Notices by The Autistic Innovator :ri: (autisticinnovator@autistics.life), page 2

Now that the sun is up, my cat Dinah is yelling at me to go work and leads me to the office. She’s definitely my cat. Keeping me in check. :blob_cat_flop:

In an incognito browser I went to Grok.com and asked it "what is the autistic innovator"

Grok said this about me:

"The Autistic Innovator most commonly refers to an autistic-owned online business and community resource run by Ashley Lauren Spencer.

It started in October 2020 as an autism-focused blog providing resources, education, and support for autistic and neurodivergent people. In 2021 (about 10 months later), it evolved into an e-commerce store: shop.autisticinnovator.com.

The shop specializes in:

Sensory tools and stimming products (fidget toys, chew necklaces / chewelry, stim jewelry)

Items designed with a strong emphasis on safety (especially bite-force ratings for chew items, to avoid choking hazards or breaking)

Products curated by and for autistic, ADHD, and neurodivergent adults, teens, and kids

Key points about it:

Fully autistic-led and autistic & ADHD owned

Focuses on high-integrity sensory safety education

Has been running for over 5 years (as of 2026)

Also includes blog posts, interviews, self-acceptance resources, and sometimes self-publishing opportunities for neurodivergent authors

It's frequently recommended in autistic communities (e.g., on Reddit, Instagram, Threads) as a trusted, non-Amazon alternative for stim toys after other stores like Stimtastic closed.

Occasionally people use "autistic innovator" more generally as a descriptive phrase (e.g., referring to famous autistic people like Temple Grandin or Elon Musk who have driven major innovations in their fields), but in current online usage — especially in the autistic community — "the Autistic Innovator" (capitalized) almost always points to Ashley's specific brand/store."

Now both Gemini 3 and Grok see me as a legacy community and safety entity. Really cool. 🙂

At this point I'm feeling like I'll be lucky just to profit at all this month. Because of the massive attacks at the beginning of the month with the first 7 days of the month I went 5 days with no US sales and 2 days with no sales at all. After the attacks stopped I finally started having good profit days. Except since yesterday was Valentine's Day I got no sales at all, so now 3 days this month with no sales during the shortest month of the year. 14 days left and I still have a ways to go before I can profit. Pretty damn shitty. Every single day the Google ad team gets to work and declares war on my store because I refuse to give them my customers data. All the changes they make to manually bury me don't last very long before the AI deletes it all over and over again.

I would really like to stop struggling one day. Next month will be a 2nd month in a row with a $0 paycheck.

@aral Oh Google absolutely listens. I have a 2018 Google home max speaker, and back in 2021 I was having a phone conversation on speaker phone while sitting next to it. I said I wanted to monetize my autism blog by selling products to help autistic adults but I didn't know how to do that. The next morning my entire YouTube app feed was nothing but dropshipping and print on demand videos. That did result in me starting The Autistic Innovator though.

Another time in 2021 I had a mental breakdown next to the speaker, and the next day my YouTube app was all encouraging videos related to what was in the speaker phone conversation. Gemini didn't exist back then, so I think it was an actual human at Google listening to me.

My store was re-crawled for the first time in 19 days after Google employees put a stop to that.

It's only been a few hours, but my site has so much authority I am dominating product searches already. Google made entire subcategories of popular products on search results named after my products with my product in the subcategory. Google plasters my products everywhere like I'm an advertiser. My Heart Chew Necklace made it all over the chew necklace keywords.

Did they just think I'd never figure out what they did to me. That I was just some easy to bully autistic. The Autistic Innovator is 7 months away from 5 years, did they really think I'd be like oh well guess I'll just shut down.

The fraud ring leader is obsessed with me. Spent thousands on ads to bury me, spent hundreds on bots and data scraper tools that just got blocked, then yesterday she downloaded my entire website, stole my empathy language, and stole part of my business name. She just can't figure out why she can't defeat me and what my secret is.

Someone has to be very evil to not see my only secret is I genuinely care about people mixed with determination.

I've been kicked down a lot this month. I've had nightmares every night since Sam died. If I weren't a resourceful hopeful optimist, I'd be in a hard panic right now. But I'll figure it out.

