The internet was built by people with our brain. That is not a romantic claim. It is a demographic observation about who has spent the last sixty years designing computer systems, networks, protocols, and interfaces. A lot of us.
The consequence is that online space, at its best, has always been more Autistic than offline space. Text-based interaction removes the pressure of face and voice. Asynchronous communication lets us take the time we need to respond. Communities of interest form around SPINs, and the intensity that would be unusual at a dinner party is the price of admission online. The small talk layer that exhausts us in person is largely optional in text.
Why online has been more Autistic
This has shaped how the Autistic community finds itself. Many of us first met other Autistic people online. Forums in the early 2000s. Blogs. Twitter when Twitter was what it was. TikTok in its current incarnation. The community has been talking to itself across time zones and borders in a way that offline Autistic spaces have never managed.
The internet has also been the site of some of the worst harm. Algorithmic amplification of harmful content. Exposure of vulnerable people to exploitative actors. The erosion of the interior by the demand for public performance. Online space is not a utopia, and pretending it is distorts what it actually is.
Where the harm has come from
But the first experience most newly identified Autistic people have, after the diagnosis or self-identification, is searching for other Autistic people online. And finding them. And realising the loneliness was not the self. It was the geography.
Digital community is community. The relationships are real. The friendships that last. The collaborations that produce things. The grief shared when someone from the group chat dies. None of this is imaginary. The dismissal of online connection as lesser is almost always made by people who have not had to build a community in places where the physical rooms did not welcome them.
The point is the each other
The internet owes us less than we owe each other on it. The point is the each other. The infrastructure is incidental.
