My student "trolled" me so hard his classmates are calling him "Jordan Peterson"

I teach high school English in a conservative area with lots of ranchers, farmers, and devout Christians. I have one student with severe autism who sometimes has trouble controlling his emotions and "meltdowns". He is normally a calm kid, but has trouble with eye contact, initiating conversations, and controlling his emotional response to certain issues. I'll call him Jimmy in this story.<br><br><br><br>On the first day of my 11th grade English class, I gave my syllabus to all the students. Jimmy got up to ask me a question, and while we were talking I noticed his shirt. It had a meme in the style of those obnoxious motivational posters with a picture of a young attractive woman in a bikini, and below that said "Be gay, do crime." I asked him to flip his shirt inside out so he wouldn't distract the other students, and he got upset and started screaming and cussing. He is a big guy, but not dangerous, so I wasn't afraid that he would physically attack. But he was endangering his own safety by being loud and destructive, and his classmates were clearly upset by his behavior. So I called the principal, and they came to escort Jimmy out for a "cool down" period.<br><br><br><br>The next day Jimmy apologized and was clearly calmer, so we moved on from the incident. But throughout the month, Jimmy, his siblings, and some friends pulled pranks to troll me with BLATANT rule breaking in front of the class, and they are careful to stop JUST before crossing a line into actual discipline territory. His siblings are in my 9th grade classes, and have disrupted with things like pretending to get up to ask a question but "realizing" that their fly is down, and pretending they are going to throw something across the room but stopping at the last second. Jimmy and his friends have been pulling off pranks like putting up encouraging post-it notes all over the classroom (e.g. "I believe in you!"), and walking around the class with a fake "lost puppy" poster with a picture of me and the caption "Brain dead. Answers to 'yes dear'." They are careful to stay calm, respectful, and fully in control as they do this, and I am starting to get the feeling that his trolling is actually a form of self-directing exposure therapy to deal with his autism. He talks about autism a lot and I am sympathetic to his plight, so I have decided to play along and troll them back with over-the-top discipline theatrics that stop just short of actual punishment. The students love it, and his classmates are now calling him "Jordan Peterson" for "trolling" their "woke" teacher.<br><br><br><br>Has anyone else ever dealt with trolling like this? How did you handle it?