It seams to me that the existence of this thread can be taken as evidence of this:
Many people who are "on the spectrum" don't feel "a part of", and do feel "apart from".
And even when you acknowledge this fact, and create a website called "wrongplanet" to gather together these people, some of those gathered together STILL don't feel "a part of", and do feel "apart from".
The other term I have heard used is feeling "less than".
I think for some people, they don't mind this feeling. For others it hurts.
My mother was trained in MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), which is described on "myersbriggs.org" as "personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people's lives"
One of the aspects of the MBTI is that some people are Introverts and others are Extroverts, and this is one axis you can use to divide people my personalty "type". This is one of 4 axes which collectively divide people into 16 subgroups, called "personalty types". The idea is that some people are "get energy" from being around other people, while other people "loose energy" from being around other people, and may need some time to "recharge".
Somehow (and I have jokingly responded to a question about "Autism culture groups" on another thread with a comment about a "non-conformist club") it doesn't really surprise me that I still, sometimes, feel "apart from" and "less than" - even here on "wrongplanet" because I have gotten used to feeling "apart from" and "less than" in so many other groups. It still hurts sometimes, even if it is not a surprise.
I think I am the kind of person who has always felt and will always feel this way in almost any group.
I continue to work on growing in people skills and communications skills to try to lessen this feeling, but I think there is a limit to what I can do to "run human in emulation mode" as a certain well-known billionaire joked. I thinking learning people skills like some people learn a foreign language will always feel a bit foreign to me, even when I get the accent right. And I think I will always be hoping for and looking for a place where I feel "ok" and "accepted" and like I can "be myself" but I am really not giving it a high probability of happening in this lifetime.
I saw a youtube video about the "Double Empathy Theory" which says that NTs may have a problem understanding people on the spectrum, and people on the spectrum may have trouble understanding NTs, but this problem simply goes away when people on the spectrum get together with no NTs to bother them.
Can't find the youtube now, but here is an article:
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-gu ... le-empathy
I understand this theory, I just don't think it is 100 percent true. I think this thread provides a counter-example.
The very idea of "popular WP members" and "unpopular WP members" suggests that it is true for some and not for others.
YMMV
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ADHD-I(diagnosed) ASD-HF(diagnosed)
RDOS scores - Aspie score 131/200 - neurotypical score 69/200 - very likely Aspie