Autism and Robots





EDIT: Gonna come in here and say that the response to the video has been so overwhelmingly positive that the first few days after publishing I sort of became a YouTube customer service representative, checking and replying to comments for ~8-10 hours a day, just because so many people had their own experiences and feelings to share and I wanted to encourage that. Unfortunately I have to go back to actually making stuff so I'm not as active anymore, but I wholeheartedly expected this video to have a catastrophic like/dislike ratio and invite tons of toxicity from generally dismissive people, so seeing the overwhelmingly positive reaction and discussions made me feel so happy as a creator.  Thank you so much

I'll tell you why I clicked on this video:
-Autism
-Robots
-I like your voice texture it relaxes me and feels very pleasant

The Stages of Online Autism:
1. Mockery and distrust (the Reeeeeeee era)
2. Slow inclusion/assimilation (weaponized autism memes, there’s a mix of disdain and genuine amusement)
3. Full acceptance (listening to tens of hours of niche video essays)

This video is the equivalent to going off the rails, except it doesnt go off the rails in any normal way. The train, its 20 cars, and its entire crew and passengers just manifest in some random mountain range in the wilderness of Asia, only for it to crash and tumble down the entire way down the mountain and slam itself into the train station...

...and there was never any rails.

I am both intrigued and confused before even starting the video

Fellow tism bro here to, say thank you. Hearing your very similar experiences reminds me i'm not alone in this dark forest.

As an autistic guy who’s currently in an internship to become therapist, that whole talk of wanting to sacrifice for others really hit home in a way I didn’t expect. Thank you.

When I was a kid I remember I was pretty much convinced I was a robot, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t like anyone else around so I came up with the most obvious conclusion. Someone had replaced me with a robot copy and now I was stuck like this for the rest of my life. Ever since then I’ve loved all robots in media as I find their lack of knowledge on human concepts like love and socialization very relatable. This was a great video Davey thank you!

"Who the fuck cares if my eyes aren't making direct soul-piercing contact with my teacher"
this and the lines that followed basically summed up a major issue i had during my experience in the education system

Being a fellow autistic myself, the fact that you are too isn’t something I’d really thought about but it does not surprise me at all.

Anyways, This video contains multiple of the most relatable things I’ve heard from anybody on the platform so thanks for making it

I clicked on this video because I'm autistic and was all excited about Robots and as it turns out, it was really you telling me I've likely been having silent panic attacks at least once or twice a month for the past 4 years and I had no idea????

This is actually groundbreaking news for me, and GENUINELY thank you!

When I was a kid, I was called “Dictionary” or “Calculator” by my classmates. Hearing my own speech didn’t sound right, and watching my own movements didn’t feel right. I became deeply depressed from a young age. I got my right arm and shoulder tattooed with machinery in an attempt to appear less human on purpose.

I’m an archivist now. My left arm is tattooed with flowers. I’m taking antidepressants. My friends describe me as passionate before all else. I lift weights, I sing, and sometimes I dance.

Thanks for this video.

I wish I had words beyond "me fr!!" but I don’t. This makes me feel so seen. Thank you for making this :)

As a diagnosed autist (all be it high functioning) this is oddly accurate and strangely comforting. Great vid dude

If I were to make this video, it would be autism and wizards. My way of coping with my disability has just been to escape into second worlds, whether it's through watching Lord of the Rings over and over again, doing little worldbuilding projects in my head that'll never be used for anything or playing video games. Never been good at coping with reality and it's left me a hair away from suicide for a good 7 years straight now, the diagnosis at 19 feeling more like a death sentence than anything else. I've tried the usual autism route of being a "creative", trying to make video games or fiddle around with my guitars, but it never really goes anywhere, I just don't have the skills or the energy to build them, nor do I have anything to say worth spending the time to say. There's plenty of overly positive stories of living with autism on the internet, whenever I hear something like this, trying to encourage me to not hang, it inspires more contempt at this point. Completely irrationally, I know your motivations are as pure as they come, but it just feels so hollow after 24 years of getting my shit kicked in and with the future looking more bleak with every passing day. Thanks for the video, I know you'll still be able to see this comment after it's deleted in 10-15 minutes, so I'll try not to be an ass, I really do appreciate the effort, just a bit pessimistic.

As someone on the spectrum just coming out of highschool and having absolutely no idea what I'm meant to do. This genuinely made me so happy. I live in the south and the general response to my problems is either A: "your disabled and won't ever achieve my dreams" or B: "it's not that hard just be normal". It's so incredibly refreshing to see someone with the same challenges and how they succeeded. If you told me a year ago that the pokemon war crime guy is going to make me cry and understand myself, I probably wouldn't have believed you. Thank you Davey, you have much of my respect.

Much like how Pikachu was the secret 4th starter, there’s a secret 4th personality for small boys: medieval fantasy

Great video Davey, saw the title knew I had to watch. Now that I’ve watched, gotta subscribe

"I'm not a guy that hides away their life because it is full of intrigue and complexity"

Apologies, but once you can start counting near death experiences on double digits, this is no longer a valid point. xD

Memes aside, to add another comment onto the pile of 'this helped me,' I'm watching this in the hospital as I deal with the consequences of going straight to university because everyone told me it would be so much better than school. It was not. But hearing, not only about similar experiences to mine in the broad strokes, but also that during a ramble about your hyperfixations and it sounding so similar to my own rambles... well, I think it made the message that much stronger. Not just the 'I know how it feels,' but seeing action that, in some way, proves it? I don't know how to describe it.

Anyway, thank you.

as a fellow robot obsessed autistic it's actually kinda cool how, the more i look into the proper care and preventative maintenance of tech, the fewer differences i see between a machine
for example/fun fact: rest and sleep are not only as important for computers as they are for people, but for a lot of the same reasons, the shutdown, startup, and sleep sequences are when both computers and humans handle a lot of the more intensive mental maintenance tasks, such as cleaning up and reorganizing memory, purging tasks/processes that either froze or didn't close properly, and processing/applying larger updates
for another example/fun fact: if you've ever seen a furby or other animatronic toy trying to function on low energy, it's a lot like how a human looks on critically low sleep, and i don't suspect it'll be any different for more complex robots/AI that are low on battery and/or are running out of available memory

I, an Autistic woman, was always into dinosaurs, robots, and vehicles as a kid. Everyone was shocked by how much I knew about cars and boats! And especially that it's a girl talking about them. I still am into vehicles and always ramble about the stuff I'm into xD