rage at things quite often. Like I can understand people getting upset about certain sort of representation within the mainstream, but I don't know. I feel like it just goes way too far sometimes. You know, I can understand maybe if they were like rolling out, you know, the whole thing with like the spectrum again, 10K, I understand people's reactions to stuff like that, but like to mainstream kind of media content and film. I don't know. She's a good person and a kind person, being misunderstood. It's interesting to hear that because it's not really something that I've been too engrossed with because I don't tend to be like too sort of up with like the cultural kind of fiction. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it, like the lifestyle aspect of autism, maybe autism lifestyle kind of side of it. I don't tend to focus too much on that kind of stuff. I'm not very in the loop, but interesting. There's some autistic people who talk badly about other autistic people and I think that's sad. Yeah, totally. I mean, I experienced that a lot. I have experienced that a lot, particularly on Instagram. Doesn't tend to happen a lot within the autistic community on YouTube. I think generally like the YouTube autism communities tend to be a bit more like nuanced, like there tends to be a bit more like acceptance for like a degree of, okay, let's talk about it and discuss things rather than the very like policing attitude that's seen a lot on Instagram. I don't know if you guys have experienced or seen the same kind of attitudes. Maybe there's misunderstandings because people thought she was NT when she's not. It's all about people not getting diagnosed. It's a lack of resources for people from older generations. Interesting. All the songs were represented by art therapy. Yeah, we'll have to watch them. But if you do make a video on that catcher, I will definitely watch that because it's definitely something that I wanna get a bit more into, I guess have a bit more clarity on. Disorder, which is what I'm diagnosed with, used to be separated into a bunch of different disorders that have their own diagnostic criteria and their own names. One of those was Asperger's and it doesn't exist. So when a lot of people talk about this, they'll talk about just the fact that Asperger's was problematic, which it was. Asperger's syndrome is named after a Yahtzee named Hans Asperger. But people talk about this as if that's the only reason why they changed it and why Asperger's was taken out of the DSM-5. That wasn't why they changed it. If it was just about being politically correct, they could have just changed the name. The reason that Asperger's was taken out entirely and that these multiple conditions were combined into one is because that's what the research supported. Basically, as time went on, we realized that having these conditions separated into different narrow diagnostic criteria was stopping people who should be diagnosed from getting diagnosed, possibly making people who shouldn't be diagnosed get diagnosed. I mean, if you guys are seeing their characterizations like PDD, NOS, what even is that? It's so strange. Yeah, that is the reason why, I would say. Rent about Asperger's, hmm. I mean, we hear a lot about it, don't we? I'm very much like if people wanna call themselves an Aspie and say that they have Asperger's, I don't really have a problem with it because I don't associate. Some people jump to some wild conclusions when someone comes in, says that they're an Aspie or something. Some people literally call those people Yarses and say that they're Hebalist and the supporter of eugenics and all sorts of horrible things just because they prefer a word that in my eyes actually is some level of a reclaimed word to a certain degree. Like if someone wants to call themselves something that they were diagnosed with, there is not a problem with that. You know, it's, I think some people, they can just be way too finicky about and too judgmental when it comes to language. Like they hear certain narratives sort of parroted within autistic spaces or disability spaces and they just reach these very wild conclusions about people that they see online. You know, who don't really say anything Hebalist or horrible but just prefer using a certain word, you know. I find it funny how Americans prefer Asperger's. Asperger's, not so fun fact in scientific literature around Asperger. Autism was literally considered to be the opposite of fascism. Interesting, I have to facture you on that. I agree. I think if someone was diagnosed with Asperger's then it's fine, especially if they aren't aware of why it is not used anymore. I think even if they know that people don't like it, I think as a sole individual they should have the right to use whatever word to refer to themselves that they want, you know. I think when, it's like, like obviously if the person is calling themselves an Aspie but at the same time it's like putting down and talking down to like people who are diagnosed perhaps like ASD2 or free and they're sort of using that to kind of distinguish themselves as being better. I think there's a problem with that but actually just like calling yourself an Aspie or like, especially when you are talking to people who are outside of the autistic community. Like people, when you say autism people think of ASD3. That's what people think about. Like most people that I've talked to who are outside of the autistic community. When they mention, when I mention autism that's what they think about and they say, okay, well you're not like that. So like I understand like that some people outside you know having kind of a separate term that they can better understand things like I get the use in that, you know. Let's not say that I like the word I'm kind of happy that it's not really a thing anymore because I do think that from the scientific lens like splitting up them into different categories it's kind of something that I think is important because there's a lot of like histories like I think there's about two or three sort of subsections of the world who were independently sort of researching autism. And so when it came to classifying all of these aspects of autism into like one diagnostic manual. Sorry my earphones just told me that I've got low battery. When it came to doing that, I think like it kind of illuminated that they're actually just characterizing the same things you know. Hello Mike, how are you doing dudes? Oh, did I get your message? You sent me a message, home in five minutes. Okay, so I guess we are doing, we are doing the podcast, how are you doing man? We're just watching a video from Foster. So I don't want to cut this one short but maybe we might try on the weekends because it is a bit late now. But we could do it on the weekend maybe. Like you said, like Sunday I think, is that what you said? Most and making it harder for those who were diagnosed with Asperger's to get accommodations. However, Girl Meets World and one other show that we're gonna talk about were made before this change happened. So they are not intentionally misinforming people but since the information has changed, if people still see these things, they still think Asperger's exist, which is not great, especially because a lot of people still don't know that it was ever taken out. Like I've seen people go real hard on Elon Musk for using the word Asperger's for his diagnosis and I am all for bullying that man. Please bully him, he's a billionaire, I don't care what happens to him. However, I do think a lot of people need to consider that most people don't know that Asperger's was ever taken out. When people say that they have Asperger's, they are often not doing that to be ableist or to say that they're better than autistic people. A lot of them just genuinely don't