Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

This is almost the opposite of what we can learn about this, and the article does a great job at pointing that out. It's a very recent social phenomenon. Yes, that contradicts your abnornal psych class, but think about it. 20 years ago (in 2005), did anyone voluntarily, happily label themselves autistic, without any disgnosis, outside of such psych classes (outliers for obvious reasons)? In elementary, middle and high schools, at the workplace, in other majors? IME absolutely not, very much the opposite. The only ones who did so were the diagnosed, and then only mentioned it when very relevant. Let alone 100 years ago. Let alone the massive differences between different regions/cultures in desire for uniqueness, both historical and uniqueness.

This is a massive sociocultural phenomenon, absolutely not something inherent to the human psyche. Almost no one is born this way (strong desire to make themselves feel unique).

20 years ago you didn't open your phone to see videos by anyone that called themselves a therapist or psychologist say you might have ADHD if you have these xyz common signs. Or if you struggle to have difficult conversations with your partner you might have grown up in a chaotic household.

All very loose, quick and ambiguous explanations that do not provide any balance.

If someone sees it and goes "Oh gosh that loosely explains why I do xyz" they will take it, because is confirming something or its providing an answer to something they deem they struggle with that they didn't have any answer for before.

It's part of the human psyche to try and understand and answer things and we have a confirmation bias that limits our ability to think of both sides of the coin, not just the one that's constantly popping up on our mobile phones from so called therapists.

The labels people use follow trends. Labelling (self or others) as autistic or on the spectrum is relatively new, but there have been trends for other disorders in the past. Neurotic, depressed, anal retentive, even phrenology - people worrying that the shape of their cheekbones mean they must be genetically stupid, or applying that to others. We have evidence of such trends going back 100 years at least, and probably more.

For sure, social media has amplified and homogenized things, as it does. But it's not a new phenomenon.

The “Aspie programmer” meme has been around since the turn of the century (at least)

https://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/

I’m pretty sure people made reference to it when I was at Cal in the 90s but I can’t prove it. (The prevalence of social awkwardness, eye contact avoidance, hyper-interests, etc.). I don’t think it was as much about people wanting to feel special as trying to find explanations for the overall environment.

100 years ago we used to often arbitrarily decide what mental conditions people have and then proceed to extract out parts of their brain to try and fix it to disastrous effects.

The same story has been repeated dozens of times; An individual is bullied/ostracized for some hobby or characteristic, years later they find the same bullies now going all in said hobbies and characteristics.

Almost every day of my whole career I've worked with people who were missing social cues and being disliked because they were misunderstood. I think an engineer is MUCH more likable if they genuinely say "Sorry if I'm loud, and I don't mean to interrupt, sometimes when I get excited I accidentally do this, I don't do it because I think my ideas are better than everyone else's."

Now obviously if somebody exaggerates a trait they don't have, says it in a self-important way, and isn't remorseful at all about the effect it has on people around them, and isn't trying to change it that's a shame.

But frankly imo the balance of that in software is I've met 1/2 in my whole career who came across as self-important about their conditions, versus against maybe 20% (dozens and dozens) weren't able/willing to communicate their oddities.

Obviously, if your deficit appears only when it is socially advantageous and disappears when disadvantageous, it is something else. But it was a thing.