The Generation That Doesn’t Believe Helen Keller Existed
January 6, 2021 9:27 AM Subscribe
In May 2020, Isabella Lahoue noticed TikTok was awash with videos doubting the existence and facts of Helen Keller's life. She wonders, "Maybe we [Gen Z] don’t believe in her because we’re growing up in a world of fake news. We know the power of manipulation and lies in the media, and we’re losing faith in the sources everyone once trusted. There’s too much data and too many lies circulating for us to process and believe it all." Interest in this phenomenon was recently rekindled by a viral Twitter thread. Newsweek article.
Y'know, I've heard a lot of horseshit during my life that people have believed while seemingly ignoring critical thinking completely, but this is of a whole different variety.
We don’t have to believe in Helen Keller, and it shouldn’t be surprising if we don’t. The world we were born into makes us profoundly different than other generations, and hopefully, it will also make us into change agents.
I sure some Classical Roman/Three Kingdoms Chinese/Ancient Egyptian kids felt exactly the same way. I'm rolling my eyes so hard that I may have to seek medical attention.
posted by Sphinx at 9:46 AM on January 6, 2021 [28 favorites]
We don’t have to believe in Helen Keller, and it shouldn’t be surprising if we don’t. The world we were born into makes us profoundly different than other generations, and hopefully, it will also make us into change agents.
I sure some Classical Roman/Three Kingdoms Chinese/Ancient Egyptian kids felt exactly the same way. I'm rolling my eyes so hard that I may have to seek medical attention.
posted by Sphinx at 9:46 AM on January 6, 2021 [28 favorites]
"We have to fight to have our opinions about the state of our country heard and understood by older generations. We have to march in the streets and endlessly retweet to try and stop our schools from being shot up. We have to hear about the injustices committed at the border, against the black community, and against women, all of which are covered in lies that sugarcoat the situation, and you wonder why we have trust issues when it comes to the government."
Except for the word "retweet," the rest of that paragraph could have been written in May 1970, instead of May 2020. Or wait, does she not believe the anti-Vietnam protests, the Kent State massacre, the treatment of the Haitian "boat people" (UGH UGH UGH), the bloody civil rights movement, or the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment (or even the fight not to be fired for pregnancy) -- does she believe that none of that happened either?
What a load of ahistoric drivel.
posted by basalganglia at 9:47 AM on January 6, 2021 [20 favorites]
Except for the word "retweet," the rest of that paragraph could have been written in May 1970, instead of May 2020. Or wait, does she not believe the anti-Vietnam protests, the Kent State massacre, the treatment of the Haitian "boat people" (UGH UGH UGH), the bloody civil rights movement, or the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment (or even the fight not to be fired for pregnancy) -- does she believe that none of that happened either?
What a load of ahistoric drivel.
posted by basalganglia at 9:47 AM on January 6, 2021 [20 favorites]
"The Generation That Doesn’t Believe Helen Keller Existed" Fine than someday people will believe that your generation did not exist
posted by robbyrobs at 9:52 AM on January 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by robbyrobs at 9:52 AM on January 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
Not OK, Zoomers.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:54 AM on January 6, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by tonycpsu at 9:54 AM on January 6, 2021 [11 favorites]
The insane thing here is the incessant use of the word / concept “believe” which has the force now of predicating both truth and existence. Just because you believe something doesn’t mean anything about its reality or truthfulness. The converse is also true. Non belief does not equal non existence. Where the hell are the philosophers when you need them? Or just critical thinking.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:55 AM on January 6, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 9:55 AM on January 6, 2021 [31 favorites]
I'm a Gen-Xer. When I was about 18 my mom walked into my room and asked "you're not doing drugs or attending devil worshipping parties, are you?"
I lied about doing drugs, but I certainly wasn't attending devil worshipping parties, because that wasn't actually a thing.
So just now I walked into my 18 year old kid's room and asked "For the record, what's your stance on Hellen Keller?"
She knows Hellen Keller existed.
Is this really Zoomers or is this a few kids doing a bit? My kid thinks it's a bit. Is it 1980s devil worshipping parties all over again?
posted by bondcliff at 9:59 AM on January 6, 2021 [71 favorites]
I lied about doing drugs, but I certainly wasn't attending devil worshipping parties, because that wasn't actually a thing.
So just now I walked into my 18 year old kid's room and asked "For the record, what's your stance on Hellen Keller?"
She knows Hellen Keller existed.
