>someone with a bit of a spectrum disorder.

I'm surprised I had to scroll this far to see someone suggesting this, since it seems extremely obvious to me that this is part of the case. It's becoming fairly well-documented that one of the primary differences in people on the spectrum is a difference in communication style, which anecdotally seems to be more direct and less apologetic or prone to "superfluous" verbal (/nonverbal) contextualizing.

With the prevalence of people on the spectrum in STEM, it's no surprise that you'd see it here, and indeed looking at the comments you can see quite a few people talking past each other about what OP "should" say with what is clearly a mismatch in communication style.