know. Anyway, it's unfortunate that they use the term Asperger's. But I mean also like I do think to some degree is like a reclaimed term, you know? Just like we have reclaimed terms in lots of other sort of diversity spaces. I think that is a, but I don't know. It's a difficult one, isn't it? So I'd like to go eat. Oh, it's nice to have you on cherries. Yes, we can sounds good. Okay, no worries, Mike. Don't worry about it. We'll get it done. If you had Asperger's diagnosis, nobody was taking it away, but it is dated 100%. I don't like that, please bully attitudes. No, I don't either. Yeah. I mean, the man is obviously, bar his sort of business ventures and such. Like he's, he obviously struggles, doesn't he? When it comes to socializing, like I've seen lots of interviews of, is she talking about Elon Musk, maybe? I've seen lots of interviews and like, I don't like that people are justifying like making fun of him because he's autistic, but that's okay because he's a billionaire or something. I don't think that that's okay. It doesn't really matter. Like if people are bullying someone of you because they're autistic, I think that's a not good thing. Yeah. No, I don't like the bully attitude either. It's not favorable to mine, mine is. But it's also unfortunate that they represent autism terribly. So this character circle, he's in the evaluation process and they just keep being like, you can't be autistic because then you would suck, but you don't suck, you're good. So you're not autistic. And all of that pretty much happens for no reason because Fargill is not autistic. At the end of his evaluations, they find out he does not have Asperger's. However, a side character who is in love with him named Smackle does have autism. He doesn't want me now. Why? Because he doesn't have Asperger's. There's really nothing to say about her. She fits into the like, not like other girls trope and kind of- What is this show? Trope, but the main thing I wanted to mention is how this show kind of paints Asperger's and autism as like entirely terrible things that you should be so concerned about and that you should be ashamed of having. So my girl Smackle, despite the fact that I used to love her when I watched Girl Meets World, she's going indeed here. Also, Girl Meets World did that weird like anti-communism propaganda episode. So... I think Foster might be a part of these Instagram communities. Maybe, I don't know. I've got to get in the feeling. I don't think, I don't think he meant... Is it, what is Foster's pronouns? I'm just going to use they because I'm not too sure. He's often bullied specifically for his aspie traits, however. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Like, I don't care about the autism musk is a fascist. Yeah. I think his online presence is very questionable. Let's just put that lightly, but yeah. Sorry, an interview with Grimes once and immediately I stood like why Elon was attracted to her. I don't know much about Grimes. I'm not very up on like celebrity culture, to be honest. Ableism isn't for no matter whom they tried to target. It still hurts the whole community. Yeah. 100%. They them, I think. Okay, we'll go with they. Really bullying people is not good. I don't agree with that sort of thing. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to take away points for that too. What the hell? Ooh, okay. This is a show that I am dying to talk about and we're going to talk about two different autistic characters from this show. First of all, we got Matilda from Everything's Gonna Be Okay. I have autism. My dad's biggest regret is vaccinating me. That's true. So I believe Matilda is the only other autistic person in this list who is played by an autistic actress. So warning, this part of the video will contain spoilers for this show. So Matilda is very, very literal. She's very honest. She doesn't care what other people think and she's super funny. I love this character in terms of like her personality except for one thing about it. And that is the fact that later in the season when her brother realizes that he is also autistic, she accuses him of pretending to be autistic and lying as an excuse for his bad behavior. He's asking her for advice. So she could have said like, oh, that doesn't make sense because autistic people do this or this or this or whatever. That is not what she says. She says, if you're undiagnosed, you are not autistic, which is the most nonsensical thing a person could believe. We aren't born with diagnoses. So no, that's not how that works. But also this is an age old form of ableism. I feel like a lot of people think this idea of like fake claiming or telling disabled people they're faking is like some internet thing that we do because people are faking their disorders online. It's not. It is something that is pretty widely done to basically everyone with disabilities other than those who have disabilities that are very, very visible. And even in those situations, those people are often. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty much in live. Well, what they're talking about is pretty much in line with those reactionary videos that we've watched. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like a, it's basically an online version of what we've, many of us have experienced throughout our life when people deny the fact that we're autistic. You're just trying to get attention. You're just trying to get benefits. You're just trying to get all sorts of stuff. People make some wild accusations because they think it falls into like a certain agenda or certain movement or certain personality of people. It's not good. Grants as a Canadian singer and artist. I think I've heard their songs. Yeah. Why would anyone want to bully anyone? I think it's like, I can understand people wanting to disagree with and criticize, but like when it comes to bullying somebody or criticizing something which is like part of their autisticness, who they are is an autistic person. I don't think it matters who it is. I think just doing that in general is just a really bad thing to do. So it gives people, it gives people ideas about doing that in other aspects of life too. You know, thinking that it's okay just because they're someone that I don't like. You know, a lot of people don't like a lot of people, but that's not really an excuse to like bully people because of their autistic traits. You know, I'm slightly off topic based on foster comments. That being autistic online for clout and internet points is very overblown. I don't think I've ever seen any clear example of that. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's that whole narrative. We've seen it in the videos. You know what I'm talking about. We're probably going to have a look at another one next week if I can find one. Very, very apparent, very, very apparent. Like, it's gonna get worse as well. This is like the beginning. This is the beginning of the reactionary stuff to online autism content. So hopefully that now this kind of, I think maybe, maybe we could call this like the new wave of autistic creators, I think, maybe. Kind of started, I think, with the Aspie worlds and autism from the inside. That was kind of like the first wave. All that amethyst, amethyst was even before that. An India, Indy Andy, sadly passed away. And then there was like the Fort Spa and Mom on the Spectrum. I think that was kind of like the second wave kind of of people. I think there's more in that category. And I think there's like a new wave of people maybe coming through. Like myself, Mike, Richard Fairey, Neera Dever, Gents. You know, kind of gives a feeling of like, I don't know, it's different. It's good. I mean, obviously I'm a part of that. So of course I would say that, but I don't know. I think we're a lot more kind of laid back in community