Is this really Zoomers or is this a few kids doing a bit? My kid thinks it's a bit. Is it 1980s devil worshipping parties all over again?
posted by bondcliff at 9:59 AM on January 6, 2021 [71 favorites]
"We have to fight to have our opinions about the state of our country heard and understood by older generations. We have to march in the streets and endlessly retweet to try and stop our schools from being shot up. We have to hear about the injustices committed at the border, against the black community, and against women, all of which are covered in lies that sugarcoat the situation, and you wonder why we have trust issues when it comes to the government."
So in response they're going to shit on the legacy of a DeafBlind woman who was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, supporter of reproductive rights, donor to the NAACP, and cofounder of the ACLU. What the fuck.
posted by jedicus at 10:00 AM on January 6, 2021 [70 favorites]
So in response they're going to shit on the legacy of a DeafBlind woman who was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, supporter of reproductive rights, donor to the NAACP, and cofounder of the ACLU. What the fuck.
posted by jedicus at 10:00 AM on January 6, 2021 [70 favorites]
idk, I see plenty of ableism in my everyday life that "no way could a disabled person do all THAT" isn't (sadly) a surprise that it's already a common attitude.
posted by ShawnStruck at 10:00 AM on January 6, 2021 [24 favorites]
posted by ShawnStruck at 10:00 AM on January 6, 2021 [24 favorites]
I feel like people are taking the last few paras of that Medium piece too literally. I don’t think the author is defending those who doubt Helen Keller, but rather trying to explain why others in her generation have that doubt (and yes, dividing everyone up by generations is reductionist but if you don’t like it, maybe ease off on the “all young people are shit” comments).
posted by adrianhon at 10:05 AM on January 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by adrianhon at 10:05 AM on January 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
It’s gotten to the point where it isn’t even a joke anymore as it originally may have been. Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed.Sorry, is there any actual evidence that this is true? This seems 100% like old people just not getting TikTok memes to me.
posted by wesleyac at 10:07 AM on January 6, 2021 [17 favorites]
We have to hear about the injustices committed at the border, against the black community, and against women, all of which are covered in lies that sugarcoat the situation, and you wonder why we have trust issues when it comes to the government.
but ableism is just fucking dandy
posted by schadenfrau at 10:07 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
but ableism is just fucking dandy
posted by schadenfrau at 10:07 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
This seems 100% like old people just not getting TikTok memes to me.
if it were a joke it wouldn't be any less ableist, tho, so, you know, don't care
posted by schadenfrau at 10:08 AM on January 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
if it were a joke it wouldn't be any less ableist, tho, so, you know, don't care
posted by schadenfrau at 10:08 AM on January 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
"The Generation that doesn't believe X"?
I suspect this is more akin to learning about the real-life existence of Johnny Appleseed (he existed, but not in the weird cartoon version I was told about in the 1970s) or other folk heroes. Remarkable people who may have had aspects of their lives exaggerated one way or another by popular media.
And adrianhon just nicely summed up the rest of my thoughts on this one article.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:08 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I suspect this is more akin to learning about the real-life existence of Johnny Appleseed (he existed, but not in the weird cartoon version I was told about in the 1970s) or other folk heroes. Remarkable people who may have had aspects of their lives exaggerated one way or another by popular media.
And adrianhon just nicely summed up the rest of my thoughts on this one article.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:08 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
wesleyac: If you watch the TikTok videos, there’s a lot of shitposting and awful ableist jokes, but there are also a lot of genuine people spelling out their arguments for why she couldn’t have possibly learned to read or write, which is obviously ignorant (this partly via Andy Baio)
posted by adrianhon at 10:11 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by adrianhon at 10:11 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I just texted my eighteen year old sister asking whether this was a Thing or whether it was a case of old people not understanding TikTok. She, too, had never heard of the concept and thought the whole thing was deeply weird, but pointed out there are kids who think Trump REALLY won the election these days, so who can say?
I casually mentioned to her that my mother had also once emailed me to ask if she might be being lead down a path to MURDER because she was a kid who liked Slenderman [she has not to my knowledge murdered anyone], and that I am increasingly leaning towards a "conspiracy theories and alternate reality seems alarmingly common among people of all ages, I guess" kind of response. We are now agreeing that humans are weird.
posted by sciatrix at 10:19 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I casually mentioned to her that my mother had also once emailed me to ask if she might be being lead down a path to MURDER because she was a kid who liked Slenderman [she has not to my knowledge murdered anyone], and that I am increasingly leaning towards a "conspiracy theories and alternate reality seems alarmingly common among people of all ages, I guess" kind of response. We are now agreeing that humans are weird.
posted by sciatrix at 10:19 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I think to some degree this isn't just an indictment of today's news and social media, but the propaganda of the past 200+ years of American mythologizing.