I feel like I'm being watched

#CatsOfMastodon

I finally went in my office. I've been avoiding it since Sam died right next to my office chair. Nikita and Dinah were really great yesterday helping me get through the first day. When I woke up I thought I heard Sam in the litterbox but it was Nikita. Just trying to keep myself distracted with work stuff. The skin on my eyelids still hurts from crying so much yesterday.

@Testoceratops there was a man back in 2013 who approached me on the street and said he is homeless and a veteran and asked for money to buy a cup of coffee. We were standing in front of a Starbucks so I pointed that out and said what kind of coffee do you want let's go inside. He looked at me very surprised and said nevermind and walked away.

@Testoceratops Same. I offered to buy him the coffee and he could wait outside if he wanted and I'll go get it. He just looked surprised and walked away.

My hyperactive ADHD brain is much too high powered to be able to relax. I tried all day to slow down and do chill things normal people do. I ended up working anyway. While trying to slow down and relax, I'm now anxious because my hyperactivity had nowhere to go, and now it's time for bed. 😭

I've figured out that one of the best ways to force the entire sensory toy and chew necklace industry to start having safety standards, is to make my store build an exemplary bar so high that everyone is forced to build safety standards or lose customer trust. Right now everyone does the bare minimum and there are ZERO safety standards with these toys being marketed at parents of autistic kids, and same with chew necklaces. It's unacceptable, so hopefully my store can wake them up. Even though I want people to buy from me so I can have a place to live, pay all my bills, and afford food, I still want EVERYONE to have high standards for safety, because right now no one gives a shit.

It must be starting to work because I'm getting hater troll fake reviews all of a sudden while I transform my store.

I added a bit to my Chew Necklace Safety article, so all the competitors are really not going to like this. But who cares! People need to know these things.

I'm tired of the industry always blaming the child/adult chewing it instead of taking accountability that the problem is structural, not the silicone material, and not the chewer's fault.

It's pretty crazy how mad competitors are getting that I'm educating consumers.

One of them has a lot of money and has heavily attacked my store to try to destroy it's revenue, so my store's traffic is almost next to nothing right now. But I will not stop educating people!

I've been stealth lurking on social media spaces for market research. Seems like retailers are the ones who want Black Friday Cyber Monday to be the biggest spend weekend of the year, but the people don't want that anymore. The consensus seems to be to leave them alone until after this weekend because they feel like every retailer is forcing this IMPULSE BUY NOW message.

Basically what I'm learning is to continue on my path of doing the opposite of what every retail store on the planet does. My number 1 rule is don't annoy people.

I don't get why when people see on my social media bio that my store is for autistics, they ALWAYS assume it's for autistic children. So many people have pitched their product to me saying it helps autistic kids or targets parents of autistic kids. Why is the fact there is a store made for autistics where children cannot use 98% of what it sells so hard to grasp? Before me there was nothing for autistic adults. When we grow up into adulthood are we just supposed to stop being autistic or something? Weird people.

#ActuallyAutistic

I've been scrolling other social media platforms significantly less. Everyone does nothing but post rage bait, and that stuff is toxic to see because it makes us all angry and what good is feeling angry over someone's engagement bait. Thankfully no one does that here.

Instead I've been playing all the Farmville games before the sun comes up, and on my phone at bus stops. I need a healthy energized mind for what is coming.

I felt bad because my cat Sam has no toys and waiting for Christmas is a long time away. I got him these little plastic jingly balls for $3, but instead of playing with those he stole an ornament off the tree and played with that. *Sigh*

Anyone have recommendations for caffeinated drinks that don't taste like sh*t? 😄

I'm tired of the same 2 coffees. Drank a Monster this morning but all the sugar made me physically uncomfortable.

I'm thoroughly convinced American coffee tastes like garbage on purpose to support the flavored creamer industry.

Any suggestions? Types of caffeinated drinks? Brands?

Someone didn't think that design through

I've spent all weekend eating only foods high in tyrosine + my hyper mode coffee

And Wow my mood is a fuck ton better!!

On Friday I couldn't do anything at all. It was bad. Felt like I had no dopamine left.

Now I know why my normal diet makes my cognition so much better. All this time I've been eating what my body wants, and 99% of it happens to increase dopamine.

https://autistics.life/@AutisticInnovator/115351918440686551