‘The Life Autistic’ YouTube Channel Takes Over Hunter Hansen’s Actual Life

You can visit Hunter’s YouTube channel here.

Growing up Hunter Hansen found it difficult to fit in. 

At one point his parents signed him up for Boy Scouts thinking it would be good for him socially. During one of their outings the kids were all talking about rabid animals and Hunter wanted desperately to be a part of the conversation.

HUNTER: So I shared how my rabid younger brother actually bit me on the belly button and left a bruise. So of course I wanted to show that off. 

So Hunter lifted his shirt to reveal the bruise left by his brother who did not have rabies. 

The boys thought he was strange for oversharing. But that was just Hunter.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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When Hunter was little he wasn’t very fond of being touched. He liked to line up his toys or his books side by side from one end of the house to the other. He was obsessed with maps, memorizing countries, their capitals and their flags. 

As the oldest of five kids and the only child for a few years, his parents didn’t think his behavior was odd. It was all they knew.

HUNTER: My parents didn't realize I was drastically different until my brother was born. They assumed that he had some developmental and speech delays because he wasn't reading it like age two and then they realized, wait a minute. No, he's amiable, makes eye contact. He's not in his own little world. Oh no, Walter's normal. Hunter's got a few issues like just cuz Walter doesn't know the countries and capitals and flags of the world by three. But then they realized Hunter’s a little off kilter.

As he grew older Hunter often felt like he had a unique perspective, like he could look at a problem or situation and see it with x-ray vision.

HUNTER: I always feel or felt that I could just see a situation more clearly and better than most. Being able to see a certain pattern come to a certain conclusion, press for answers and get silence that made me feel a little bit isolated, and almost ostracized. 

In elementary school he was always the first to answer the question. Sometimes he was the only one who knew the answer, so he’d second guessed himself.

HUNTER: Then I felt wrong and it's like, that was daunting. It's like, why is, why is nobody else seeing it? And it's like in those movies to where like, you know, you get transported and you're wondering like, is nobody else seeing what's going on?

Ever since he can remember Hunter had to have order. He was obsessive about it. Everything had its place.

HUNTER: I could not really exist peaceably in a space that is not very carefully organized and not like, you know, from smallest to largest in terms of books. But you know, I had to have my CDs arranged in a certain order, in a certain place, my pens and my watches had to be laid on my table in a certain way.

While he was the first to solve a problem, he was the last to get a joke or social cue. 

Because of this he had trouble relating to others. His siblings didn’t really get him. His two younger brothers played Z-bots and Legos.

HUNTER: They liked going outside of the house. I did not. They liked, you know, simpler things, riding bikes, catching lizards, and snakes. I had a bit of an apprehension with that. I just really didn't have a lot of opportunities to run into kids with similar interests you know that were like typical to 12 year old boys like beanie babies and Regis Feldman.

If anything was off, any routine disrupted, it could ruin Hunter’s whole day. And his brothers… well they knew that about their big brother. Like, one time Hunter remembers walking into his room.

HUNTER: …and finding everything in what I would call this strategic disarray. So I could tell that my CDs had been rearranged and some of them were jutting out. My pillows were like out of order. My pens were tilted. My watches were in the wrong spot.

Hunter knew right away he’d been pranked. His heart rate started to rise as paced back and forth and did what he calls “freak walking.”

HUNTER: Looks like I'm overtaken by some kind of strange violent spirit because I'm so foregone in like Hunter world that it ends up into like this rapid pacing and just strange full body contortions and movements. PAUSE

…and I just remember like looking at everything and everywhere my eyes went, it was something completely missed….I froze and just found the anger boiling drastically. And then finding that, uh <laugh> you know, it was my brother who did it and he thought it was great. And I was normally pretty, I don't wanna say calm, I would blow up, but I wouldn't get violent. But I remember that day. My sisters had like this blue plastic chair and I remember just getting that. And I think it's funny cuz you know, my younger brother will admit that he was more of the bully, but he's like, no, I remember you savagely trying to beat me to death with that chair… PAUSE

It went on like that for his entire childhood. Their mom was a nurse in the Navy, so they had to move every two and a half years – California, Florida, even Iceland. In some places, Hunter struggled to make friends. He knew he was different.

