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I see autistic masking discourse going around again. Neurotypical social norms *are* understandable. Acting neurotypical is doable if high effort (my mom is like this). You can get a long way by being a kind of weird that doesn't rub people the wrong way, which is much easier. But it hinges on this:

i was unaware it was going around but i guess i’ll just say, like, yes, you can do this and also doing this can break you irreparably in meaningful but specific senses and that really needs consideration especially bcz typically after ur broken ppl will not do much to help u get back to stable

Yeah which is a big part of why I do something that isn't "play a normal neurotypical person 100% of the time" and my partner in particular is one of the people I do not perform around as a rule. If I had to, we would not be compatible.

Do you consider “use social signaling in a way that’s comfortable to be but also meshes well with others as a learnable skill” to be or not be masking, or is the question wrong

Like this sounds suspiciously like how I’m trying to be in a post-masking self that is slowly learning to be Me, not Someone Who Others Will Like. But I still want to be Effective Me…

It depends. I think motivation matters, but so does how much effort it takes and if it can cost you in something other than just energy/attention (e.g. suppressing a self-stim behaviour if I am really knocked sideways by something and need to re-centre but can't find a private spot).

my feeling about this is that it's part of who i am to try to communicate caringly with the people around me in the mode that works for them, so learning an unintuitive norm isn't masking. it becomes masking if the effort is unbearable long-term, or if you just don't see that consideration as a goal