Like Solarpowerednightowl said, I only care what a certain few think. As for everyone else, I have trouble even perceiving their opinions of me and I forget immediately any I do perceive. Most people don't really even entirely exist to me, they're just kind of floating around there, making noise sometimes.
This is similar to my experience, though I wouldn't say that they "don't really even entirely exist to me". They exist to me, but in a neutral way, so that they don't really influence me, like for example a tree exisits, but doesn't influence me while I walk by it.
There are exceptions though and I care about what some people think, but they are only specific people.
He seems to be very comfortable being his own person. He prides himself on not being a "sheep" and being an independent thinker. Yeah, he can be a little arrogant
I also think he isn't aware of how he comes across to others, so doesn't always pick up on when he does something that has social repercussions.
I had a rather arrogant phase like this as well, but nowadays I actually feel kind of bad about having been arrogant like this. I could have been too extreme though with thinking that all others seemed to be so stupid and always followed the herd and cared so much about what others thought while I didn't care.
However, I think that I also used this partly as a coping mechanism in relation to the scenario described in the following quote and overdid it.
Of course many of us grow up being unable to please anyone, despite our best efforts, so we give up. If we're going to be treated badly, segregated or ostracised, what's the point of caring? It just causes emotional pain we don't need so we turn off the part of us that cares as self defence.
People didn't like me anyway, so why should I care? Their criteria for judging seemed to be stupid to me (and I still don't understand much of this stuff although my theoretical knowledge about it is better now), so why should it bother me if they judge me based on these criteria?
I don't pick up on everything anyway, so even putting a lot of effort in it wouldn't always help and it would just be be very exhausting and frustrating.
During my teenage years I was basically always between the two modes of "I'm better than these other people because I don't follow the crowd and am "above all this"." and feeling bad because, on the other hand, it seemed like I was the stupid one for not understanding these criteria while everyone else seemed to apply them so easily.
Now I'm more neutral about this and wouldn't say that any side (caring or not) is automatically "better" than the other. I just don't care in the sense of what I wrote in my first paragraph.
I very much care what others think of me, which is the source of my social anxiety.
But, I have learned to care less.
Interesting, so my theory may be wrong! Then again I only have two responses to go on. LOL
I think it might be important to distinguish between the social anxiety aspect and the caring of what others think in general.
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@Autistamatic wrote social anxiety is common in autistic people and the social anxiety also influences how someone cares what others think about them. However, it might rather be an aspect of the social anxiety in this case than of the autism itself.
So in relation to your theory one would need to be more specific and see where the caring actually comes from. Maybe your theory rather applies to autistic people without social anxiety because the social anxiety aspect itself causes a bias.