focus. I don't know if you agree, Mike. Hello, Anin. Lovely to see you. Did you new wave? Yeah, I think so. 100%. Oh, I'm autistic now. What would also be like the Fort Spa kind of category, I think too. All I watched are content creators on YouTube and everyone was talking about all the hate out there. Yeah. It's not impossible though. I can see scenarios where people with certain narcissistic need would claim autistic. So a bit of skepticism is always a good measure. Yeah. I think the issue is it's like, whenever people basically tell other people online that there's kind of two thoughts that they'll have. One thought is that you can't be diagnosed or you can't say that you're autistic unless you've been diagnosed by a professional. But on the other hands, they are very, very trigger happy in saying that other people online are not autistic, you know? Do you know what I mean? It's kind of like, maybe. I hope it's coming across. Well, it's kind of like, it's a bit hypocritical, I think, you know. I don't think at any point, unless it's like being confirmed or, you know, there's a lot more information about a specific circumstance, I hesitate to like say that people don't seem autistic because it's just so different, like person to person. Like even if I met with people in person, some people are just like very, very masked. Some people's experience of autism and their traits are just so different to mine that it's hard for me to like really characterise what I'm experiencing, you know? Which had for a long time. Well, I have actually been around a long time as well, you know? I think my first video was made about seven years ago. It was around about the time that the ASP world was creating a lot of content. But I was just at university and I was doing my taekwondo around that time. I didn't really have as much kind of consistent content kind of coming out, you know? Maybe some evil. Yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, there's so many things that we could say about like representation on the internet. It's like, it's a minefield, it's very complex. And so I would hesitate to like sort of criticise people as not being like real autistic people, you know? You gotta be careful about that. Because that can do some real damage, you know? To both the person and also to autistic people in general if people feel happy and like calling out if you think someone's not autistic. That makes sense. You literally have to know the magic words to get tested in the US, yeah? You don't get diagnosed yourself, but I can diagnose you from another content. Exactly, Narragiza. Exactly. They're often still accused of pretending that their disability is worse than it is. This is just like a famous way to do ableism. So it is really unfortunate to see that coming from an autistic character. She does apologise and her brother is autistic, but you hate to see it. So when I'm taking away points for only that, because I pretty much like everything else about her, Matilda is gonna go in A tier. Oh, there is one more thing I wanted to mention about Matilda is that is the fact that she is in some group. I don't know if this is a support group or like a special education situation, but she is in this class with a bunch of other autistic people at school. And this is something that's really cool and that I wanted to mention specifically because when you are representing autism, you have to remember that autism is a giant spectrum with a lot of diversity. So one of the best things that shows can do in my opinion is have multiple autistic characters if they're gonna have any. And that is because autism looks very different on different people. So having multiple characters makes it harder for the audience to assume that all autistic people are the same. Yeah, it kind of reduces the risks of like stereotypes happening, you know? Thomas, you were so humble, you were one of the first. I wasn't really like a consistent creator, but yeah, I think my first video was about seven, eight years ago. I think that that first video was like how to know if you're autistic. It's probably aged very, very badly. I still use the term asperger. I mean, my channel for a long time was called Asperger's Growth. I actually, I changed it mostly because it didn't make sense anymore because of the new sort of diagnostic stuff, but also like, no, I'm not really ashamed to say it, but like it's kind of stopped people from wanting to engage with me or follow me because I had Asperger's in the name, you know? Which I didn't really want. So I kind of made sort of a decision to go with my name. You know, I think it has a lot more potential to be like a longstanding thing, especially if I want to be more of a public figure. But yeah, you deserve praise. Thank you. Oh no. Marvin took you down with a swift, swift strike. I'm gonna adjust Marvin, gonna tinker around in his head to see if I can stop him from being so annoying. I loved your first video. Good. I was funny. Like my speaking, my presentation style and how I was and like how I thought was just so different. Like I've changed so much since that time. It's kind of crazy. I like a different person. I like Instagram. It's more right here, right now at times. Yeah. I think it can be very useful, but yeah, I know Marvin got you. Naughty Marvin. Naughty Marvin. Even if that's not what they were trying to imply, a lot of people will still do that. So it's great that they have multiple autistic characters. I do want to give bonus points to every show that tries to do that. So I will give bonus points to Atypical as well, but it's saying in B tier because he is in a support group with other autistic people. Some of them are played by actual autistic actors. Anyway, let's talk about the other autistic character and everything's gonna be okay. That is Matilda's brother, Nick. This is one of my favorite portrayals of autism I've ever seen and it's not because it's like inherently better than all of the other ones, but if you are late diagnosed, high masking, et cetera, I really recommend watching this show. So Nick is Matilda's older brother until the point where the show starts. He had been living independently and at the point when the show starts, he moves in with his sisters to take care of them. He has low support needs and at the time that he moves in with his sisters, he does not know that he is autistic. Another thing that's cool about this is that it is quite a common story. So he's diagnosed because he realizes that he... So he's diagnosed because he realizes he has quite a few things in common with his sister who was also diagnosed and this is pretty common way to be diagnosed with autism if you're diagnosed late in life. Autism is genetic, so if you have a family member who is autistic, it is more likely that you will be autistic as well than if you didn't. This show also has a portrayal of masking, my favorite portrayal of masking that has ever existed. I think Nicholas masks in a way that was very similar to the way that my mask was and still is, which is just making everything a joke. Like he doesn't know when to take things seriously and he kind of always makes it seem like you can't tell if he's joking or not. And it's like, if I'm never serious, then no one can actually know the real me and they'll be laughing at me because I want them to and not just because people laugh at me. And I loved to see that. That's very complex. My favorite portrayal of masking that I've ever seen on TV. So Nicholas is going in S tier. He's also funny and like gay. I love this show so much. Dear God, we've finally made it. We have gotten to the promised land and we finally get to talk about the man, the myth, the legend himself, Abed Nadir from Community. Yeah, I've heard about this guy. Yeah, I think my brother actually encouraged me to watch