Is this true for all of us?

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Honestly though how weird would it feel to be NT? Like I said the problem is we feel relativly normal on the inside but on the outside something is not working properly. Okay maybe not completely normal on the inside but still more normal than we would appear on the cover.

NT's fourtnatly feel normal both inside and out.

I'm not sure how I come across to other people, but this video isn't particularly scary to me. I've known plenty of people who behaved like this, and I would not even suggest that they are all Aspies.

I can understand that NTs may misinterpret their voices, words, body language, etc, in odd or even unpleasant ways - which does happen to me even still at my age, and I had felt I could at least socialize somewhat normally. But if they do, it's about the NTs and their difficulties interpreting Aspie behavior.

I don't know, I don't see the problem with the video. If I behave like anyone in that video? Well, it's been true to varying degrees my entire life. Knowing about it doesn't change who I am, you know (and I don't know about it, just the possibility)?

I can understand anxiety over how people perceive you, though. I sort of had a panic attack the first time I heard my own recorded voice played back to me - I did not sound at all like I thought I did, and became severely self-conscious about it for some time. It can be really frustrating.

I don't act like those guys. My friend videotaped me once chatting with another friend. The way I spoke was definitely a bit weird- like I don't think I sounded NT so to say- but not like the people in this video. My voice goes up and down a lot in an unnatural pattern and I use a lot of hand movements.

I am a girl though. Perhaps we are different?

My impression was that the newcomer with the wide eye tracking was obviously different. Also, he bounced around at the end between the lone gal standing, then moving abruptly over to the conversants near the doorway. His attention is 'all over' and shifting here.

The "lone gal"^ was ordinary I thought..... just a little shy.

The engineer was a "little" with the over expressive head bobbing with the laughter.... (at the end when standing)

I noticed the younger fellow sitting ,the one answering on the one Asperger date, was stimming while talking; as he was rocking side to side here a bit.

The man in the plaid seemed ordinary . He's the one with the movie watching strategy to sharpen up socially.

I've been told I "seem ordinary", but I've also had total strangers guess I'm autistic. No clue why.

Different people have different levels of awareness of what autistic people can look like, that's probably why. It can have far less to do with you and a lot to do with them.

I've finally worked out for instance that a lot of things I did in my life before I was diagnosed looked very autistic to anyone who knew much real about autism. But people who don't know a lot about autism did this weird thing. Each autism-related action, they put another explanation on. Whether it was "crazy", "attention seeking", whatever. Then instead of remembering the action they remembered their explanation. And most people do that -- they think in terms of their explanations of their perceptions more than they do in terms of their perceptions. So "seeming normal" can just mean that someone is explaining away to themselves everything "not normal". Which is why I don't agree with the idea of "passing" being simply a matter of not looking very autistic. It is really more like "being passed off as" nonautistic in many cases, by people who don't know what autism looks like anyway.

They talk more than I would. If you put a camera on me in that type of crowded room (it is crowded to me) I'd probably not say very much and say it unintelligibly. I wouldn't make eye contact and I'd be stimming.

Jamesy I think you're thinking about this stuff too much. I can't control my behaviour so I just go with it. I've got friends who don't say anything about it. I find just going with it much better than becoming anxious about it. And yes I have cared what people thought about me before. Is there any point to get so worked up about what people think about you that you may or may not see ever again?

I think there's a tendency for NTs to assume everyone they meet is NT until proven otherwise (much like straight people tend to assume everyone is straight, I think? I am not sure if that is a good analogy, but it's the best I have), so yeah - I think it's easy to get passed as NT even if you look autistic or do autistic things in front of people. Plus people coming up with alternate explanations (I know people tend to come up with their own reasons for why I sometimes get stuck on a word or phrase and repeat it, and it's never autistic - even though it was the first thing I noticed about myself that made me think it) as Anbuend says.

