Can Aspies truly enjoy talking to people and being friends?

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Of course they can!

I don't develop a connection with people like others seem to. I can enjoy social contact with certain people in the moment, but it doesn't engender a sense of social motivation/imagination. I wouldn't think to re-initiate contact for example.

I've always enjoyed talking to people.

When I was a kid--except for my "best friend," I had no real motivation to make friends.

I developed a motivation to make friends when I got older.

I have a tendency to not want to contact people very often though--unless I feel really close to the person.

People make assessments here that others 'sound autistic' all the time, I'm only making the slight opposite. I'm not saying that they are necessarily BAP but just closer to BAP (so very high functioning, I guess) than the autism I have encountered IRL. I've had 3 friends with autism now, and usually it is those that are diagnosed with (usually moderate) classic autism on this website that express views/desires most similar to them.

I'm very social and enjoy socializing and small talk as well as talking about things that are more important or weighty. There are times when I don't want to do that, so I don't. I enjoy it very much though

Yes. But I find it tiring and risky. Risky as I might say the wrong thing then I feel crap. However when it goes well it feels good and so I have enjoyed it.

^ That.

Surround yourself with friends that you have something in common with. Quality is better than quantity.

Interesting. I haven't noticed so much of that "this person sounds autistic" stuff. I think it's a bit daft. If I think of a few WP posters whose words I read frequently and try to imagine what the person who created those words is like in person, I am certain I don't know them at all.

What is their speech like? Their gait? Are they loquacious? Taciturn? Fidgety? Constantly in motion? Still? How emotionally expressive are they? I have read enough of their written self-expression to have an idea of how they might put something in writing, but is their face-to-face verbal expression like that?

Let me think of a few WP members I am a bit familiar with: Fnord. OliveOilMom, kraftiekortie, you, MomSparky, InThisTogether, btbnyr, Rocket... I can think of many things I have read from each of you, but I don't KNOW any of you. I have only met one person from WP in person and I think it's fair to say we were both surprised by the actual person in contrast to the person we had imagined based on WP writing. On the basis of what I have read from each of you, I couldn't begin to guess anything about your neurology.

We all know that autism is a spectrum and aspergers is a spectrum within ASD, and yet I keep seeing people arguing from tiny data sets: "I know a couple of people with autism, so I know what it is and what it isn't" --and we get arguments about the interpretation of the diagnostic criteria and differential diagnosis. "If you are hearing voices, then it's something on the schizophrenia spectrum, so you are not autistic" -- this despite the knowledge of comorbidity and higher rates of a variety of other disorders including those on the schizophrenia spectrum.

It seems to me that just reading these paragraphs of words in little shaded boxes reveals so little about a person that any such judgments we tend to make about each other should be considered essentially unreliable--a vague impression at best, to be discarded in the face of any real information to the contrary.

We exchange a great deal and this is wonderful to me, but it's more on the conceptual level, not so much the richness of personality, psyche, character, the full complexity of our individual natures.

I wasn't sure if you were saying "the level of communication I see here is more like the level I see among BAP people in real life" or "I think many of the people on WP who think they are autistic are really BAP" but in either case, it seems to me that we can't have enough information about other members, in the absence of real world encounters, to make such judgments.

There can be such huge gaps between a person's self perception and the way others perceive them and the persona a person may adopt in writing can be so different from the entirety of the person in real life, I just don't think it makes sense to assess or evaluate others here in that way.

But I don't mean to be jumping on your words or over interpreting them--This is just an extended riff on certain thoughts that your words sparked in me.

^You are right, I guess I just mean in a sense that people on WP generally seem to be more keen talking to people and enjoying being friends than those that I have known/still do know IRL. Those that I know IRL have been like introverts but to the extreme - always waiting for me/others to setup plans and initiate conversations, and leaving in the middle of them etc. I only asked one of them (my current one, I didn't consider myself close to the others) about it and it isn't a lack of ability but a lack of interest with him.

I can't speak from an AS point of view but my closest friend is an aspie. We text/chat everyday, every few hours. I always enjoy his company when I see him in the morning or on weekends and he has said that he enjoys being around me. He has often said "If I didn't like you, I wouldn't hang out with you." He is open to trying new things to meet people, like joining a volleyball meet-up. Though he said he wasn't any good and felt awkward, he was still open to the idea and he did make new friends that day. He has said that he loves his friends and he is very sincere about that.