[ptoo]

I don't think mimicking someone's Tourette's, which is what these children are doing, makes them mentally unwell.

It's very possible that they are simply attention-seeking or enjoy the idea of being special. It reminds me of the relatively new phenomenon of a community on YouTube where kids faking multiple personality disorder upload videos displaying their "systems", and each persona in the system has some time on the camera before being taken over by other competing personae.

Most people are in agreement that these kids are faking it, and it doesn't necessarily follow that they shouldn't be deemed "sane". It's more likely that they don't value the time of medical doctors and are willing to mimic a YouTube celebrity's tics for self-serving reasons, even if it is wasting their parents' money and the time of others.

[whimsicalism]

This has also become a debate/problem in some segments of the aspergers/autism community where you have kids on TikTok pretending to be autistic.

Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference.

[faeriechangling]

This is a direct consequence of society giving aid to autistic people while reducing stigma, it is practically obvious that more people are going to consequently try and fit that label.

What we see is this phenomena where autistic people today have less actual impairments, who might even take offense to the idea that they are impaired, but with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube. An emphasis on the preformative over the substantive. There has even been a counter-backlash in this community that too much funding is going towards people with few impairments, and too little funding is going for people so disabled they're completely unable to be independent.

[whimsicalism]

> with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube.

I do wonder why people view this as offensive or obviously fake though.

I am a pretty well-adjusted adult who has not been formally diagnosed with anything, and I still "flap hands" when I am in private/can hide it from others. It's hardly performative.

[faeriechangling]

I think what really strikes me is that the most common form of "stimming" I've seen in the wild is the leg bounce. I've seen various other kinds of "stims" from autistic people from verbal, to tapping their fingers, to playing with a pen, to using an actual toy, to squirming around a bit, to standing on their tiptoes. You also mentioned that you flap hands in private, that's the other thing, traditionally people have had this desire to "blend in" even when they DO flap their hands and avoid doing so.

However if you go onto tiktok, you primarily are going to see the stim that everybody knows that real autistic people™ have. There is even some far-left advocacy within this community about having "loud hands", and even said activists have expressed discomfort with "staged stimming"

https://www.autistichoya.com/2012/01/having-loud-hands.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-sh...

It's just a very bizarre thing that when you're on tiktok, people desire to share what makes them look the most autistic. The other genre is incredibly attractive women getting indignant about people believing they are not autistic because they are incredibly attractive women. I get this sort of twilight zone vibe going into autism tiktok where everything seems slightly wrong.

[FooBarBizBazz]

"Stimming"? What in the fuck? Can't normal people fidget?

[whimsicalism]

It's just a known ASD behavior. What exactly is your point, is it just general hostility to new words?

[cannabis_sam]

> There is even some far-left advocacy within this community about having "loud hands", and even said activists have expressed discomfort with "staged stimming"

I’m not trying to be contentious or combative, but what makes these people/trends far-left?

(Absolutely agree about how people dismiss «attractive» women as not possibly being autistic tho, it’s both sad and infuriating)

[faeriechangling]

Well regarding the specific person I cited they identify as "radical left" in their FAQ and they're probably the most prominent activist I can think of that makes this sort of advocacy.

https://www.autistichoya.com/p/blog-page_19.html?m=1

I don't mean to say all people who day people should stim openly are exactly far left. It's pretty mainstream especially in health/education nowadays to not suppress stimming so long as it's not unduly disruptive or harmful (i.e. stimming by screaming, smashing head into wall), as it's thought to be harmful for the suppressor.

I would say that if somebody is stimming as a political statement or identity I'm almost invariably going to assume they're pretty left of center, because they're making an identity out of nonconformism and because of blog posts from radical leftists like the above.

[whimsicalism]

> even said activists have expressed discomfort with "staged stimming"

This is what I'm confused by - were the links you posted meant to shed light on that?

[faeriechangling]

The first link was more straightup advocacy of stimming, the second is more of a reasoned followup after backlash to the first post 6 years earlier including the phenomenon of performative stimming. I'll jump to the blurb I was referencing in the 2nd link because the posts are quite long:

"But sometimes I have also seen activists engaged in stimming that was not authentic — stimming deliberately used to get attention or to make a statement. I’m not sure if this staged stimming is good and true: I’m not even sure if it could properly be called “stimming” (if stimming becomes divorced from its joy, its delicious rush, its natural high, is it still stimming?). And when we aren’t stimming for joy, because our bodies want and need it, because it is physically releasing us from neurotypical oppression (the rule of quiet hands), then who or what are we stimming for?"