I mean, I am not sure what people think about me, but I've caught myself stimming in various ways - rocking, finger-flicking, staring at lights, clicking my fingernails in my ear, kind of shaking one or both hands (not really flapping, I have these long floppy sleeves on this thing I wear, and I like the feeling of them on my hands), smiling inappropriately (talking to my niece about how she was arrested today? I couldn't stop smiling... I hate that). I tune out of conversations the moment they shift to things I'm not interested in, I talk at length about the things I am interested in, I have to stop and decide how to react to strong emotion, like I'm on a kind of delay, when most people would immediately know what to do, I tend toward very little clothing variety and I tend to eat the same food over and over again. I wear sunglasses everywhere but in the house (and sometimes in the house). I occasionally (although not too often for the past couple of years) try to sound like my favorite characters from television, movies, and video games.

And while I feel like I have become more obviously autistic in the past month and a half, most of the above is stuff I've done for a long time. I figure if anyone in this house doesn't know, they don't want to know, or they don't know what to look for, or they have alternative explanations they're comfortable with (possibly not flattering to me).

I don't care what people think of my anymore. I live my life the way I see fit for me. I do what I do, because I am as I am and to try to change me, would be a rejection to me.

I have a defense line to use on people who question my ways, now.

I don't notice anything significant... I'm not english mother tongue so I can't see anythimg weird in they way they speak.

I think i am in total denial as to how i appear to others. I convince myself that i look totally normal, which is pretty easy since i left high school and noone is calling me names based on my appearance anymore. But i will never look at myself on camera. I have had some glimpses before turning my head away quickly, and i do overexagerate my expressions, even the movements of my head seem somewhat "stylized", i remember a friend telling me i looked like a cartoon character when i was 13, and i can see some truth in that actually. She was a manga fan so she thought it was cute, but as a grown woman, it's just plain weird.
Btw, that guy in the middle who smiles all the way through his talking, i remember i had a phase of doing that at some point during my teens, because people were always telling me to smile, and i had noticed that they did sometimes smile while speaking. It passed pretty quickly though, because it's so damn unpractical. Can't articulate that way so to hell with the moronic smile, let them call me angry if they want to. Yep, it's a struggle.... I'd much rather never speak to anyone again than to have to go through all that again. Easy choice, i know

I don't think that is how I look. At least not as extreme. I've seen myself on tape and I don't seem too different from the NTs. I don't know what I look like to the NTs, though.

On the other hand, I didn't realize that I had abnormal speech patterns, until someone said that I talked like a textbook.

The guy at about 1:33 reminds me a lot of Temple Grandin.

I think I'm sitting in quite the same way when I'm listening to someone talking as most of this guys do.

So far, I actually did not think this could be a "special feature" of me.

What's amazing are the little bits of characteristics you notice while watching them interact. I realized how many people in my life resemble them to some degree. I had a friend in high school who talked like the guy with the dark hair who's talking about Parkinson's and Michael J Fox. I was thinking while watching him, I know/knew two people in real life that remind me of him. I know someone who holds their hands together, one on top of the other grasping at the arm like he does.
I see myself and others while watching them.

A few weeks ago in a therapy session, my psychologist stressed to me that I am "weird" to NT people. He told me to visualize a ret*d person and how I feel when I see one. Then he said that NTs will get "that" same sort of feeling when they interact with me. That was a pretty huge shock to me and one I am not sure I agree with completely but have much more to learn on this subject.

The main character in that video seems to be suffering from ADHD as well as Aspergers. He also clearly has NO CLUE about some pretty basic social concepts. This indicates that he has also managed to escape all adaptive strategies and/or interventions somehow in his life's experience. I haven't seen one quite as clueless as he seems to be in the few meetings I have gone to. The adult meetings I have gone to have various "disorders" or ways to wear the label but the majority of the people are pretty quiet and/or respectful of one another in a social sense.

Still, in all, we look pretty "weird" to the rest of the world if I am to believe my psychologist.