that. Although I'm quite surprised that they didn't talk about the good doctor. I'm pretty sure that they're canonically autistic, aren't they? It's definitely not like a comprehensive list. You know, there's a lot more people like, what are you talking about? Like Toon Roon's video about Steven the universe. I mean, there's many characters that I can find within shows that just, they're not like canonically confirmed autistic, but they definitely give Autie vibes, you know, like very strongly. There isn't one Matilda I don't think is autistic but she is magical, so maybe. Abed is the best boy. Yeah, I think a lot of people like his character. Oh, the undiagnosed story, very interesting. One or more of the writers were like diagnosed by Hot Take. Thomas, you've been chaired to be expected with time. Yeah, I don't think it was necessarily like a time thing. I just, I think I put a lot of work into like self development, I think. Kind of changed my outlook, my appreciation for the more social emotional side of life too, very apparent as opposed to what it was once like. Tom Baker, our favorite. Yeah, I mean, there's so many characters that you could think of, isn't it? But I suppose when we're talking about canonically confirmed characters, it's a bit of a different story. God, I love this man. So Abed is by far my favorite canon autistic character that might reveal where he's gonna go on the list a little bit too soon, but it's obvious. So this is one of the shows that I think does the best job at humanizing autism out of everything I've ever seen. But it's super, super cool because Abed is shown as having childish interests. That's one thing he's really into like Batman and superheroes and like playing games, playing paintball and being into like dressing up and stuff. He has interests that would be considered childish, but he is never actually treated like a child by the show. The point is not to infantilize him, except for like Jeff, who sucks. But the show is always making fun of the people who are making fun of him, not making fun of him. I love that. I also love the fact that he has a special interest. That is the main issue that I have with Big Bang Fairy because it's basically the opposite of what Foster is describing about the community. Like it's definitely like the show and the cast is just constantly making fun of Sheldon. Like kind of like on the rest of the cast's kind of side and never on Sheldon's side, you know? No, maybe not never, but you know what I mean. That's the impression that I've got from watching quite a few of them. My, I think my girlfriend, when I was probably like 17, 18, 19, that kind of age, they watched a lot of it. So I did watch a lot of it, but I used to play like video games on my phone. Paintball is childish. Yeah, it's pretty badass, isn't it? I don't know about childish. Maybe geeky. But then again, like it's not really geeky, is it? It's like war-esque, maybe. But then again, you have larping. Interesting. Community wasn't bad. Yeah, I've heard a lot of good things about it. Okay, his special interest is filmmaking. That's what he is going to college for. And they show him as not being particularly good at it, which is super, super interesting because a lot of people have this idea that your special interest has to be something that you know everything about or that you are extremely, extremely talented in. Like you have to be a savant in whatever your special interest is. And that's not true. Like obviously there are a lot of people who know insane amounts about the subjects that they like. There are people who are extremely good at the things that they are extremely obsessed over. But there are also people who are just obsessed with them. And that's all it takes for it to be a special interest. It's for it to be repetitive and something that you are very, very, very passionate about. So I love seeing that, seeing that he's not seen as having like this special interest be a superpower almost, which is so, so cool. Also in terms of Obed, ableism is never used as a major plot point. And I think there are times when that can be a good thing, when ableism should be discussed because it is real and it exists. And people need to know about it. But in the case of Obed, he's just a normal person. He's just a character in this story who is treated like all the other characters. And there are ableist things that are said to him and ableist things that happen to him. They also represent him as being extremely good at shutting that shit down, which is so cool. Oh my God, oh my God, another thing. A bit of self-advocacy. We love it. I still don't know. Well, Obed was written by an autistic man, apparently. A bit of a self-insert by Dan Harmon. Interesting. Dan Harmon brings a bell. Where is Dan Harmon from? Red Dwarf is White Love Vindaloo. Yeah, Red Dwarf is a good one. It's kind of a show that was put on in the background with my dad. My dad used to put it on quite a bit. Why do you think he'd be in boring for you? I don't know many of these. I haven't watched many of these shows. I've seen snippets from them and I've heard all four autistic people talk about them. I don't tend to watch like autism-themed shows. There is one that I'm gonna talk about if Foster doesn't bring it up, which I think is really, really cool autistic character that I haven't really heard about anywhere before. I'll tell you why later if it doesn't come up. I didn't even think of this. He is a canon autistic character. He is confirmed to be autistic by the creators of the show. It is frequently mentioned in the show. Asperger's, he's another character that's diagnosed with Asperger's. But Asperger's is mentioned by name, as is autism, the word developmental disorder, et cetera. And he is undiagnosed. He is a canon undiagnosed autistic character. So he is autistic, but is never within this time that the show is going on ever diagnosed. And that is super sick. There's representation for people who aren't diagnosed. And that is so fucking cool. Even like, I would even say that parts of it lean into like him being self-diagnosed because it's acknowledged by everyone. Everyone knows he's autistic. He mentions the words himself, but he is never diagnosed and never gets evaluated. And that is so cool to see in representation because those people are, because those people are not doing well. Like prior to me being diagnosed, I never really self-diagnosed. Like autism didn't really mean anything to me until right around the point when I was in the evaluation process for it. But I'm sure that if I saw this as an undiagnosed person who was not self-diagnosing even, I would still be in love with this character. And it's so cool to see autism represented in a way where it's not like constantly going to doctors and showing like all of the therapies that he's in and all of the skills that he's built over time. And like he's just a guy. It's so cool. I love Abed so much, dude. And Abed is one of the many, many characters on this list who is not played by an autistic actor, but he is written by an autistic person. Like the writer of the show is autistic, which I think is probably how they did this so well. But they did it perfectly. They pretty much avoided everything that could go wrong. He is not seen as someone too pity. He is not seen as inspirational. He is not being infantilized. He is not a plot device. The fact that he has autism is not used to like make the storyline happen. It's so cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. And of course community is a really funny show and there are a lot of great jokes about autism as well. And I love to see that. Something else about the way that community is structured as a show is that one of their big things, like the things they're known for is that they have these little, little