comment: >
  
  Did you even read my post?
context: Are we discussing the diagnosis methodology or the behavior / symptoms levels and their denomination?
  Do I think big pharma would create sub-divisions to create products and increase revenue? Yes.
  Do I think doctors (as a class/ science ) would purposely misslabel people in bad faith? No.
  Do I think people can label themselves as afflicted from an illness in order to excuse bad/anti social/ schizophrenic-like  behavior so they can get more attention? Absolutely.
  Do I think there is a real mental illness epidemic ? Yes.
  Am I changing your view? Not sure. 
  Am I a Dr? Absolutely not >
  
  The diagnosis methodology >
  
  Asperger's is not savant syndrome. Even a decade ago, when it was still considered a valid condition, having a special talent or ability was never a requirement for the diagnosis. The Rain Man type of autistic individual is actually exceedingly rare, nowhere near the norm, even if you consider only the upper end of the spectrum.
  With that out of the way, to your main point: 
  I do agree that there are tons of people who self-diagnose as autistic but aren't, the internet is full of them, i know it because i was one. When i was 14 i was convinced i had Asperger's. I changed my mind when i met people who actually had that diagnosis and realized that autism is a disorder of neurodevelopment, not a personality, and the few quirks i had were nowhere near it. So i agree with that.
  But the point of an actual clinical diagnosis is to give the individual a framework to help them in whatever aspect of life they're struggling with. It's not just slapping a label on their forehead. You either need a diagnosis because you're struggling in life or you don't need one. That leaves little room for overdiagnosis >
  
  Rather than focusing on the diagnostic criteria for autism, you might, instead, focus on the differences between how autistics experience involvement in their social interactions, especially face-to-face ones, and how non-autistics experience involvement. Why? Because the diagnosis was going to "lag" as an indicator for the felt difference in involvement, anyway.
  There are three papers  by the sociologist Erving Goffman that might be helpful here. 
  In the first, "Alienation from Interaction," Goffman proposes that interactions always have involvement obligations for their participants such that being too involved, not involved enough, or wrongly involved—respectively, and, for example, not keeping track of signs of boredom while talking, being visibly bored yourself, and inadvertently interrupting someone—tends to alienate the participants from their interaction. Rather than focusing on the flow of conversation, they focus, instead, on the other participants and their behavior; or, in the self-alienation case, they feel like they're not "in" the conversation, but merely observing it. 
  The second, "Felicity's Condition," puts forth the argument that, insofar that people typically convey far more than they actually put into words, our likelihood to infer that enriched meaning from their words depends on us being able to take for granted that the person's behavior doesn't significantly deviate from normal most of the time. So, if my partner tells me, off-handedly, that she really likes a pair of shoes she saw the other day, I will infer that she means she wants me to purchase them (otherwise, why tell me?); on the other hand, if I'm speaking to someone who comes off as being always just on their train of thought, I might just take their comment as off-hand, that is, not relevant to my own actions, at all. 
  Finally, there's "On Face-Work," where he suggests that each of us brings to our interactions (1) a pattern of behavior that tends to support  (a "line") (2) a self-image that we're invested in maintaining (a "face") and that (3) we expect others to help us maintain, just as we help them maintain theirs, by going along with our lines. Our interactions tend to break down when others don't help us maintain our faces; an example might be the sort of "flirting" that tends to disgust women, leaving them feeling "objectified," that is, with a self-image they do not want to accept ("objectified" differs from "desirable.") 
  So, drawing on Goffman, I think members of the third type of autistic you've identified are more liable than non-autistics to cause others to feel alienated from their interactions with them, to themselves feel alienated, to fail to have the meanings of their utterances inferentially enriched, and to inadvertently come off as "rude," etc., by failing to honor people's faces. I also think that they know this and, with any luck, are able to recognize that their involvement in interaction is not the typical one. 
  If you're right about the environment you've described, by the way, where "most" people have autistic traits—that tells us nothing about whether the features of interaction I've laid out are not, still, being violated by those people outside of that environment. Can your co-workers do such utterly banal things as going to a bar, talking to a random stranger, and then making them feel "seen" or are they scared of that? How are they at sharing the conversational floor with people who aren't willing to be captive audiences to a monologue? More generally, how do they fare in society outside of your work environment, that is, amongst non-autistics, rather than where autistic traits are more likely to be tolerated? >
  
  Too many people self diagnose and claim to have autism when they probably don't. With TikTok and other social media it's "cool" to have autism, ADHD, PTSD, etc. >
  
  Unless you have some sort of accreditation towards being allowed to diagnose autism I would say you have zero insight into deciding who has or hasn't autism. 
  Now if you want to discuss whether there's an issue with how we as a society are treating diagnosis, that's a different discussion one can have. >
  
  
  Unless you have some sort of accreditation towards being allowed to diagnose autism
  
  I'd take issue with this part. Autism can be diagnosed well outside of the medical community. Speech paths, OTs, etc. None of which have any sort of medical background or study of the development of brain disorders - they assist in services for them, they have no background in what autism is.
  And I think this lends itself to OP's point - we're getting more and more ASD diagnoses - from people who are carrying around hammers looking for nails. >
  
  If you go back and read my comment, even just the part you quoted, you'll notice I never said it had to be within the medical community, but simply it has to be accredited to being allowed to diagnose autism. 
  Take issue all you want to little friend. If you aren't a professional making the call, your oponion on whether it should be diagnosed as autism means nothing. >
  
  
  If you aren't a professional making the call, your oponion on whether it should be diagnosed as autism means nothing.
  
  I'm not an umpire, but I can still see when a bad call gets made. Your reasoning is shockingly ignorant. >
  
  Yea, that is exactly opposite of how the world works, and frankly a bafflingly foolish analogy, which only saving grace is exactly why amateurs don't get a say in the umpires decisions.
  So great job buddy, you just completely undermined yourself.