I mean, if you yourself have admitted that crushes don’t come naturally to you and that the crushes you tell yourself to have feel artificial, I feel like that answers your question, haha. I’m no expert and my experiences don’t speak for all, but I call myself ace precisely because I’ve never experienced a crush (from what people have told me; like feeling nervous around a person, blushing, wanting to do romantic/sexual things with them, etc.) and because I’ve never thought about how “hot” someone was or anything like that
Of course, if you don’t feel like you’re acespec for whatever reason, you’re not obligated to label yourself that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ literally the only reason I began labeling myself as ace was because I was sick of some people asking me about my opinions on dating and/or someone’s attractiveness and apparently “I don’t think about stuff like that” is not a good enough answer for them. Outside of those people, I just like to say “I don’t really like anyone like that” in response to sexuality stuff since I think that exactly describes me