We've got all of these people who were certainly real people, but weren't really what they were built up to be. Frauds like Johnny Appleseed, or the various folks who "discovered" that which was already known.
I don't blame kids for at least being skeptical of Helen Keller's story. Especially when it's already so whitewashed and reduced down to inspiration porn. No one tells us how much of an activist she was, we just get told how she learned to read and write through perseverance.
Lie to your kids about Santa and Jesus and Columbus and the Founding Fathers? Why should they believe you about Helen Keller, either?
posted by explosion at 10:23 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
We've got all of these people who were certainly real people, but weren't really what they were built up to be. Frauds like Johnny Appleseed, or the various folks who "discovered" that which was already known.
I don't blame kids for at least being skeptical of Helen Keller's story. Especially when it's already so whitewashed and reduced down to inspiration porn. No one tells us how much of an activist she was, we just get told how she learned to read and write through perseverance.
Lie to your kids about Santa and Jesus and Columbus and the Founding Fathers? Why should they believe you about Helen Keller, either?
posted by explosion at 10:23 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
I'm not 100% convinced Benjamin Franklin existed.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2021
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2021
performative ignorance drives clicks.
posted by jenkinsEar at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by jenkinsEar at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
I submit that the person who writes that “Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed” — which is objectively false due to gross overstatement (these are just some TikTok videos and in no way do they represent “a generation”) — are themselves promoting exactly the kind of misinformation that they are pretending to be worried about, for clicks. A person who believes that this tiny slice of evanescent social media represents the beliefs of "a generation" is precisely as deluded as someone who thinks Helen Keller didn't exist.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 10:28 AM on January 6, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by demonic winged headgear at 10:28 AM on January 6, 2021 [31 favorites]
That Isabella Lahoue article is really dumb and makes me mad, but she’s also a teenager so I guess I’ll just throw up my hands about it. That 1,400 people follow her on Medium, though…
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM on January 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM on January 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed. And frankly, I’m having a hard time accepting that she did myself. I don’t feel bad or wrong for it, and I don’t think anyone else my age does either.
Do you likeants Skynet Trump? Because this is how you get ants Skynet Trump.
posted by The Bellman at 10:34 AM on January 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
Do you like
posted by The Bellman at 10:34 AM on January 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
There's a difference between viewing the mythologizing of Keller with some skepticism, and claiming her achievements must have been fake because deaf-blind people are inherently incapable. I'm all for kids learning about the aspects that get whitewashed, like her radical (and admirable) politics, in particular; that's real skepticism and engaging with history, as opposed to whatever this is.
posted by tavella at 10:37 AM on January 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:37 AM on January 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
This is interesting to me because just a couple of days ago, someone expressed skepticism about Helen Keller's story on r/linguistics. They said her story was fishy and asked for other examples of DeafBlind people who could communicate (which they were given).
They baselessly believed that people born deaf and blind wouldn't have enough "context" to learn to communicate fully, that this would only be possible for people who became deaf and blind after acquiring language. I wonder if this is where that came from.
I'm not linking their comments since they've since been removed for being horrifically ableist.
(Note: This person was not a linguist.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:38 AM on January 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
They baselessly believed that people born deaf and blind wouldn't have enough "context" to learn to communicate fully, that this would only be possible for people who became deaf and blind after acquiring language. I wonder if this is where that came from.
I'm not linking their comments since they've since been removed for being horrifically ableist.
(Note: This person was not a linguist.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:38 AM on January 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
Is this really Zoomers or is this a few kids doing a bit? My kid thinks it's a bit.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. 15 years ago we thought Flat Earthers were doing a bit, but now there’s a community of people for whom it is clearly a sincere belief.
posted by chrchr at 10:44 AM on January 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. 15 years ago we thought Flat Earthers were doing a bit, but now there’s a community of people for whom it is clearly a sincere belief.
posted by chrchr at 10:44 AM on January 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
About a year ago, back when we were all freaking out over the hot new wellness trend of sunning your asshole, Merus wrote an insightful comment suggesting that the real story was not so much a couple of attention-seeking weirdos doing something weird on the internet, but the anxieties that the rest of us reveal when we react to it like it's a major concern.
