When neurotypical people read someone's expression, it happens automatically: parallel processing, fast, effortless. Like a GPU rendering a scene.

When an autistic brain does it, it runs a different process: observe, decode, match, select, output. Sequential, non-automatic, constructed from scratch.

The result looks similar, but the cost doesn't.

This is why masking is exhausting: not because autistic people are bad at social interaction, but because they're running a CPU process where everyone else has a GPU. Same output. Different architecture.

🧵

#autism #actuallyAutistc #neurodiversity @autistics