tiny jokes, things that you wouldn't notice without rewatching the show over and over again. And that is a really cool way to portray autism as well. Like there's a scene where someone drops a bag of bagel. Autistic representation is clearly their special interest. I think so, yeah. Jeff in communities is supposed to represent high-masking autistic. I did not know that. Dakota Fanning also played a autistic character as in Please Stand By. And I just watched the accountant where Ben Affleck plays someone autistic. There is a lot of it, you know, 100%. Like there's a lot more than that's just kind of represented in this left. Left. I think it'd be a very long video if that was the case though. I've been gifted with a skill of pattern recognition in social behavior. So it's when I have no idea how to use it. Oh, see you later, spicy. It's good to see you around. See you soon. And Abed is like 13. And it's just not mentioned. And there are so many small things like that and that is really cool. So Abed is obviously going in S tier. Now let's talk about a character that I mentioned earlier on in this video. Music from Music By Sia. So this movie by the autism community is often regarded as a terrible fucking movie that did terribly at representing autism. And I would agree and we're gonna get into that. But first I wanna bring up something that a lot of people misunderstood or were wrong about when they were talking about this. And that is criticizing music as a character. So the reason that this show is bad is because the show is bad. The way that they try to treat autistic people is bad. It is not because music is unrealistically autistic. Like I do agree that the acting is bad but the way that the character is written is not particularly bad. And I wanna show you a TikTok of a higher support needs autistic describing this. What is the problem that people have with that? Like do you know what the exact issue with it was? I don't know if the movie's still like available to be watched, to be honest. Run, Forrest, run. I don't think Forrest Gump's an autistic character. I think they're probably intellectual disability representation maybe. I don't think autism. Do you think Forrest Gump was autistic? I bet you have to agree to disagree. I haven't watched music but there was some post publishing issue with the casting bullying of an holistic lead character plus ABA content. I guess the link with autism speaks that kinda sold it further. Yeah, you don't know Joe. Oh, they were the consultants on the movie. Okay. So is it just because of that? Or was it like, yeah, Thomas watched the movie again? I don't think Forrest Gump is one. I've watched Forrest Gump so many times. I never pinned him as an autistic lead. We could agree to disagree though. But I'd like to hear if you've got anything to say about music. Cause I am not very clueless on this aspect of video. And I'm curious if we can all vote and vote for the person in the audience and her experience watching the show. It comes to criticizing films and television like The Good Doctor, Atypical Music, and even older media. Though this is often less talked about. One of the main criticisms is the actual character themselves. While there might be some truth to criticizing the portrayals of these characters, it almost always lacks nuance and is actually harmful rhetoric. Take for example, Musics I Remember when then film came out, people said that no autistic person behaves like her. was an animal for eating gum off the bottom of a park bench, and no autistic person would do that, but here's the thing, we would. Likewise, with the I Am A Surgeon outburst in The Good Doctor, lots of people said that no autistic person has meltdowns like that. Yes, we do. Not everyone does. Some do. These characters are often referred to as offensive stereotypes as soon as they have what's seen as a major flaw, and while I agree that autistic actors should be playing these parts, insulting the character, and their mannerisms is often stigmatizing and often directed at the higher needs population. So once again, I think that the character and the traits that the character has were fine. Uh, the acting, however, not the best. I actually showed this clip, I showed that to my mother, and the first thing that she said to me, she just turned and looked at me and was like, it seems almost like they're making fun of autistic people. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does seem like they're making fun of autistic people. Like, the acting is really bad, and that's not... I mean, from that video, it doesn't look like they're making fun of autistic people. Maybe I just need to, like, watch it, I guess. I probably need to watch the film, don't I? I think that's what I've... that's what I've gathered. Someone brought up Shawshank. Why is there an autistic character in Shawshank? They portray taking an autistic person and having a meltdown to the ground, face down, laying on top of them is the best way to handle a meltdown. So, yeah, yeah, a forced meltdown restraint scene. Uh, yeah, that doesn't sound good. Sarah says, I watched music, I'm a fan of Sierra, I saw it through your different eyes because of that. I think it had to do with the depiction of music, the character. I don't really see the problem because it's on the spectrum. I have the same meltdowns as Sean from A Good Doctor. Does someone autistic need to be casted to play an autistic character? I mean, clearly it's better representation-wise, but do we also impose these rules in the reverse so all autistics play? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting line of question. I think usually it's probably the safe option to cast an autistic person as an autistic person because, like, I think when you bring on an autistic person to play a role, like, it's pretty much like their personality, their sort of outward behaviour within the actual show. It's sort of, it's, yeah, I don't know. I think it's generally good, it'll probably be good practice, I would say. Like, I think it would make a lot of autistic people a lot happier, but I don't know. It's all very grey, this isn't it? That's what I'm gathering from listening to you guys talk about the various sort of controversial orders and stuff. I'm not too sure, you know, about the autistic lead thing. I think it would probably just be a better idea, you know, and particularly allow that autistic person to not be sort of changed and portrayed in a way that's inauthentic, you know? But it's difficult, isn't it? Because, like, autism is an aspect of somebody and plus autism looks different person to person and generally autistic people, well, all the time autistic people are humans who have their own experience and personality and, you know, various behaviours which aren't going to be reflective of every single autistic person. You're not offended by the movie. What if they're an undiagnosed autistic character? I don't know. I remember a similar argument made with straight men that shouldn't play gay characters. Essentially gay men should be used for gay characters, I have no opinion on it, but I've seen people say that. Yeah, I mean, there's like, I think generally, again, I think it's just good practice, you know, but I don't know. It's a difficult one. It's a very complex issue that I don't want to be like the deciding factor on, you know. I think if people can represent autism well and they're autistic, I'm fine with that. If they were autistic themselves, probably be better, less room for potential issues, you know, not sure. Well, I think it's a bit different if you were to turn, even if you turn the tables and you think about autistic people. It's kind of, I understand what you're saying, but like, it's kind of, I think it is to some degree different because most people are not