Quick asks

0/📱 current status
1/🎹 music recommendation (i recommend that you send me one as well!)
2/📺 video recommendation (don't send me recommendations back, i won't have time to watch them)
3/💽 cool open-source software or services (you may specify a type of software/website you are looking for)
4/👽 Star Trek character (one I associate you with, or just random if I don't know you well enough)

Boundaries

If you involve yourself regularly with drama or queer community/fandom/social justice discourse, you may interact, but I will probably not follow back and may mute you if it is pervasive enough. You are encouraged to talk to me about controversial topics if and only if you are willing to accept that I may disagree with you, and hear me out. In return, I will keep an open mind to what you are saying. If you intend to cut me off, harass me, or go after my friends if I'm not convinced of your position, don't bother asking in the first place.

Non-sexual flirting is okay, but ask before making overtly sexual comments. Since I allow followers under 18 and Retrospring does not yet support content warnings, it may be best to move those conversations to another venue. Feel free to ask for my contact information on other platforms.

Largely depends on who I'm with. Among "normies" I tend to worry about coming across as cringe or annoying, and among "weirdos" I tend to worry about coming across as boring or fake. Either way, the worry is that I don't belong anywhere.

On one hand I have a weird accent, I visibly stim and talk and sing to myself in public, I get super passionate about certain things and infodump. I can think of many occasions in my life where, in retrospect, someone was probably really annoyed at me and just pretending to care while I infodumped at them. On the other hand, I have a formal, grammatically precise writing style, I tend to appear very laid-back and calm, I'm very conflict-averse, and my media taste, while oddball at times, is arguably that of someone 20 years older than me. It shocks me that no one has ever questioned my right to appear in queer spaces because I often feel like I should come across as a boring cishet.

It's odd that I have this worry because I don't have the trauma that would normally cause it. I was hardly ever bullied in school, and no one has ever told me I'm cringe or that I'm boring, quite the opposite actually. But I guess just hearing about hatred for people kinda like me, even in a negative light, was enough for me to internalize it. My intrusive thoughts do things to me that my conscience finds absolutely despicable.

In any case, "being myself" and authenticity have always been more important to me than conformity and conflict avoidance, so I don't change much about myself consciously. Definitely a bit unconsciously, though, and enough that it's caused me tons of distress.

i cannot give you advice here. i can only tell you my understanding of my own psyche, with the disclaimer that i am not very mentally healthy, so i might be doing a few things wrong.

for one, i both hate lying (even subtly) and am very afraid of conflict, so i've developed a lot of social strategies to balance the two, basically saying what's on my mind but in a way that makes an adverse reaction less likely. i will only outright lie when i feel i am in genuine danger, but i do bend the truth sometimes to get around a potential conflict. also, weirdly enough, my feelings in this regard are almost exactly the same online as offline, anonymous or not.

i also seem to have a different response to social adversity than others. one of my greatest fears is that people only interact with me because they have misidentified me as a good person. i deal with that by being as honest and vulnerable with friends as i can, so i know they know who i really am. i get embarrassed occasionally, and the memories torment me for years afterwards. but i use that to hone my strategies for avoiding embarrassment while staying honest. (also to develop new complexes and worsen my self-hate, but that's beside the point.) in situations where others would find a reason to hide themselves and their interests, i rarely find those reasons compelling. and sometimes i find new reasons to open up.

that probably isn't helpful (and remember the disclaimer: this might not be healthy), but i hope you get better about vulnerability. it's not as hard or dangerous as it seems. outside of the internet, most people aren't assholes, and the assholes are easy to spot. hiding is not as necessary as you think.

Linux is an operating system - the basic software that makes a computer function, or the same sort of thing that Windows, OS X, and Android are. In order to maximize its users' control over the operating system, nearly everything to do with the OS's development is open-source (like Mastodon), completely transparent, and interoperates with other programs. This makes Linux great for specialized uses, so it's the dominant operating system for pretty much everything except personal computers and smartphones.

There's no single entity developing Linux; rather, it's pieced together from a lot of different programs created by different people with similar goals. Some of these programs have overlapping uses, and as such Linux can be pieced together in numerous different ways, creating different versions called "distributions" or "distros." The only program every Linux distribution must have is that way on a technicality - the Linux kernel, because it's the namesake of Linux. You pretty much have to make your own choices at every level of the operating system, which is great for users' freedom and control, but not as good for ease of use - and that's the root of pretty much everything good and everything bad about Linux.

Sorry if this is long, but this is what you get for asking an autistic person about his special interest. If you need clarification, please feel free to reply to this or DM me on Mastodon.

Oh no, this is going to be controversial, please don't hate me...

Favorite anime: Psycho-Pass. I love the cyberpunk aesthetic, the high-concept setting, and all the philosophy, it really gets me thinking. The second season and the first movie aren't great, though. If Psycho-Pass 4 came out I'd be stoked to watch it.

Least favorite: Nekopara. What little plot it has seems to go out of its way to have the most uncomfortable possible implications, and none of the characters have any depth, which is probably because the plot was written for a kinky adult visual novel and the anime adaptation tried to make it G-rated. Then again, now that I'm deeper into the rabbit hole maybe I'd be swept up in the cuteness on next watch. Which seems to be the intended effect, and the catgirls themselves are good-looking.

I've read so little manga, that Pokémon Adventures would have to be best and worst by default.

self-diagnosis and self-evaluation are valid, but be careful about it. you could massively improve your mental health, or ruin it. so do your research and don't take extreme measures.

whether you want an official diagnosis is up to you; all it really does is give you something you can show to prove you need accomodation. it also has the downside of potentially denying you rights on the basis of your disability or leading to abusive treatment regimes. it depends on your circumstances whether the positive or negative side shows more, for me it's about neutral.

what's really important is that you accept yourself regardless of diagnosis and don't spend your life trying to conform to social norms that are slowly killing you.

"man, i really like the song magnetic fields part 1 by jean michel jarre. i'm just gonna keep playing it over and over again while repeating this message in british intelligence code."
"dammit kevin you're supposed to be spying on the egyptians, not promoting popular french electronic artists! now change that intermission tone to something normal, like the beatles' come together."
"look we all know these stations are useless anyway. we have computers now! we have top secret post-quantum asymmetric encryption algorithms we could be using! why the hell are we talking over radio? back to jean michel jarre."
"KEVIN I SWEAR. you're fired."

I'm not sure what it means to not be able to help faking something. To my knowledge even factitious disorders are choices, motivated by a desire to be a medical patient - except Munchausen by proxy, in which the caretaker tries to make their dependent appear disordered, but I wouldn't call that faking. It is irrational to punish anyone for something they did not decide to do, and even if they did choose to do something wrong, it is better to address their reasons for doing so than to enact retribution.

Anyway, I can't say I have experience with people faking autism. Being honestly wrong about having it is more common, so I tend to assume that people playing up stereotyped traits of autism or another disorder are in that category, unless it is proven that they know they aren't autistic.