Young people on the spectrum flocked to online communities like Wrong Planet to announce their diagnoses as cause for celebration rather than as occasions for mourning, because their lives had at last come into focus. It remained to be seen, however, whether a bunch of brainy kids tapping away at their keyboards could evolve into a social force formidable enough to oppose the rhetoric of disease and disorder that had intensified after the publication of Wakefield’s study. Could an aggregation of loners become a movement?