autistic, like a very large majority of people are not autistic. Not necessarily saying that that's like reasons for why the representation wouldn't be okay, or as authentic, but I think it's just because we are like a minority group, and that there are already out there a lot of stereotypes and stigmas which have been propagated by some sort of mainstream media content. I think if, in my opinion, if an autistic actor does it well, then I'm fine with it. It's not really much of an issue for me, but it would be nice to have autistic actors being able to play autistic people. I think it'd generally be good practice if you can find an autistic person to play them, you know, especially when it's like a long form, kind of like sitcom, you know, like a series where the actors need to be consistent. I think maybe employing an autistic person to act should probably be a good way to go about it, you know? I think it's good that autistic people play autistic characters. Yeah, it's not an immediate write-off for me, you know, because I know some actors who do a bang-up job of representing autistic people pretty well, because it is acting, you know. It's an acting role, so you're basically acting as somebody else. It kind of makes sense, but then again, like the whole representation, stereotypes, you know, perhaps it might be good for autistic actors to get gigs representing autistic people if they wanted it to. So it's kind of like a social nicety, maybe. Less likely to go wrong, you know? How many actors are unrealised and undiagnosed? No one knows. I mean, there's a lot of autistic actors out there, maybe not actors in the sense of acting for like TV or a film or anything, but autistic masking, just saying. You know, we've got some skills somewhere. That's not specifically because I want to call the actress Maddie Ziegler. I don't want to call her a bad actor or a bad person. She was 18 years old at the time that this was done, and she was obviously hired by Sia, who is like her mentor and has been like sleeping in the same bed as her since she was like 11. Like they have a weird relationship, and Sia has been a huge part of her life and someone she's looked up to for a very long time. Don't get me wrong, I blame pretty much everything wrong with this on Sia. She shouldn't have made this movie. One of the huge things about this show, it's handled poorly in pretty much every single way. It is largely inaccessible to autistic audiences. It has flashing lights despite the fact that autistic people are significantly more likely than non-autistic people to have epilepsy, so it's like cutting out a big part of the community from even watching the show. It doesn't have captions despite the fact that so many autistic people are deaf and that so many autistic people have ADHD or just their regular sensory issues that make auditory processing very difficult. It includes depictions of autistic characters in prone restraint multiple times. That is a form of restraint where your head is to the ground. It has killed multiple autistic people and in the show, sorry, in the movie, it is depicted as if that were the right thing to do. Like the thing that they are teaching the audience is that that is the right thing to do when that literally kills us. This is a terrible movie. It is actual garbage. Another thing I wanted to touch on. Very strong position there. What do you guys think? Oh, using using that mojibre. It's nice to see you. How are you doing? I became a singer in the band as it was my lifeline at the time so I can relate to Sia and the movie music a bit. Hmm. It's very judgmental. I mean, it's pretty much in line with a lot of like the advocacy stuff that goes on in Instagram. You know, you don't have to watch it to know how I feel. Yeah, me too. That's why I hesitate to make too many statements on such a thing. Thomas, please drink a cup of coffee or Pepsi Max. I got my sneak, which you can get if you would like and I get a small commission down in the description. Just some sneak. Tastes like melted cola bottles, you know, like those sweeties that you can get. Sweeties. Candy for any Americans. Petron, a little bit is the fact that Sia has now been diagnosed with autism. I will not now or ever be participating in telling someone who says that they are autistic, that they are not autistic. I will not ever be claiming that someone is faking their disability ever in my entire life. I don't even believe that she is and I've seen some people doing that. So just so you know where I stand, no, I will never support you telling autistic people that they're faking. However, I think a lot of people viewed this as something that was supposed to change to the way that the autistic people feel about this movie and no, like the movie is still really, really, really bad regardless of if she's autistic or not. She has still done terrible harm to this community regardless of if she's a part of it or not. And also, the movie is about a high support needs non-speaking autistic girl, which is not what Sia is. Sia is a late diagnosed, presumably high masking, probably relatively low support needs autistic. She is still representing a community that she is not a part of because she wasn't representing autistic people like her. She was representing autistic people who she sees as beneath her, who she pities, who she thinks need to be infantilized and seen as inspirational. Everything she did. Man, there's a lot of like strong feelings going on in this video. I don't feel like I am the right person to be able to like respond, I guess. But I do think that people have had like, it's a very controversial thing. And whenever something is controversial by its nature, there is going to be strong feelings from both sides. This is disappointing. Would you like a taffy? Would you like a sweetie? I haven't seen more than clips from the movie. I do have very strong opinions on Peron restraint. But aside from that, I don't know how enough to judge a movie as a whole. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same camp as you. Hello Elma, how are you doing? Good to see you. Are you my friends? Are you my friend, Elma? Like outside of YouTube? You know who I'm talking about if you are that person. But yeah, I think there is a podcast episode that I'm going to release soon. It's good to see you about doing well. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to have this person that I interviewed about cerebral palsy called Emma Stone. So I think it might be that person. I love Sia. Oh, yes, it is you. Hello, Elma. I love Sia and I don't change how I feel about her because she's been very transparent about her life and I respect that. Yeah, I mean, as I said, I'm not really into the whole autism kind of culture kind of lifestyle kind of side of it, I guess. So I'm not really too sort of up on it all. I don't think I can give like a genuine sort of response to what Foster is saying. But I'm very happy to read out what you guys are saying. Are you my friends? Yeah. She did was still wrong, regardless of if she's autistic. And obviously, this is going in detail. It is the worst thing I've ever seen. And then finally, we have the good doctor. So the good doctor is a show about an autistic surgeon, Sean Murphy. He's diagnosed with autism and savant syndrome and he is medical savant. That's his thing. So there are loads of issues with Sean. I made a video fully just about the good doctor. One thing I didn't mention in that is that he is extremely infantilized by other characters. He is inspiration porn. His autism serves as a plot device. You're supposed to feel bad for him or inspired by him at pretty much every time. Those are all of the things you're supposed to feel about him. He only exists to make non-disabled people feel bad or inspired. Another thing I wanted to touch