“Autist” is a slang term of endearment for people who are weirdly obsessed about various things. It’s similar to “based”. It doesn’t mean anything other than they were not worldly businessmen and investors felt they needed an adult to watch them.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it used as a term of endearment so much as a way of describing someone as strange or atypical while purposefully distancing yourself from them. It’s not flattering, and it’s overtly marginalizing. I don’t take much offence from it, and I don’t find it remotely endearing either. I can’t speak for all people on the spectrum, but I doubt many actually like it.
In the "terminally online" communities I hang out in, it's a term of endearment since there's a pattern of obsessive people (like terminally online people) also being on the spectrum.
They aren't othering someone by calling them autists, they're calling them one of themselves by highlighting that they're behaving in a similar way.
It's really just an english version of the word "otaku". In the past the word would be "nerd" but for whatever reason the word doesn't capture the same vibe anymore. I personally think its a praise in some circles.
“Otaku” in the literal Japanese definition, yes. However in terms of “Otaku subcultures” it doesn’t quite fit.
Powerleveling for a moment, but in my circles an “autist” is used positively, neutrally, and negatively. It can play a synonym to “obsessive”, or be used to criticize behavior. It naturally is also used for it’s actual definition. On the contrary “otaku” refers exclusively to those who are into Japanese media but who do not worship Japan, as those are always weeaboo.
In Japan, by definition, an “otaku” is essentially someone who is obsessed with a specific subject and dedicates an overwhelming amount of time to it. For instance, a “train otaku” is someone who spends all their free time working on model trains, to the detriment of their responsibilities.
However, on the Japanese-speaking Internet (mainly 2ch), and to a lesser extent in English-speaking circles (4chan’s /a/), “Otaku” was co-opted from an insult to the tongue-in-cheek name of the subcultures surrounding anime, manga, video games, idols, and nowadays Vtubers. The dedicated “Otaku subculture” is essentially all forms Japanese media, but especially manga.
It’s best to think of it like the real world definition of autism compared to 4chan’s definition of autism.
People calling each other "autists" is a WallStreetBets practice, from Reddit. It's not a thing on 4chan, not even on the interesting place that is /biz/.
4channers would use the "friend"-word as a neutral term (oldfriends, newfriends, etc), or less often "schizo" as an insult, but not autist.
Don't ask me why I'm taking the time to type all of this out, or who cares. Slow news day.
The first time I came across the use of “autist” as a semipejorative term of endearment was on IRC in the late 1990s warez scene, around the same time as the concept of neurodivergence was gaining traction.
I suspect the term has deeper roots than most people realize.
I remember it being used as a synonym for “obsessed perhaps a bit too much” even in the 90s, probably from the idea that if you had autism you would be amazingly brilliant in some tiny subsection of knowledge, like LEGO manufacturing differences.
I think any from these communities (4chan, crypto, etc.) already feel marginalized. So they probably don't care what people outside of their community think about their word usage.
If I can speak for the word "retard" - in reality it means "delayed" (i.e. fire/flame retardants) which I know comes from the French language verb "Retarder" (delay)(I never dug further to see if it has a latin origin when I was learning French).
On the example it's the typical - the "the early bird catches the worm".. meaning the first to get in the trade, makes the buck, the last one in is stuck with an overpriced stock/instrument which is about to deflate. So.. they got in too late.
It gets used that way in the tech-adjacent community of twitter. It's a very particular culture. I think it's a way of sort of re-claiming the autism label from being atypical to being a 'superpower'ish thing.
'Autism' when applied as a slur to everything and everyone has grown to mean 'talent.' It is very rare to see it referred to the actual medical condition these days.
Accurate on the behavioural description but pretty much an alternative to "nerd" and whether it's endearing or not depends on context. Agree it's not remotely hostile here.
