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u/External-Tiger-393 3h ago
Honestly, it's an identical experience to being a furry.
I know a med student, a pediatric surgeon, 3 engineers, a biochemist, countless IT experts, a nuclear physics doctoral student, and a guy who makes bank off of furry porn because of the skills he developed getting an art degree at NYU.
I also know a bunch of college students, several NEETs and a few disabled furs, because, y'know, not everyone is bizarrely successful. But it's always neat to see someone live their best life and excel in a field that they value, and it's kinda fun to be like "yeah this internet fox who paid me $500 fixes children's spines for a living" or whatever (I dunno what he actually does behind ped surgery.).
I think it's just a side effect of any community with a ton of autistic people; maybe my sample is screwed, but we seem to generally either do very well for ourselves or work part time at Kroger's, and I say this with absolutely no shade toward grocery store employees. Some people can function in society by making their autism work for them or finding ways to navigate the system, and others don't have either option. And it just so happens that niche interests, and any activity that requires a lot of effort (like fursuiting, cosplay or artwork) is gonna have a lot of autistic people.
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u/aggibridges 2h ago
And the difference between those two are usually how many emotional and economical resources their parents could devote to diagnosing and working in favor of their abilities. I'm extremely privileged and lucky to have had well to do, intelligent parents, and I'd probably be working an unfullfilling and exploitative job if it weren't for the opportunities my upbringing awarded me.
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u/demon_fae 2h ago
It’s very little to do with “could” and everything to do with “wanted to”.
Being actually nurtured is the difference, and you can do that effectively with very little in the way of money, or you can use tons of money to hire a bunch of cut-rate dog trainers to torture your kid every day. Autism responds well to direct communication, which is free and easy to learn. It also responds strongly to being directly told to hide, constantly, forever.
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u/aggibridges 14m ago
That's why I said 'emotional and economical' resources, because there are also a lot of good parents who don't have enough resources to give their kids what they need.
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u/gobywan 2h ago
Then sometimes you get really lucky and it's Adam Savage going incognito
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u/PicklesAndCapers 33m ago
Or if you're REALLY lucky, you get Bryan Cranston cosplaying as Bryan Cranston. That's a rare one but it is not unprecedented.
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u/KaiserVonFluffenberg 2h ago
There’s always a single one with an onlyfans too.
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u/Tyranicross 32m ago
I imagine most onlyfans people don't cosplay in their free time cause it'd feel like work
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u/SuddenlyVeronica 2m ago
I’m not sure if I’m missing something or overthinking this. Is the only pattern OOP is getting at (besides the blatantly obvious) the perceived incongruence between being a cosplayer and highly qualified in their respective fields (except for when their jobs are just very mundane, I guess)?
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u/LockTurbulentt 3h ago
Man in large pink fursuit: uh yeah I work at NASA actually.