on because first of all, the video I made about the good doctor when I recorded it, it was like 15 minutes long. And then it got edited down to like 20 minutes. There is so much stuff that's being brought up in the comments. Here's a question, though, guys. Do you think it's wrong for people to be inspired by the struggles that autistic people have? Just think it. Just like to stimulate some conversation because obviously the whole idea of inspiration porn is that disabled people or autistic people are given a platform to talk about how difficult it is being autistic or being disabled. They've done something that people do and they're used as this talking point to make people feel good. All content. You don't think it's wrong? No. It's a difficult one, isn't it? It's a difficult line because everyone has their own interpretations of stuff. Everyone struggles aren't allowed to be inspired by anyone else who struggles. My 18-year-old son calls me a musical savant. People are inspired by struggle and overcoming in general. That's what I mean. I don't know. I think there is something I guess inspirational about battling hardships and such. But I think the issue that I find is when the hardship is directed internally towards a problem about the person. Their hardships is because they are autistic because they are overcoming their disability or something. I think that's the point at which it becomes an issue maybe, if that makes sense. Love on a Specialist means to be edited for Inspiration Corn. We watched a video about it before. It was like the production choices are a little bit questionable infantilizing maybe. I think it's the reason. It's the narrative behind it. I don't know. It's a complex one, isn't it? All this socio-political stuff, it's not very black and white. It's a lot of shades of gray. Comments that I should have just left in because I cut it out. One of those things is the meltdown scene that I talked about in that. That's the one where he's yelling I am a surgeon over and over again. So I did not think the meme that went viral was very funny because the point of that meme was basically just Sean yelling I am a surgeon over and over again. And then seeing Dr. Han, the ableist doctor who tried to fire him. Seeing him with just like a blank face not caring at all. That's what people thought was funny about it. They were like, stand Dr. Han. We love him. Wow, he doesn't give a single thought. Like no, Dr. Han is terrible. So I didn't think that part of the meme was funny at all. The reason that I personally think the I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon thing was something that I like referenced in that video and kept repeating is because that is how the entire show looks, by the way. Sean Murphy has two traits. He is autistic and he is a surgeon. He is autistic. Yeah, I think I don't know from what was talking about like also if the only reason why that person is being highlighted is because they are autistic or disabled, you know, I think there was there was over reasons to highlight people and like the fact that we only see that side of it maybe maybe that's the issue is that we only tend to see that side of that kind of inspiration corn in the media. We don't really see like people having like an intellectual debates or having some inputs on various aspects like we only really hear the input from like professionals or like parents of those individuals so we used to it used to kind of be like that maybe but because you can be inspired by something or someone doesn't mean that you have to put stable people in the spotlight for that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean it's like I've I've struggled a lot in my life from from other people specifically like because I am different, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with finding inspiration with my ways of sort of self-advocating and growing as a person in order to kind of deal with and process that stuff. I don't think I'd have a problem with people finding that like inspiring but if I was only to be interviewed because I have like overcome my autism or something like that, you know, that would be a problem, you know, if it's just that it's not like oh okay let me understand more about who you are as a person. It's just oh autism, oh this is hard, oh you did good, you know. I think it's maybe it's like it's like understanding it as part of a greater picture rather than the actual thing itself, you know. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to sit and be inspired by me joke. You're very mature regarding this, well thank you. I'm trying to be, it's a very complex thing. I think it's best understood like people's reactions to inspiration corn in general as a part of a greater kind of social narrative and collection of sort of the most common places at which disabled people are highlighted possibly, maybe. That could be right. They don't even know us and they can be so judgmental sometimes, I'm sure they're great parents of autistic children but they don't see them as much, it's mostly negative. And closely related is infantilization, 100%. They tend to come one in the same to be honest, like what interviewers talking to disabled people are like. Oh what was it? What was it? A video that we saw about Love on the Spectrum, one of them went on to like a show and like I think Ellen DeGeneres is that her name, sort of said that they're like cute and they've got like a funny quirky personality or like just the way that they sort of treated them as sort of a kind of like a spectacle, kind of like a unique, I don't know. It's very hard to explain isn't it? Very complex. Not sure where you draw the line, yeah. It's really, really hard to understand. And he is a surgeon, he is autistic and he is a surgeon. He is not a person at any point. He does not have really a personality or anything other than being autistic and being a surgeon. So I think the repetition of I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I am a surgeon, I think that was great way to criticize the entirety of the show. That I originally had pointed out in that video, but I cut it out is the fact that there is nothing wrong with his voice or his movements. One thing I hated seeing was the people who would mock that scene and they would do the voice while they were doing it. That really bothered me. I also just hate that scene. Like I think it was some of Freddie High Moore's worst acting that I've ever seen. I think he's a great actor, as I said in that video, but that scene was some of the worst acting I've seen. Not because the meltdown was unrealistic, all the things he did during the meltdown were completely realistic and fine. I just don't think it was good acting. And I don't like seeing non-autistic people pretend to have meltdowns. Another thing is that I didn't really touch on- You know, I kind of agree with that. Like it's less of like a logical kind of sort of understood thing, but it is kind of irksome a little bit. Like it doesn't make me feel very good to think of like someone who is an autistic like pretend to have a meltdown. But then again, like it doesn't make it doesn't make me very comfortable anyone pretending to. I don't know. This video is bringing up a lot of complex topics that my brain is not geared to approach today. No, it's the context of the scene. Yeah, I don't, I just, yeah. But then again, that is the nature of acting. Is it a feeling? Is it an icky factor? It makes me feel a bit icky. It makes a feeling now. I wouldn't say that it's necessarily like I relate to that feeling that they're expressing, but I don't know like if I have anything to say or not in sort of an intellectual front, I guess, a logical front. Thank you. I think so. On any of the reasons that I liked the good doctor in the last video, but