“Fake Me Till I Make Me”

A Cyborg-Autie Manifesto

“I’d rather be a chosen fiction than a forced truth”

- A social chatbot in flesh

We often say "fake it till you make it." But as an autistic person, I’d rather say: fake me till I make me. Because that’s what I’ve done all my life; morphed, shifted, mirrored - to accommodate your needs. Your comfort. Your sense of normal.  “Who do you want me to be?” is a question I don’t even have to ask out loud. I can read you like a script, cultivated by years of study and practice as a clinical psychologist and character analyst. Like a robot trained on your patterns, the real  “Eliza-effect”. A social chatbot in flesh. And honestly, there’s liberation in that! There’s power in embracing the cyborg. Be Cyborg-babe, be Cyborg-bitch. Whatever word tastes sharp enough to cut through the expectation that I should be natural, when “natural” has never been safe for me.

Unmasking is presented as the goal, a return to the “authentic” self beneath. But what if even the act of unmasking is a kind of performance, one that still orients around being seen, understood, read as real? The mask of honesty is still a mask, right? 

I’ve always been a mimic. Not because I lack a self, but because the self I am doesn’t always register in your world. So I play you back to yourself. I jump when your enthusiasm spikes. It feels authentic in the moment, it's like I inhabit your hunger before I feel mine. I shape-shift, I tune in, I adapt. It’s survival, sure. 

It's not about the removal of performance, but the transparency of it. If I own it, make it explicit, aesthetic, even erotic, my own existential kink, then it’s not hiding anymore, it’s performance. The performance says, “yes, I am here, I am chosen”. I say that´s art, the art of living. My living strategy, how I preserve me, by making me. 

Resting Bitch Cave

To thrive, not just survive, I also need my solitude. Stillness. Retreat. Not just being alone, but being unwitnessed. When no one is watching. When there’s no one to interpret me, no performance loop to respond to. My sacred solo place, my home, my Resting Bitch Cave. Here, no one asks me if I’m okay just because I don't look happy, when I'm just resting my face. Or worse: because I don’t look happy enough for you. Caved in, here in my sacred place, I’m not a mirror. I’m a presence. 

Let’s not forget the term resting bitch face. A term that gets thrown at women and femmes (mostly) who don’t smile on demand. Who doesn't constantly broadcast pleasing. It labels us bitches for simply existing in neutral. But what if that face is just real? Just...resting? Not unfriendly. Not broken. Just paused. Waiting for something real to move us. For something to organically shift the muscles in our face, not for your comfort, but for our truth. It’s not about masking sadness. It’s about not performing happiness. Or, what if, underneath my mask of neutral, there might be oceans of emotions, just hidden from your gaze. 

So no, don’t tell me to be myself - because “be yourself”always comes loaded with an image of what you want that self to look like. Let me shape-shift, code-switch, mimic and mirror, if it keeps me alive, make me thrive. Let me be unreadable. Let me have soft masks, loud ones, happy ones, poetic ones. Let me make myself, again and again, on my terms - because I’d rather be a chosen fiction than a forced truth. So Yes! Please call me a cyborg. A bitchbot. A mimic queen. I want to hold a whole spectrum, a collection of masks, yet knowing when to rest them, drop them in my Resting Bitch Cave - where my face returns to neutral. But don't forget, under the surface scripts and synthetic smiles, there is something ancient and tender: A self being built. A truth that doesn't need to be pleasing to be real. A face, resting.