Which in turn reminds me of Fred Clark's concept of the Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition, where he noticed, when he still had a newspaper job, that when there was an animal cruelty story in the paper, they'd get a ton of letters a) furious that this had happened, understandably, but b) that assumed this was a controversial position that had to be defended. It was a moral performance - burning a kitten is a low bar, morally, so condemning it demonstrates that you're better than someone, with very little risk on your part that you might have to actually fight.posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:45 AM on January 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
[...] And with this, it's kind of a mix of wellness influencers peddling woo, where a lack of boundaries is conflated with intimacy which is conflated with authenticity. It's an expression of our anxieties about the modern world, in a form that's low-risk to stand against.
Clark brings up the Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition in the context of Evangelicals: he sees the same pattern with Evangelicals, with the Satanic Panic and with the pro-life movement, inventing imaginary monsters to allow them to be moral crusaders without actually having to be morally upstanding themselves.
You do you, but I think it's preferable to put my energy to worrying about terrible things that are real.
Well, I guess if we're going to give up on Science during a pandemic, we might as well give up on Object Permanence, too.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:48 AM on January 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:48 AM on January 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
Also, as a Millennial who's spent the past decade and change being told about all the dozens of industries we're killing and how we're all glued to our phones and we're all super sensitive snowflakes, I've got a heavy side-eye for any story that tries to get me to distrust young people.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:49 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:49 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
Well, I guess if we're going to give up on Science during a pandemic, we might as well give up on Object Permanence, too.
fuck you, limerent dots on a screen
posted by lalochezia at 10:50 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
fuck you, limerent dots on a screen
posted by lalochezia at 10:50 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
Okay, look, some of it is obviously a bit and then there's some people who take bits seriously.
Some things:
1. Non-disabled (young?) people clearly have very, very little idea of how people with various disabilities live. This has to be substantially because of the way our culture isolates disabled people so that at best most non-disabled people see disabled people only in passing. If you actually know, eg, a blind classmate, you're not going to be able to believe that blind people can't do things.
2. I'm curious about the average state of general knowledge today. When I was a kid, I knew that blind people could read and do things because I'd read the Little House books and some other 19th and early 20th century kids' fiction with blind characters. I'm not saying those were ideal portrayals, but the mere fact of braille was known to me. Also I read some autobiographical thing for kids written by Helen Keller, so I knew about her and how she learned to read and write. I'm sure that if we're talking about volume of knowledge, the youths know as much as I did, but I wonder if the nature/scope has changed.
3. If these are teens, they probably haven't thought deeply about what they mean by "proof". That's not weird or even exactly particularly worrying. "How do I know that something is true? What kind of evidence do I accept?" is one of those things, like cooking and making a budget, that you can teach through lecturing in schools but that ultimately gets learned through being alive.
4. There areweird [ETA - not "weird" so much as "call on us to reframe our own knowledge" ]historical facts that I didn't believe at first. You know how Mansfield Park has an anti-slavery element? I've read Mansfield Park four or five times since my twenties, I've read an array of early 19th century novels, I've read about the UK abolitionist movement....and it still seemed wildly implausible to me that Austen was commenting on slavery. I really thought it a sort of offensively ahistorical reading. I mean, I looked into it further because the years have taught me that when I take the huffy white person route I'm usually wrong, but it seemed just as implausible to me as Helen Keller's life must to a teenager who doesn't know anything about disability.
5. The bad thing here is the same bad thing as for any age group - while in the past it was extremely easy to be ignorant and disbelieving, it was fairly difficult to find conspiracy material and even if you found it there was only so much of it to read.
6. Framing it as "believing in" Helen Keller is cringe-inducing, but probably an error generated by the difficulty of writing conclusions.
posted by Frowner at 10:53 AM on January 6, 2021 [13 favorites]
Some things:
1. Non-disabled (young?) people clearly have very, very little idea of how people with various disabilities live. This has to be substantially because of the way our culture isolates disabled people so that at best most non-disabled people see disabled people only in passing. If you actually know, eg, a blind classmate, you're not going to be able to believe that blind people can't do things.
2. I'm curious about the average state of general knowledge today. When I was a kid, I knew that blind people could read and do things because I'd read the Little House books and some other 19th and early 20th century kids' fiction with blind characters. I'm not saying those were ideal portrayals, but the mere fact of braille was known to me. Also I read some autobiographical thing for kids written by Helen Keller, so I knew about her and how she learned to read and write. I'm sure that if we're talking about volume of knowledge, the youths know as much as I did, but I wonder if the nature/scope has changed.
