Can an Aspie become socially popular?

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14[/youtube]

I managed to gain a large group of friends during my first year of university. But after a while it became apparent that they were all becoming closer to each other, and inviting each other places, while I wasn't. It also became too hard to manage, I felt drained being around them for too long. Eventually, I drifted away and made friends with an older aspie (undiagnosed) woman and I felt much more at ease.

The point is appearances can be deceiving, just because someone thinks or appears to have loads of friends, doesn't mean they do. That's not to say its impossible for an aspie to be popular, I'm sure they can be, I imagine it would just be difficult.

I knew somebody here would say that (funny, if I was talking about an NT with 1 or 2 possible Aspie traits, I would get the ''are you sure he's NT...?'')

But anyway, it wasn't just a case of being shy and sensitive. He also had a fascination with electric, and would spend hours taking electrical things apart when he was as young as 6, and his family would wonder why, being so they never made him be like this. He also used to keep repeatedly pressing light switches on and off when he was a toddler, and his mum had to stop him. She just didn't understand what the fascination was with lights and other electrical things. Then when he got a bit older his family could tell he disliked certain loud noises but tried to hide it because he felt embarrassed. And he used to make odd noises with his voice when he was a teenager. Then I remember when he was 11 we were at a Queen Jubilee party, where most of the kids in the town were invited to with their parents, and he came with his mum and his sister, although his mum said he had a panic attack before they went out and really didn't want to come to the party. I was a little bit shy too because there was a lot of children I didn't know, but I still ate my food and played on the swings. But he just sat there, wouldn't make eye contact with anyone, and wouldn't eat his food, and then went off to sit on his own because he didn't want to join in any games with the other kids. Soon his mum had to take him home, but left his sister there with us and we took her home later when we went home. His sister told me that he is very hard work at home, and teases the dog, and sometimes gets into rages and hits himself in the face. Just lots of little things like that seemed typical in ASDs, and I always thought he was different too. He used to keep pushing me when we were both little, not trying to hurt me but just mucking about, but he did it too much and I got annoyed. His mum once even told him not to keep pulling me about. But he seemed to be more hyper with me, probably because he was comfortable with me.