Intro:

Once you learn you’re autistic and have understood more about yourself and why you do certain things, it becomes a lot easier to notice if someone else has your kind of autism. You may not be able to notice every kind of autism but certainly in the subset that you have experience in, your own, you will likely be able to spot folks now.

Finding out you’re autistic is a profound event. Many will recontextualize their entire lives with this new information. Since if you are autistic, you always have been. Social interactions, miscommunications, feelings and sensory traits. All of which you might’ve thought everyone had, such as everyone hears the school bell that loudly but ‘only you’ have a problem with it.
Or thoughts that you felt no one else had, ‘only you’ have a hard time drinking water or being on time. You realize both were false belifs. Yes, your struggle was valid most people aren’t experiencing a spike of pain at the school bell.
Perhaps, even more importantly, there are others who do experience what you do. You’re not alone.

That’s a powerful realization. That your struggles are valid and that you’re not alone. The fact that you can accomodate yourself and make things easier so that daily life isn’t quite so painful is often a second beucase the pain you felt in your heart is often stronger than the pain you felt in your brain.

With the flaws in professional diagnosis, it’s very possible that you could’ve been evaluated for autism but because of a personal bias and lack of adequate understanding of autism the professional may have misdiagnosed you. Indeed this is most stark in the rates of diagnosis of men and women, or white people and Black people. The system that’s supposed to help us, fails the vulnerable most of all even though it fails all of us in some way or the other.

Possibile Outcomes:

What can happen if you tell people? Let’s consider this in two parts, what can happen to people if you tell them and what can happen to you when you tell people.

Other person’s experience: If they are ND:

They might know already and are comfortable with it:
In this case you high five and likely celebrate together! Win-win for them and you, in both the short term and long term.
They might know already and are ashamed of it:
They could react badly and now feel that their masking was found out. They feel further shame that no matter how much they mask, they can never hide who they are.
In this case they could get angry with you or dismiss you or simply have their day ruined. However they communicate this with you, you will be upset as well, since you were trying to do something for them and now you both are hurt. That’s the short term.
In the long term they will know that they are clocked still. Certainly if you can clock that they are ND, the NTs will as well and they’ll still be treated badly. The masking continues to take a large toll on them and drain vital executive function and also fail to help the way they intended.
Their lives are still bad, if they are hurt by something it is still the truth that they have ignored but cannot escape.
Your life will be slightly worse in the short term but do you accept this outcome? Did you do it for yourself or did you do it for the possibilty of them having a better outcome?
They might not know at all, but like all of us, are struggling: You have just mentioned something it might be. I link ASAN’s about-autism page when I tell them as well. I tell them why I think they might be and that there’s more information on ASAN.
They might be busy or in a hurry and not have heard you or dismiss it or any number of other things but in the back of their mind they know someone said X thing I do, could have a reason.
Let’s say they are ND and they get curious, they go to ASAN and read the description, they find more and more in common and come across ASAN’s books to be fully supported.

You have helped them achieve the thing that you had, at the beginning of the article. They could’ve been suicidal, they could’ve been ok but lost and disconnected. They could’ve been just fine among their group but notice some odd things at their interactions with the rest of the world.

In the long term, you have transformed their life, maybe even saved it. Could be anywhere lesser than that but all of those are net positives, from the biggest to the least.
In the short term you could still be dismissed or looked at like you’ve told them they’re blargon, whatever that means. They might not acknowledge it at all or they could politely say they’ll think about it.

They might be NT: Short term they’re confused, they also don’t bother to look at the link or anything else and forget it about shortly after. You might get mentioned to their friends as a weirdo.
Long term, they’ve forgotten you existed and you haven’t changed anything at all for them.

My Conclusion:

I do it almost every time because I’m fine to be yelled at or ignored or dismissed since in the grand scheme of things people are at worst given one more datapoint that masking will fail, something they surely have been made aware of by many NTs in their lives before.
In the best case you have saved a life.

I tell people because if I think of what happens if I do this a thousand times. Several lives saved. Some people hurt in the short term but no more than they were getting already, some people benefited. I have seen several of these pan out. Successes and failures. I do not play individual games.
I’m here to save my people, and I can take a little pain from them no issues. I call this “my conclusion” because each of you might have to weigh the pro’s and cons.

Maybe you don’t mention it to a co-worker until they or you are leaving the company. Maybe you never say it to a boss because the risk of backlash is too great. Maybe if you’re a woman you don’t take the risk of angring men with this. Maybe you’ll save a life anyway.

The risks and benefits are upto you. For me it’s worth it in a very large number of cases, to possibly save a life.