I don't know. When OP describes their community of "furry queer hackers," I can't help but notice that the link to the autism spectrum goes overlooked. While it's very good to find one's people, it's dangerous to define yourself by these kinds of online personas. Autistic people tend to be drawn to and identify with cartoons, animals, and exaggerated displays of emotion — from deficits in the subtler forms of empathy or theory of mind, I don't know. Combine this sometimes highly visible trait with their (our) tendency to obsess and dominate online conversations and it's not hard to see why outsiders are uninterested in paying a visit to the deeper end of autistic-coded fandom where furries, anime fans, and children's media obsessives collect. I'm cishet autistic but I knew a lot of "furry queer hacker" types online when I was a teenager. I think that autistic people are uniquely vulnerable to over-identification with their online disguises; replacing human connections with pseudonymous communities that don't ask too much of them. I'm not telling OP to touch grass or whatever, because I don't know OP, but maybe this will resonate with someone.
I agree... But also the online 'hacker community' (whatever that means) IME tended to be filled with people supposedly 'outside' social norms. Even the 'straight white males' are of the slightly socially awkward video gaming variety. Not your erm generic ones. And they are all obsessive over stuff.
Almost put me off when I was considering careers but people in real life are much more diverse with a variety of interest.
And they don't live/breathe/eat code.
I'm an autistic woman with ADHD but because my interests are typically girly people don't believe it...
Also to add nothing wrong with video games, I can't do woess very well but what I mean is they tend to have some 'identifier' that they're proud to not be like all the 'normal peoplw'
I don't have any quirky interests. I like trash TV and doing my nails. Somehow that's not acceptable
Works both ways though. If you bring your identity into something irrelevant I'm gonna assume it's because you don't know what you're doing.
I'm not saying that people should judge by profile pic or website colour. But I see my peers who spend most of their time at diversity events, winning 'diversity awards' getting promoted over people like me, who are doing the actual work.
Am female, bi, neurodiverse but none of that is my entire identity so much that I need to plaster it everywhere.
