Autism Radar, Headcanoning Real People, and Where is the Line.

When I tell you autistic people have a radar for our kind, I mean it. It's like a gaydar, but for autism. I feel like I can see a person, spend a small amount of time with them, and that radar in my head will start beeping. They're autistic.

And this radar extends to celebrities and famous people too. There's definitely a few people I follow who I can name who get my radar beeping. The only issue is when I want to share this with others, I often times end up getting attacked by allistic fans saying I'm a terrible person for even daring to insinuate that they could be on the spectrum. Of course, that just comes from their own ableism against autism, them perceiving it as a bad thing and therefore an insult to call them autistic. But its not a bad thing. In my opinion, if anything, its a complement.

I can think of two people in particular who I follow who I relate to a lot. Firstly, aurora.

A fellow INFP, type 9 on the enneagram. I feel like I relate to her in many ways, and at the very least look up to her and the way she thinks and sees the world. She often talks about feeling like an outcast, and being percieved as one by others too. She's no stranger to being called weird or strange.

But i think it is her very weirdness that makes her the amazing artist that she is. Every time I see her perform, I'm in awe at how she doesn't just stand and sing for an audience, you can tell she's singing for herself too. She's really connected to her music, no matter how cheesy or hippy-ish that might sound.

When she performs, she uses her hands a lot. Her hands help to tell the story. I've heard some say it's distracting, but I think it just adds to her amazing performances. But one thing that I will always think about is how similar they seem to stims, a lot of the time. She'll wiggle her fingers or maybe flap slightly. Sometimes she'll shake her head, and its like she's stimming to the music, which a lot of us do. Sometimes the way her hands move so gracefully makes me wonder if perhaps she experiences some sort of synaesthesia, maybe she can see or feel the music in the air. Who knows, its not something she's ever really spoken about.

Two of her songs in particular really speak to me, those being Through The Eyes of a Child, and A Different Kind of Human. Through the Eyes of a Child is about wishing you could be a child again, when you couldn't see all the bad in the world that you're exposed to as an adult. A Different Kind of Human is actually about death and the afterlife, but I feel a connection to some of the lyrics as someone who is, in essence, 'a different kind of human'. Another interesting thing about Aurora is that she developed her own language, made to convey specific emotions that no other language can convey, and she includes a part of it in A Different Kind of Human. I think its fascinating that she has come up with her own language, and I can't wait to hear more of it in future music.

She spoke before in an interview, that when she was younger, kids used to call her autistic as an insult, because of how strange she was. But she didn't take this moment to say yes or no. Frankly, I don't think she needs to. Autistic or not, I'll still love her and connect with her in the way that she sees the world.

Onto the second person. Jungkook.

I'm sure many people would find this more surprising. A member of the worlds biggest boyband? Autistic? Surely not, right?

Well, once you get to know him, if you know enough about Autism, you start to realise just how likely it could be. If not autism, its just as likely that he could have ADHD, or at the very least some form of neurodivergency.

For one, he stims. He stims, a lot. Watch any interview with them, I guarantee you'll see him rocking side to side at some point, or fidgeting with his hands, or picking at his skin. Especially in recent years, his stimming has got more and more common, which suggests to me and many others, that he is unmasking. He likely masked and supressed his stims a lot in their early days in fear of people noticing and using that as a way to hate on him and the band. Now that they're so popular, he likely feels less pressure to hide who he truly is.

That's not the only thing though. There are many other things that point to possible autism. He's mentioned many times that he's very sensitive to smell, he's always sniffing the other members (which, hint hint, is a stim) because he clearly finds their smells comforting, and he likes to keep things smelling nice, and gets uncomfortable when things smell bad, which I can definitely relate to, as someone sensitive to smells.

He also spoke before, about how since the members raised him, he felt like he gained many parts of their personalities over time. This is a common thing when it comes to masking. We copy the mannerisms and habits of those around us who we look up to in order to mask. So the fact he picked up on traits of the other members and gained them himself is a huge pointer to masking.

He's also known for frequently zoning out, he's known for staring intensely at whoever is talking, which could be an auditory processing thing (looking at the person might help him better understand and process what they are saying), and he's known for having very intense interests, to the point where the other members have mentioned this before, worrying that it might end up interfering with his main job of being an idol. Not only that but he's known for being seemingly good at everything, and this likely comes from this fact that he gets intensely interested in things. This is where the whole autistic savant stereotype builds from. Autistics gain very intense interests, to the point where we want to gain all the knowledge and skills we can in that certain department, and so by default, some of us end up seeming especially talented in those areas.

But anyway, I'm not here to try and prove to you that they're autistic. There's one moral issue that I face with this. On the one hand I want to talk about this with other autistics, about how much we relate to them, but on the other hand, I don't want to start rumours that may not be true, or if they are true, I don't want to out them before they're comfortable. I wouldn't want them to have to reveal information like that if they don't want to or aren't comfortable, which is why i hesitate to post this at all.

Off the back of that, a very important disclaimer: I AM NOT DIAGNOSING EITHER OF THEM. Are they autistic? maybe, maybe not. We might never know, and that's ok. All that matters is that they are them. And I can still relate to them and chat about it with friends, because at the end of the day, everyone will have some traits. It's inevitable, its called being human. I will always see them as autistic in my head. I doubt anything can change that, but so long as I keep it to me and my small community of like-minded people, I don't think it will do much harm. I hope one day that autism will be seen less like an insult, and more like a simple statement, or even a compliment. Then maybe I won't have to hide this as much.

Anyway, that was just a little rant that gave me an opportunity to dump about my favourite people. I hope you enjoyed.

see ya in the next one!