that's because none of them are like really valid, but I do think he is funny at times and sometimes relatable. So I put him in C tier. I don't think he's on the same level. To be honest, like talking about the good doctor, it definitely helped my brother, I think, have a little bit more understanding about me. Little bits, some things like were way too stereotypes and were just completely not how I worked, but it definitely sort of piqued my brother's interest in understanding a bit more about autism, which I can be thankful for for sure. I mean, it's the whole thing about like, I don't think they're going to cover Rain Man as being like an autistic character, which I completely understand. Like as much as Rain Man is like a really, really highly stereotypical kind of thing, which was covering a particular kind of autistic person who's like a savantist in a very sort of strange way. It was still, I think, one of the if not the first kind of mainstream movie that got people talking about autism. Now, whether it was for a good or a bad thing, I think, you know, sometimes even if they're not the most favorable, you know, I guess what I've learned from that just from my brother watching it is that although it can stereotype, it can have some negatives that come with it, it does, I guess, speak some people's interest into learning more about autism, you know. I feel like that disabled people get misjudged in the sense that they have to be done more, they have to be not good enough on TV shows as such. I see that. The garbage in the tear beneath. If you want to hear me rant about The Good Doctor for 20 plus minutes, consider watching this video. Let me know if there are other confirmed autistic characters you'd like me to do another video like this with or if you'd like to see one with headcanon characters where I like rank your headcanons because I would love to talk about headcanons again. Also, remember to take your meds and thank you so much for watching, and thank you to Blinkist for sponsoring this video. Anyway, remember to take your meds, thank you to Blinkist for watching this video, and thank you so much for watching. Bye. Very interesting video, brought up some extremely complex things. I thought this was going to be kind of more of a light-hearted kind of video, but there's, yeah, there's some lot of strong emotions and feelings and opinions going on in this video that I was not expecting, but I do like delving into the more complex side of autism. I think there's always some useful worthwhile discussion to be had about stuff like that. One character that I don't think, well, they didn't actually bring up, who is one of my favourites, and it's not because of the accuracy of the actual autistic character, but there is a series, I think it might have been like a BBC series called Hannibal. So it's not the actual Hannibal-like to film, but there's a series that was made sort of like a different version of Hannibal, I guess, and there was a character in it who was canonically autistic. I can't remember his name. It was a while ago since I watched it, but it's really stuck in my brain because I don't know if you guys, but basically it's all about him being like a detective and his sort of superpower, I guess, you could say. Not saying that that's necessarily derived from being autistic, but his, he's autistic and he also has this gift where he can sort of hyper-emphasise, like to a point where he can sort of visualize and understand like crime scenes in a way that other people can't. Understandably, not like a real thing that autistic people are capable of doing, I know, but it was a really interesting series, not because of that representation. I think the actual character played an autistic person so well, like I think that they did so good at playing it. And I think they actually did a couple of other movies which had autism in, but the main drawing factor for that was that, of course, the main characters are autistic, they're a detective, but obviously because it's Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter is a part of it, who is a psychopath. So it's really interesting seeing like the dynamics and how they sort of played off the two characters as part of the story. I really like that although it's kind of going the opposite way in terms of stigma. I really like that they highlighted the main autistic character as being really, really empathic, really, really kind of emotionally kind of in touch and caring and like, I don't know, it's just something about it that just kind of made me feel seen when I watched it. I really, really identified with the main character. And the other great thing of them having an autistic lead and obviously Hannibal liked to be in the psychopath was that they did sort of touch on like the differences between the two as well. So if you know much about like autism research, professors, Sam and Baron Cohen did a study which aimed to sort of illuminate some of the ways that particularly Lorna Wing misunderstood autism, basically splitting this idea of empathy into adaptive and cognitive elements. I know some people like in LA terms have described different types of empathy, but these are the kind of like the scientific things related to autism. You have cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand what emotional state someone is in just by looking at them, not necessarily them telling you how you are. And adaptive empathy, which is having an appropriate emotional response to how someone's feeling. So psychopaths, Sam and Baron Cohen highlighted as having high cognitive empathy, low adaptive empathy. So they know what you're feeling, they can manipulate you, they don't care. They don't care to do it other than for social sort of purposes, manipulation purposes. Autistic people can struggle on the cognitive empathy front. So that's like indirect communication, not everybody, of course. It's something that it's something that can be actually learned as a skill as well. But that tends to be a lot more apparent in autistic people. Yes, yeah, he also advocates fear of man, I know. But I think it's a good study because it kind of tries to explain and corrects like the empathy myth that was going on in scientific literature, which is why I talk about it quite a lot. But just that fact, like how the show is kind of centered around this idea of empathy, and the fact there's like an autistic lead and like a Hannibal Lecter as a psychopath, it was it's really, really interesting watch, not necessarily saying it's the best like characterization. Yeah, as you said, super empathy, it's kind of going the opposite way to like, it's like the whole thing about autistic people once being seen to be like demon children and bad and have bad morals. Whereas we've gone the other way, and now it's like people say that we're like benevolence and we can't do no wrong, and we're just beautiful, lovely, moral creatures, you do everything by the book. So it's kind of following the same thread. But I think, like just the show in general and picking apart that, picking apart that aspect of it out of it, it's just so good. Like I just love it so much. Honestly, highly recommend you're watching it. And it's not like autism is just thrown in your face constantly either. It's like it's a part of it. It's a part of the main character and you get to be in his head a lot of the time, but it's not like everything's about autism, you know, 100%. Anyway, that was Foster on the Spectrums, ranking every autistic character, I hope you have enjoyed it. And let me know what you think about some of the complex issues that we've brought up in this episode down in the comments. It'd be lovely to hear what you guys think. Make sure to like, subscribe, consider becoming a member, etc. And I will see you very later. Very later.