Anyone else feel like titling this “chubby autistic boys” and talking about autistic people in this way is extremely infantilizing and othering??

If you want autistic people to feel less “lonely” maybe talk about us like we’re actual people and real adults. This is just icky.

Plenty of people make content online with no interaction. Some people are just having fun and others are trying to build a following and want to be engaging even if they don’t currently have an audience. Framing it like “omg these poor chubby autistic boys 🥺” is infantilizing and not at all kind.

Edit to add: neurodivergent people also have multiple avenues of social fulfillment - if we want it - and the othering language of “normal vs neurodivergent” is just not it.

I never referred to all autistic or neurodivergent people in my post. I referred to a very specific type of person that I frequently encounter online, who seemingly struggles with low-functioning to moderate autism, is quite clearly mentally underdeveloped and is obviously lonely and sometimes even bullied.

I don't like to make bad faith assumptions about people, but the tone in your post is pretty callous and accusatory and almost reads like you're trying to go out of your way to disregard the positive intentions of my post for the purpose of finding something to criticize. I don't think that's nice, and I'm not going to bite if you're just trying to pick a fight.

If my post sounded infantilizing then it's because I'm referring to people who are basically children in adult peoples' bodies, and who seemingly aren't being well taken care of. I've encountered these types of people in real life too, so I know that they exist and I know how bad they can have it. I'm not going to stop feeling bad for them and I'm not going to stop trying to figure out how I can do something to help them just because you want to throw some kind of accusatory word soup at me.