It's sarcasm.

“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 financial / crypto trading subcultures it’s quite popular. I don’t control what becomes slang.

Perhaps you are misinterpreting slang based on a desire to think more positively? The whole tweet, er, x had a condescending tone to me.

As an active participant in the subculture from which the author is from, I assure you it was not remotely condescending.

Which subculture?

4chan

For the record, that's not it.

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.

Aaaaaaactually lol

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.

Ah, fair enough! I'm only trying to describe the state of things today, but certainly those uses of the word are not new

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.

This is also the usage that I understand.

I suppose that's how it is right now but memories run deeper and "friend" used to be a different word.

No.

So which subculture?

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 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.

It's really funny to see people attributing it to Twitter when it's 4 Chan slang from forever ago.

You attribute it to twitter so you don’t have to admit you know anything about the notorious hacker 4chins.

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.

> On the contrary “otaku” refers exclusively to those who are into Japanese media but who do not worship Japan, as those are always weeaboo.

Huh? I thought people that are obsessed with trains can also be referred to as otakus so it is not exclusive to Japanese media.

In Japan, sure. Outside of Japan an Otaku is someone who likes anime.

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.

Here's a simple example from r/wallstreetbets: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/ihu7rh/auti...

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.

The "retard" that (unwise & unkind) people use comes from "developmental retardation" (https://healthquery.net/developmental-retardation.html). And the rest is history...

This results in the apparent plane insulting the pilots: https://youtu.be/vmbzKsqKQoI

But it’s just telling them they can flare.

'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.

Yeah, I think some people might find it offensive when it's actually used as an insult.

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.

It's not really saying that they're actually autistic, it's saying that the a corporation was able to basically buy its researcher into their research & credit because they didn't navigate the academic system sufficiently to get tenure or respected positions a la a k-drama, possibly because they were more into their own work than networking and status. In a sarcastic/bitter/eye-rolly way.

Very well said

Autist =/= autistic. The latter is used to formally refer to anyone on the spectrum. The former is often used as a friendly or self-deprecating title.