Essentially making the point that stimming for the approval of others is still surrendering to ableism because you're performing for other people's acceptance when you should just be accepted. It's just that instead of trying to look more normal than you are, you try to look more different than you are.

This is to me what gets at the heart of what bothers me about TikTok. It seems to create pressure on autistic people to confirm to stereotypes of autistic people.

[DoctorOW]

Depends on execution, in situations where I'm stimming, it'd never occur to me to turn on a camera. It's certainly not something that feels good or natural when forcing myself to do it.

That said, even if hundreds of thousands of people upload videos indicating they are autistic that seems in line with the statistics on the matter.

I could be convinced stimming videos are fake, but a high number of young people with ASD is consistent with the data.

[nicoburns]

Stimming isn't performative, it's performs an important role in sensory regulation. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't kids who are acting out autism on TikTok. There probably are. But Autism is still greatly under-diagnosed, and I think you should also take into account how many people might be able to put a useful label on something that they'd previously just considered a personal quirk.

[totony]

>might be able to put a useful label on something that they'd previously just considered a personal quirk.

Is that useful though? I disagree with this need people have to categorize themselves. It seems just going on without labels would be better

[nicoburns]

I think is is with something like autism that likely represents an underlying cognitive difference. It allows you to find other people like yourself, and calibrate your own experiences. To understand why you react to things in the way that you do. Otherwise you could easily end up going through life receiving advice and guidance that is completely inappropriate for you because it's aimed at an average that you diverge from significantly.

[Morizero]

> Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference.

What a weird way to try to tie this to modern politics. You do realize that the movie "Sybil" had a similar effect (people copying a mental condition) in 1976, predating any kind of acceptance movement?

[whimsicalism]

I was worried that comment might be read this way, and of course copycat syndrome is something that has been with us for a long time.

To be clear, this is an extremely small cost to pay for difference to be broadly accepted.

[OneEyedRobot]

>Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference.

Oooh, I think I'm going to steal that.

To be fair, maybe it's just another mechanism for culture transfer. Hours per day on a phone filled with highly evolved addiction algorithms are proving their value, God knows what the future will bring.

If kids never absorbed silly things, we'd never have had bellbottoms.

[fortran77]

> we'd never have had bellbottoms.

Those were appropriated from the Navy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell-bottoms

[ravenstine]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I know I've inherited personality quirks, tics, and ways of speaking from notable figures because either I thought they were funny or simply because their tics and catch phrases have a quality much like that of an "earworm". Mimicry certainly doesn't have to indicate a psychological condition beyond perhaps having a bad habit, which everyone has every now and then. The internet is just amplifying some of these inate human characteristics at the same time that we have gotten really good at pathologizing everything and labeling ourselves.

[darkerside]

meme: (n) an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation

[pessimizer]

> I don't think mimicking someone's Tourette's, which is what these children are doing, makes them mentally unwell.

> It's very possible that they are simply attention-seeking or enjoy the idea of being special.

It depends on what you mean by mentally unwell. If mentally unwell means that they are unhappy, a danger to themselves or others, or having difficulty functioning in the world in an acceptable way - then being attention-seeking to that degree is also clearly being mentally unwell.

If mentally unwell means that there's some physical problem with their brains, then very few people who are mentally well are provably mentally unwell. I would prioritize for help a malingering Tourette's sufferer whose life is falling apart because of that over an "authentic" Tourette's sufferer who has found strategies to cope with the disease in their daily life.

The question shouldn't be to determine if they're really mentally unwell, but to determine whether their illness springs from the same causes that treatments that assume this is a physical problem are effective on, or from different causes (e.g. lack of/need for attention) which might yield to different treatment.

[ezconnect]

I had a classmate in elementary that faints almost everyday when the teacher is not around and gets well very fast once a teacher is called or get nears. We are all just kids and we thought she was very unwell. She likes being attended to we didn't knew it back then.

[a9h74j]

Relevant to the overall thread, perhaps: Fainting couches were a thing in Victorian times IIRC.

[mc32]

Maybe doing a cross cultural study would help determine if it’s mimicry (a social phenomenon) or there is something else by going to cultures that are different from ours and seeing if some of their kids get affected. Indonesia, Congo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc.

[atatatat]

Why would they want that?

[rasz]

Let me mimic mental disorder so I can be a punchline to weekly idiot doing stupid things mashup videos? or worse pr0n mashups like Sweet Anita? I dont see it.

[jl6]

They're smart, not insane. They have figured out how to use YouTube to monetize the "everything is valid" wave.