Bix dot Blog

“This imperative to avoid being – even appearing – unhappy has led to a culture that rewards a performative happiness,” writes Cody Delistraty, “in which people curate public-facing lives, via Instagram and its kin, composed of a string of ‘peak experiences’ – and nothing else.” I’ve mostly avoided this sort of “happiness influencer” artifice in my follows, but I do sometimes wonder (not to keep coming back to this) how many Aspie Supremacists or Autism Exceptionalists are engaged in this sort of performative positivity—or, even if it’s not performative in the sense of fictive but just in the sense of deliberately curated, whether they ever really think about how such performances impact others who not only don’t feel superior or exceptional but feel downtrodden and unsuccessful.