HUNTER: I remember one kid asking Hunter why do you stand up and flap your arms in class? And here’s the thing I didn’t know I did that.

He was bullied. Kids called him stupid and weird, but he figured out a way to evade the worst of it.

HUNTER: I tended to sus out like what kids got bullied … There was always, I would say there was always another weirder kid who didn't know any better. And it's like the adage about outrunning, a bear with a hiking buddy. You don't have to outrun the bear, you just outrun the person you're with. And that's kind of where I, I started to do that subconsciously like, well, well hold on. I'm not like, I'm like, not like that person or like, Hey, hang on. This one is the guy you should be making fun of. And not like I joined in on it, but I soon realized like, um, I can’t outrun a bear. I just have to outrun the people who are also running from the bear.

He felt isolated from his siblings and even though the strict routines of military life helped him cope with his quirks, by the time he got to high school… Hunter was reaching a sort of breaking point. When the family moved from Iceland to Jacksonville, Florida, Hunter joined a church youth group to meet other teens but felt defective, like he was missing something.

HUNTER: I just remember like breaking down in tears and, you know, getting really distraught and depressed. Like why, why can't I be normal? Like what the heck is wrong with me? PAUSE

Hunter’s family moved around so much that after the fourth grade his parents decided homeschool and self paced Christian classes were a better fit for him and his siblings.

His parents were stressed trying to manage how Hunter would adapt to a new home every couple of years. They took him to a child psychologist who said he had ADHD and he might struggle completing his school work. But if anything, Hunter was more advanced than his peers.

When he was 15 his parents got him a job in the commissary (like a grocery for the military base) working in the produce and meat departments. He loved feeling like a grown up, independent with a real job. He actually enjoyed restocking the shelves, checking inventory, and hanging out with adults. There was an orderliness to it he craved. At 16 he was named employee of the month. 

Hunter knew he was different but he didn’t know why. But then in March of 2003, something happened that would change the course of Hunter’s life. His mom was working at the hospital when she passed by an exam room,  and overheard a psychologist talking to his patient.

HUNTER: …kind of listing out all these kinds of criteria, early patterns of really repetitive behavior, involuntary tics... And my mom's like freaking out and she almost like wheels into this guy's room. Like, wait a minute. Who, who, who are you talking about? Like, and she was panicked because she thought that that person was evaluating me. And the guy’s was like, oh no, I'm, I'm doing a, I'm doing an evaluation on a, on a child here for, you know, Asperger's or autism spectrum disorder. My mom's like, oh my gosh, that's my son.

She drove home and found Hunter sitting in the living room. He had just come home from work. And she couldn’t wait to tell him about her discovery.

HUNTER: She was excited like Hunter, I know what's wrong with you now. There was a thing that actually describes you and it's called Aspergers. And I was like, ‘oh, like, oh I hate the name. Like that's terrible.’ But you know, she explained it being more related to autism, like, ‘Hey, this is an autism spectrum disorder. Like, remember how you used to do all this?’ …And I was like, ‘okay, that's great. Um, I need to eat dinner and then I gotta go to bed so I can like finish up school and then go to work the next day…’ 

He was never formally diagnosed but checked all the boxes. While it helped explain his behavior, Hunter didn’t really want to be told he had a disorder.  

HUNTER: I just kind of shut the door on it and kept it buried…I think I was ashamed to have to like tell people in plain English like other folks, oh I'm not weird. I'm just autistic. I'm not actually intelligent. I'm just autistic. And then you get that mouth like, oh wait a minute. That's what's wrong with you? Like, oh it's some kind of like neurological thing. 

LAUREL: Was there any kind of support available for you? HUNTER: In a bleak way, yes. And that was full-time employment. It's like I got to do adult stuff. <laugh> at a very early age… I don't remember my support needs being specifically addressed at that time…with my family was that they just, they new to, um, handle hunter differently, like later in life. And I just remember like the tone was a lot better about expectations, people coming over. Like they were just more accommodating. 

