Where do you meet other Autistic people?

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of course I meet some of them online but I also in a support group for Aspie/Autie people and also i know some of them from school and from my mother

I've never meet another aspie. Gotta love living in the middle of nowhere

I've yet to meet any others - frustrating when you want to meet others, you know they're out there, but...*sigh*

There's a local group, just joined and next week is the first meeting I've been invited to, but they're going bowling - as much as I like bowling it's too much for me to meet new people in a new place, FAR too many variables, unknown factors, even though the letter gave precise details on costs there are still factors like when to pay, who to pay, etc....and that's before even thinking about what it would be like talking to other people, what happens if the others in the groups are too different to me, etc. I hope to go to another group meet at some time though.

I've only ever met one other person - my ex, who believes he is HF autistic (he is definitely on the spectrum).

I've never met another in real life. However, I just moved to Charlotte, NC and I just searched for "aspies in charlotte, nc" and it pulled up a complete website dedicated to aspie meet-ups here. Looks like they meet several times a month too. Wow.

I've encountered people on the spectrum via three differnt routes

A) Actual support groups or aspie lead groups. Ran by a local group or charity, or in the case of online communities such as the now defunct aspievillage in the UK organising their own meetups throughout the country.

B) Special interest groups. I've never met so many diverse people with various oddities including aspergers then I did when I met up with people into bushcraft stuff. I imagine its not exclusive to that kind of community at all any niche group that would attract a person with asperger qualities will probably be rife with them either undiagnosed or diagnosed.

C) Hidden aspies. Until 2005 I never went out of my way to speak to other people with aspergers. I was happy in my life, i had job, friends i'd been backpacking across europe and North America live was grand. It was only when life became crap that I thought maybe its worth me meeting other people with AS so I joined my first online community in 2004. I've been diagnosed since 1992 and up until 2005 I'd never met anyone else with a diagnosis. There are plenty of people who are still like that who were diagnosed in childhood or adolesence or who maybe were informally diagnosed and they went oh wow thats cool explains everything...well time to go get on my life.

There are absolutely TONS of aspies who are under C and I meet these kind of people unintentionally all the time. Especially women with aspergers, very much fall into B and C its such a hidden iceburg of a population thats really untapped. My brothers would definatly come under C as well they both have social lives of their own and choose not to meet other people with aspergers, inadvertantly they probably do without knowing, but they won't openly talk about it or engage with it.

London is so far the only place I have encountered an actual self lead asperger community so far. I think its still in its infancy but it is far ahead of anywhere else in the world that I know of and its really cool to see people diagnosed now don't have to plod along without anyone else they can relate too.