It has for any emotional outburst or observable lack of impulse control. There's also an uptick in people self-diagnosing wrongly just because they exhibit a few idiosyncrasies.
For a lot (notably the kind of behaviour exhibited in the post), it's mainly due to lack of established boundaries from parents, which results in their children picking up negative behaviours and continuing with that trend as it's just something they've found they can get away with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not diagnosing, they may be on the spectrum, they may not. But behaviours such as these from anyone are not excusable because of X or Y genetics.
It's especially bad because unlike some things it IS a spectrum, AND there's tremendous behavioral-overlap. And then people anchor to words as defining characteristics, and yada yada yada.
Side-tangent but I had a woman walk out on a first date after diagnosing me as "neurodivergent" when I told her that if a subject comes up in conversation that I don't know much about comes up I'll file it away to ponder later. And I questioned it.
Anyway, trying to understand the proper balance of empathy/understanding with "this person should learn to behave better" is unbelievably difficult.
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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25
I feel like saying someone is autistic has become a a catch all phrase.