At 16 his parents saw his good grades, his neat room, his steady paycheck and agreed college was the obvious next step.

So a few months later when he enrolled in a small Christian college in Pensacola, Florida, he kept his autism buried and masked as best as he could. 

HUNTER: To where I’m intentionally masking by not talking about my special interests and bore you all to death because I kind of want you to talk to me in some cases or if I don’t I’m going to go at length about battle bots and you’re going to have to sit through it.

He has to focus on making eye contact. He tries to avoid social interactions. If he must talk to someone, he carefully plans conversations beforehand, so he doesn’t get cornered. 

HUNTER: I'm not every other autistic person. And I think my case was spectacular in that not only was I, you know, not only did I have relatively lower support needs, I was brutally independent.

Hunter did well in his classes and maintained a job at a print shop. 

HUNTER: I was thinking like, why would I bring this up? I kind of wanna be cool and autism doesn't make me cool.

And Hunter wanted to be cool especially at work in front of a girl named Andrea Nelson, a shy, smart classmate with long brown hair. Andrea worked the day shift, Hunter the evening shift so  he’d see her everyday as he came to work. 

HUNTER: I read through the entire yearbook to try to figure out who she was and see if I could spot her face. I looked at the roster of names … I'd remember a few of them and then retain them long enough to like scour the yearbook and do like a name check. And then I found her Andrea Nelson. I was like, okay from Edgewater, Colorado.

He studied Andrea Nelson like he was preparing for final exams. 

HUNTER: I had this trick would assemble facts about other women, which sounds really stalkerish now. And it's like, how the heck do you know so much about me? And I thought that was cool. Like I've done my homework.

When he finally had enough intel, he decided to make his move. He checked the schedule and found a day when they were both working. At quitting time Hunter followed Andrea to the train stop. 

HUNTER:  I finally caught up to her like, yes, I finally get to talk with Andrea… Does it usually get this hot back in Edgewater, Colorado? No, not really… 

Andrea did not appear phased or interested in Hunter.

HUNTER: I was an idiot. It was almost like when you do tricks for, at a birthday party and then you do the same illusions for penn and teller and there's a world of difference. She wasn't buying it. 

So he did try and Andrea became Hunter’s first girlfriend. 

ANDREA: He was very talkative on our first date. I didn’t talk at all. I think he was so nervous that talking to help fill the awkward void. He didn’t eat much but he filled it with talking.

Hunter attempted to hide his autism with Andrea but as they became closer it became more obvious especially when Hunter was invited to hang out with Andrea and her noisy friends.

ANDREA: Some of the social cues he didn’t pick up on right away like when we would interact in group settings. So sometimes that was not alarming, it was ok this is not what I would define as ‘normal’ at the time social interaction. This is different.

He eventually told Andrea why he reacts the way he does in certain situations.

ANDREA: It wasn’t a coming out moment for me to find out it was more little conversation. it was more something that came out naturally in circumstances as we faced them. So it just kind of unfolded.

HUNTER: I can't live as much on an island as I've thought. I thought for a while that I could be my own enterprise and figure it out in like this isolated tower…I don't think humans were meant to exist in a vacuum by design. 

Two years after graduation in June of 2009 Hunter and Andrea got married and moved just outside of Denver. Hunter had only told immediate family and one family friend about his autism. 

But Andrea now had his back in social settings. She learned he can’t handle messes, one on one close talker situations are a nightmare, and surprises even worse. Some things she learned the hard way. 

HUNTER: When my mother-in-law came over uninvited once delivering cookies and I spent the time hiding in the shower just because it jarred me to such an extent like you do not come over uninvited…I am a train. I am on tracks. It takes me a long time to slow down. It's hard for me to pivot. So it's like, I, I have to tell others, like you're not talking to a car that can slam on the brakes and drive off road.

Hunter and Andrea now have kids, which means his routine is often thrown off. Children make messes, wake up in the middle of the night, and want to touch you all the time. But that’s one thing he’s can handle.

