Existing online with a disability.

Reading the title of this blog you might be thinking, “what on earth is he talking about? Existing online with a disability is a non issue!” and honestly, up until last month I thought the same.

A few months back while browsing a disability forum I saw someone had made a post saying every time they try and have a discussion with someone online, the other party in the discussion will visit their profile, find out they are disabled, and then use that against them in an argument.

When I first read that I was obviously disgusted, that people would sink that low. Afterwards though I thought back and couldn’t ever really remember that happening to me personally. It occurred to me though that at that time I really hadn’t mentioned my disability all that much on my Facebook or Instagram profiles.

This past month as some of you will know, I have started solely making videos about disability on my youtube channel and being much more open and active about it on my public (and private) social media accounts. I’m here today to tell you that I have now dealt with someone using my disability against me in an argument three times in the past month.

My interests online vary from various music pages to warhammer instagram accounts and everything in between. Every issue I am going to talk about here though, has been on video game related pages and accounts. The one I want to talk about happened recently.

Yesterday I saw a post about a game which had just come out. I decided to comment (after watching many reviews about said game) that I thought people would be better off waiting a few months as I felt the price would drop due to the bad reviews. I hit post and forgot about it.

Around 15 minutes later I got a notification that someone had replied. I expected it was someone disagreeing with me no doubt but I was shocked to see the replies.

So these two guys had seen my comment, disagreed with me so much they wanted to insult me personally, clicked my name and gone on to my profile, scrolled for quite a while as I hadn’t posted about disability in a couple of days, found something that said I was disabled and then decided to use it against me without even referencing the game we were commenting on or my original comment.

I don’t know these people. Both had a private profile. You might be thinking that maybe they were someone who knew me and were just trying to troll me, but both seemed to be fully fledged accounts which had existed for a while and for a friend to have found my comment on that post would have been difficult. These were two random guys, who must have enjoyed this game so much that, to defend it against my not even inflammatory comment, they decided to insult me personally.

I have had many an online discussions/arguments in my day. Up until this year when I realised that online arguments are a complete waste of time I would often have debates on various political pages and occasionally pages about games etc, but I have never been this shocked by a reply before.

For one, my original comment wasn’t in the least bit offensive or trying to start an argument, it was merely advice to anyone considering shelling out on a new release. Secondly I just couldn’t believe the vitriol in the comment itself. To argue with me in the first place was bad enough, but to dig through my profile and find what they perceived to be a weakness to use against me is truly disgusting.

You can see I replied, and I really wish I hadn’t bothered, I was just so angry in that one moment. My advice to you if you ever come up against anyone like this online is to block them as soon as you can. People like this will never change, they will never learn. If they are willing to try and insult you by referencing something you cannot change, then they are never going to be good people. I have never met anyone who has become a good person after telling racist/homophobic/ableist jokes or insulting people because of something they can’t change. A friend said to me on this matter, if someone said this to you in real life you wouldn’t give them the time of day, and he was right about that.

I stewed over those comments for a couple of hours. I was actually letting it upset me. When I thought about it, I realised it’s because I have always feared people judging me on my disability before even getting to know me, and obviously on the internet it is incredibly easy for someone to have a 5 second look at your life and assume what they like about you.

In those two hours of upset I honestly considered giving up youtube and instagram and no longer being open about my life online for fear of this continuing. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, twice before this, in the last month in fact, I have been called a cripple and a retard in a conversation about politics or games online. But I thought, that would be letting disgusting people like that win. I shouldn’t have to hide who I am, even online, just to appease people like that, or for fear of someone insulting me. If someone sees that I am disabled and chooses to use that against me then I know they aren’t someone worth discussing anything with anyway.

So the reason I am writing this blog post is to give some advice to you. If you are someone who has posted on their page about disability, or if you are someone who hasn’t because you don’t want people judging you or finding out about your disability, don’t be afraid. Be proud of who you are, and don’t let anyone make you feel like less of a person because of it. Those people aren’t worth your fear of being judged and they certainly aren’t worth your time.

I will continue to be me, to be disabled out in the open, and I will always be proud of who I have become in spite of living with my disability. Every day.