well, while yes you can draw value from it regardless of his personal life, there is a difference in moving with shame vs moving with pride.. and being a positive role model with that for the community.

I think it's a bit comparable with being gay and closeted, societally there's a lot of internalized homophobia which makes it hard to identify and out yourself as "not normal".

him performing "normal" on a podcast can't really be taken as proof as that being "himself", since there's intense pressure on you as a person in those settings to perform and mask. but do link me I'm curious to check those out

and yh I'm aware of the RS interview, but tbh 2017 was also a different time where discussion about autism in the mainstream was not nearly as nuanced yet. I for sure take that statement with a grain of salt at the least.

I'd be willing to bet money that he'll come out as on the spectrum in the next couple years, with how things ended it would also only make sense of it becomes a central topic in the next season of Rehearsal

on second thought, your reply has me re-evaluating my thoughts on it, lol

playing off of your comparison, if he wasn't then it'd be like queerbaiting, which would be pretty lame

but at the same time i don't get why he would selectively "turn it off" and "on". in the podcasts below he's very different than, for example, when you just look him up on TikTok when he's doing things in public (best example i can think is when he showed up to a bar and gave this speech and mentioned Summit Ice or like whenever he's on Conan)

i guess the only scenario where it would make somewhat sense was if he wasn't, but was too deep in it to say he wasn't considering he's an accidental representative so the next best thing would be to be ambiguous about it

because otherwise, like you said why not just embrace it? idk. it's probably not that deep and i'm realizing now that maybe it's not really my place to speak on this, lol

open.spotify.com/episode/5t1fEsELkrCQQjr9KsiBtw?si=bNQwWQ3oRGSTkL3UIV0N-A

open.spotify.com/episode/6kHFf3iu0rag9h3SmTcZQ7?si=x5tinbpFTWmv7XBAeE9s6w

open.spotify.com/episode/6tcBpdZkN7zlMsFmccaDiR?si=cbA5SXZFTOKMU8HaV8mdnA

appreciate u linking the podcasts 🫡 I'm just listening to the Alexa Demie podcast and at 10min he literally says that he doesn't really consider himself a real actor

"I can do.. basically me in little ways, but I can't disappear into the character. I feel like my skills are more in directing and editing so I can use those tools to make myself look like I can perform."

and after saying about his comedy that he just figured out which odd behaviours of his make people laugh.. I also really don't think he acts or talks very different at all.

I think again all this kind of suggests he learned to hone in to his autistic traits for comedy. with the very specific behaviours and thoughts he keeps revolving his shows around it's just too many details which to anyone who is neurodivergent is just such a dead giveaway, it's too authentic to be an act.

as to why he's not revealing a possible diagnosis.. I think he might be playing the long game, that irl he's already been diagnosed for ages, but finds it more interesting to keep his public character undiagnosed, so that he can dramatize the diagnosis for the character.

the more I think about the way he dramatized his character realizing he's seen as a spokesperson for the community and accidentally scoring high on an autism test to me suggests that he must already feel pretty secure and positive about the topic, to make it part of his show. explicitly linking himself to autism seems like a strong wink to the community already.

Watching the episode where he gets a pet fly so that he can put a pet store ad on a gravestone
I don’t remember this one

At the end of the day I think Nathan failed the robot test, he showed his drawls n pubes

Best Burger in LA episode where Nathan gives people $100 who don’t think it’s the best burger. Nathan watches an old lady eat burger and spit it out:

“Wow do you want $100 or an academy award?”

Dead at Elizabeth Holmes potentially only knowing this about Nathan before inviting him into her home

You happy?