HUNTER: I've learned that there's just a package of variability and it's like, you know, there's only so much control I can exert in this situation and the harder I squeeze, the more slips out my fingers.

ANDREA: They’re just being babies or toddlers they need a certain level of attention too. So trying to balance his needs with their needs can be challenging so trying to come alongside him and say ok it’s not the end of the world if all three are screaming at once. It’s not going to last forever. Lets try to calm one of them down and minimize things so that it doesn’t get too overwhelming for him.

Andrea helped him embrace the diagnosis he received as a teenager.

HUNTER: So instead of looking at like all these awkward social interactions as me just being inept or deficient or like just basically grasping like why is this, so why does this feel impossible? Now? I knew like this in a way, wasn't my fault. This is how I was wired. So I think a lot of the relief came. So as the shame kind of subsided, it was more like, okay. I can understand why life was a little more difficult for me.

After their second daughter was born, Hunter was on paternity leave and he didn’t know what to do with all of this sudden free time. With a newborn and a toddler he was sleep deprived and got to thinking he wasn’t sure he really enjoyed his tech job. 

What he really enjoyed was writing and telling stories. And he remembered reading somewhere that stories are more impactful when they come from personal experience.

HUNTER: Like what if I just talk about me and share something that I've never shared with the world or really anybody like coworkers? You know, why don't I just tell everybody I'm autistic and just see where that goes? Like, I, I'm just gonna be more radically honest with myself. I still haven't hit the root of it. Like, you know, I'm still working on that, but that was another layer to where this is, it was unmasking before I knew what masking was … 

So he sat down to type his first blog entry and in it he revealed he was autistic. That moment when he clicked “post,” he felt his stomach drop as all of his Facebook and Twitter followers read his big secret. 

HUNTER: It's kind of like deciding to go on a roller coaster for a first time or on a thrill ride. Like you have to just push your mind past that point to say, screw it. I'm gonna go ahead and jump. I'm gonna go ahead. Like for me, it's like, I'm just gonna go ahead and try a back, flip into a pool, you know, like you just have to power through that block a little bit. And then the exhilaration and pain of slapping your back on the surface of a pool hits later, it, um, it felt liberating to do. And I felt like I was reintroducing myself to people who knew me my entire life.

His blog started to take off, then a friend suggested turning it into a youtube video.

HUNTER:  It went from being a, um, it took a while, but it went from being more of like a personal catharsis to this could actually help people.

VIDEO MONTAGE 

He was funny, relatable, and self deprecating, making fun of his wild red hair.  And his videos went viral – this one has reached more than 2 million views. 

VIDEO

Parents of autistic kids, autistic teens, the newly diagnosed, and those who said they were searching for a way to feel less alone commented. 

HUNTER: …like this explained so much, you said this better than I ever could. I expected to be laughed at and shunned, but everybody was encouraging.

LAUREL: Being out and open about being autistic, has that helped you accept it?

HUNTER: I would even accelerate it further and say, it's helped me celebrate it. Yeah. Like embrace it… sharing some of those learnings to where it's not a stigma and it's far less a stereotype than people assume. …I felt it's been helpful to bring that as a more public part of my identity to where, um, parents of autistic sons and daughters see somebody who, Hey, this guy's autistic. He's kind of a decent job. He's married. He has kids. 

Not everyone was so positive. Autism is a big label that can describe a massive array of experiences, behaviors and needs.

HUNTER:  Some people bristle at autism being presented positively in my experience where their experiences with somebody who may have significant support needs. Their communication needs are just vastly different. They’re not as independent.

Hunter kept up with a full time remote job with a tech company, took care of his now three kids all under the age of five and produced his youtube videos one day a week. But what started as a side project became a passion project that fulfilled a need for him he didn’t know he had. 

But before long, this new passion that had brought him all of this joy and connection… it started to shift. 

HUNTER: There is an autistic part of me that wants to like keep everything checked. My inbox does not have any unread email. So it became the same thing with comments, like just reading through to where I need to feel like I'd read every YouTube comment…

Every day Hunter would check his Instagram followers and the number of views each time he got an alert. At first it was maybe 20 times a day. That turned into 20 times an hour until he became obsessed with the numbers of views, likes, and comments. 

