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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Probably going to get downvoted - but I'll hypothesize anyway...

I imagine for the younger folks on HN, we grew up with what seemed like >50% of people claiming to have ADHD, OCD, Tourettes - or some other TikTok-fad "cool" disorder - which obviously not that many people actually have these problems.

At least not too long ago when I was young enough to be in that crowd - ADHD was the king of "cool" disorders. Everyone wanted to have ADHD. If you were "normal" - that was "uncool". It was like - what's wrong with you? Why don't you have some debilitating problem like everyone else?

So like claimed gluten intolerance in the adult population - I think there could be some skepticism to the occurrence and severity of some of these disorders - and to anyone making products for such groups to be a snake-oil salesman trying to capitalize.

But, who cares? Is anyone getting hurt? Let people do what makes them happy.

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> At least not too long ago when I was young enough to be in that crowd - ADHD was the king of "cool" disorders. Everyone wanted to have ADHD. If you were "normal" - that was "uncool". It was like - what's wrong with you? Why don't you have some debilitating problem like everyone else?

Speaking as someone who definitely, definitely has rather severe hyperactive type ADHD complete with anxiety comorbidity and tactile defensiveness that presents sufficiently severely to look like mild ARFID and was diagnosed over a decade ago in early adulthood:

How, just -how-, could anyone want this disorder? It's miserable, it's embarrassing to constantly blurt things out and to immediately regret it and yet not be able to change the behavior, it fucked up my educational experience (I wasn't diagnosed until AFTER that happened), every day is a struggle with it, and because of the stigma it has, I can't even communicate to people effectively what it means that I have it!

So who cares? I care! It hurts ME when people self diagnose or claim to have my disorder when they don't. It's a struggle every. Single. Day. And thanks to people apparently deciding it's cool to pretend to have, a lot of people don't even believe my disorder exists

Endlessly frustrating.

> How, just -how-, could anyone want this disorder?

Because they don't understand just how debilitating it is and how much trauma it causes a person. It's absolutely shit, especially for those of us who find out later in our lives like both of us apparently. Aside from the normal issues that go with it, now I'm also plagued by the thought of how things could have gone had literally anyone picked up on it when I was a kid.

I don't think it's about being cool, at least not completely, I legitimately think some folks want at least some struggle in their lives. Something to fight against, something to give them...purpose? I'm honestly not sure, but I know if they did have it they'd do everything they could to get rid of it.

Don't look back with regret, frustration and anger. Look back and be proud at what you have achieved undiagnosed and what you could achieve going forwards with a diagnosis.

Oh! Your hypothesis makes a lot of sense to me, so I appreciate you risking the downvotes. I missed the ADHD over-diagnosis and that TikTok self-diagnosis stuff by a generation, but seen through that lens, I could imagine people are tired of exploitative fad-chasers in this space. I have recently talked with a couple of adults who were only recently diagnosed with ADHD and it sounded enlightening/clarifying for them, so that’s the lens through which I initially read this.

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