Feel not the same as low functioning autistics

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Functioning labels are not really useful. There are a variety of areas that can be affected by autism, including social communication, motor coordination, sensory processing, cognitive ability, executive function, language etc. We can be "high" or "low" functioning in any given issue. That level of functioning may vary from day to day, over longer periods of time, or within a day. Your "functioning level" in any given area may fluctuate depending on a variety of factors including whether you are ill, exhausted, overtaxed, the number of people involved in a social situation, who is involved, the amount of additional sensory input, fluctuations in your biorhythms, your vitamin D level. etc. Functioning may be significantly impacted by what assistance you did or did not receive while growing up or on transitioning to independent life. Bullying and child abuse can dramatically lower your overall "functioning level". Appropriate accommodations may raise your perceived "functioning level." As a result, many people eschew the use of functioning labels at all.

The assessment of someone else's functioning level doesn't take into account comorbidities, all of the factors above, and is typically drenched in abelism and discomfort with your own diagnosis. There is absolutely no difference between the rubbish "I have nothing in common with hand-flappers" attitude that some people bring to the discussion, and the disparagement that we face at the hands of NTs who know nothing about autism. Clinging to the "aspie" label as a way of distinguishing oneself from "those low functioning people" is leveraging one's own status and managing one's own internalized abelist self-hatred at the expense of others.

You are who you are, they are who they are. There isn't necessarily a commonality on the spectrum. You shouldn't look down on them or be offended that they're on the same spectrum as you.

Have you actually met any low functioning autistic people? Or just seen videos of them?

I first met some low functioning autistics when I was 15, right around when my self-diagnosis was confirmed by a professional. What really amazed me was that I instinctively understood them in a way that I haven't found with non-autistics. Even though they couldn't talk very well, I knew why they were acting the way they did, because they often acted the way I'd have acted if I had absolutely no inhibition or knowledge of social norms and wasn't able to talk. It was a wonderful experience, and it encouraged me to loosen up and be myself more. And the more I was myself, the more the LFA kids seemed to gravitate to me. I'm convinced many of them knew I was autistic better than most NTs do.

My point is, I saw none of that in the videos. Before actually meeting those people, I had a sneaking doubt of "maybe they really are nothing like me". But once I actually met and interacted with some low functioning autistic people, I knew that we really did have the same condition, because they mostly tended to have my quirks exaggerated to an extreme degree.

Too bad I don't know how to make wing-dings. I'd put swastikas in place of the S's whenever I type out Autism Speaks.