HUNTER: I ended up having to turn all my notifications off and then all the badges off. And then it built another habit of like, let's open the box and see who's responding. …then it became a game of like, oh, how do I make a reel that goes viral and pops. How many likes and comments does this get? How much does this get featured? I would get discouraged by how, what I was doing, uh, compared to what other creators were doing or other like YouTubers were doing. Yeah, comparison is a thief of joy.

SFX: OVERLAPPING VIDEOS, LIKES

Hunter said it felt like a trap. He was spending less and less time with actual people and when he was with his family he was thinking how this would make a great video.

HUNTER: What that does is very subversive and dangerous … It's hard for somebody who struggles with ego, superiority and pride with a great capacity for internalizing self delusions to realize like Hunter dude, you're literally doing this to live a second life. You're basically living through your Instagram stories. You're getting to the next video. Your high points are literally what you're putting out to the world. Are you not neglecting what your world actually is? PAUSE

It was his wife Andrea who helped him realize “The Life Autistic” was taking over Hunter’s actual life.

AMANDA: Sometimes having a break from the constant need to live socially I have to live every moment of my life in front of everyone to feel good about myself. Feeling good about yourself is the point so being able to be proud of who you are outside of all that is the most important part. 

HUNTER: The things I learned about my autistic experience very publicly have taught me about myself some things that I had not realized were, um, you know, endangering my life, my family, um, just on a personal standpoint. So it's strange how you have an aspect of what is deeply embedded in your life that almost threatens to overtake your life in a weird way before you realize like, wait a minute. Okay. Who am I really? And as my wife and I kind of talk and she's apt to remind me, you are not “the life autistic.” 

AMANDA: If you focus too much on pleasing people and lose sight of why you’re doing something that has neg eff and it’s usually on the people you wanted to help in the beginning or those closest to you.

So in September, Hunter produced a video that wasn’t like any of his other videos – one camera angle, no sound effects, no subtitles, no edits, just Hunter standing in his home office rocking back and forth on his heels.

VIDEO EXCERPT…little bit of a personal lament stepping to the edge of a cliff and I don’t know what’s next it’s weird to reckon with it. I keep chipping away at this and for what? Keep making episodes and never quitting I feel like I dont belong. I've been quite at home with loneliness and isolation. Even since embracing my autistic identity, I find the more I do this the more isolating it is. It’s a strange incongruous paradox to be one of the few chipping away expressing the attributes makes me feel less connected and alone in this.

HUNTER: I can't live a life of projecting vulnerability and off the, on social media when that authenticity and reality is, I'm a husband, I'm a father, an employee. There are things that need more of me than my audience... I've had to have some hard conversation and talks about it's, it's tens of thousands of people who don't just follow you like they would a Kardashian I'm kind of pitching myself as like a real person. Millions of people have seen the inside of my house, which is just strange to think. And it's like, I think this particular age has a certain kind of thread and a zeal and like a verve and excitement that when it finally hits, it's almost too late to consider, like, what is this, what is this really doing?… I've had to learn where to better separate that, you know? So it's like, not only am I learning about this dimension of like what the life autistic spun off to be, but like my own autistic self and then my own actual self. 

Hunter says he’s produced his last video for a while, maybe even forever. He says he doesn’t know what the future holds, but it’s time to get back to his actual life.

HUNTER: I would say that distance really brings a lot of clarity not just in looking back but in looking ahead. As I do look back at my channel, sad to say I used that to feed very negative aspects of my character. It really hurt those closest to me: my family, my wife, my kids, myself. It hurt in what I would call sinful actions and destructive choices. I was taking a direction that would have ruined my family. But not anymore. I’ve re-evaluated where I was going and where I’m leading … There’s more to that story. I don’t know if or when it will ever be shared. My family and I we’re a lot more blessed and encouraged by a different course. This new much lighter path that’s putting me further between me and a lot of darkness. SoI don’t know what’s next for the life autistic but I look forward to what’s next in life and living.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.