3. If these are teens, they probably haven't thought deeply about what they mean by "proof". That's not weird or even exactly particularly worrying. "How do I know that something is true? What kind of evidence do I accept?" is one of those things, like cooking and making a budget, that you can teach through lecturing in schools but that ultimately gets learned through being alive.
4. There are
5. The bad thing here is the same bad thing as for any age group - while in the past it was extremely easy to be ignorant and disbelieving, it was fairly difficult to find conspiracy material and even if you found it there was only so much of it to read.
6. Framing it as "believing in" Helen Keller is cringe-inducing, but probably an error generated by the difficulty of writing conclusions.
posted by Frowner at 10:53 AM on January 6, 2021 [13 favorites]
We've got all of these people who were certainly real people, but weren't really what they were built up to be.
Sure, but kind of irrelevant in a discussion of Helen Keller, whose popular image has generally been sanitized and toned down and who was actually way more badass and accomplished than at least I was taught as a kid.
posted by eviemath at 10:59 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
Sure, but kind of irrelevant in a discussion of Helen Keller, whose popular image has generally been sanitized and toned down and who was actually way more badass and accomplished than at least I was taught as a kid.
posted by eviemath at 10:59 AM on January 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
I think it's preferable to put my energy to worrying about terrible things that are real.
I've been infantilized because of my disability for my entire life. People don't think that I'm capable of being a full, contributing member of society because I have a disabling health condition. This has profoundly shaped my own life and many disabled people would probably say the same. Ableism is very real, and very terrible. It has made so many people's lives infinitely harder or impossible. Ableism kills disabled people.
This story reveals a deep truth: it's easy for some people to believe that people with disabilities like Helen Keller are incapable of being full, contributing members to society. It's easier for them to believe that it's a large conspiracy involving the collusion of a bunch of able-bodied, seeing and hearing people. That's the real story here. As a disabled person, this doesn't surprise me at all, but it does surprise me to see people here dismissing it as an unimportant or trivial concern. "Just a few kids on the internet" misses the entire point.
posted by k8lin at 11:01 AM on January 6, 2021 [33 favorites]
I've been infantilized because of my disability for my entire life. People don't think that I'm capable of being a full, contributing member of society because I have a disabling health condition. This has profoundly shaped my own life and many disabled people would probably say the same. Ableism is very real, and very terrible. It has made so many people's lives infinitely harder or impossible. Ableism kills disabled people.
This story reveals a deep truth: it's easy for some people to believe that people with disabilities like Helen Keller are incapable of being full, contributing members to society. It's easier for them to believe that it's a large conspiracy involving the collusion of a bunch of able-bodied, seeing and hearing people. That's the real story here. As a disabled person, this doesn't surprise me at all, but it does surprise me to see people here dismissing it as an unimportant or trivial concern. "Just a few kids on the internet" misses the entire point.
posted by k8lin at 11:01 AM on January 6, 2021 [33 favorites]
They said her story was fishy and asked for other examples of DeafBlind people who could communicate (which they were given).
The techniques used to teach Helen Keller were actually influenced by contemporary successes with other deaf-blind children, right? Through I don’t know how this interacts with the argument regarding their relative amount of exposure to language prior to losing vision and hearing.
posted by atoxyl at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021
The techniques used to teach Helen Keller were actually influenced by contemporary successes with other deaf-blind children, right? Through I don’t know how this interacts with the argument regarding their relative amount of exposure to language prior to losing vision and hearing.
posted by atoxyl at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021
I can't even be shocked by anything any more. Sure, why not stop believing in Helen Keller on TikTok too, why the fuck not. This started in 2020, right?
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021
I ( youngish Xer) once so successfully convinced my littlest sister (young millennial) that Nancy Reagan was robot that had been rebuilt from the spare parts of a defunct ride from a low rent Disney-knockoff that I kind of still believe it.
You're welcome, sis.
posted by thivaia at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
You're welcome, sis.
posted by thivaia at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
This is interesting to me because just a couple of days ago, someone expressed skepticism about Helen Keller's story on r/linguistics. They said her story was fishy and asked for other examples of DeafBlind people who could communicate (which they were given).
Please tell me that wasn't in response to the research on Protactile. Which, if not, look! A paper literally just published in Language about all of this. Ugh.
posted by damayanti at 11:06 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Please tell me that wasn't in response to the research on Protactile. Which, if not, look! A paper literally just published in Language about all of this. Ugh.
posted by damayanti at 11:06 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I submit that the person who writes that “Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed” — which is objectively false due to gross overstatement (these are just some TikTok videos and in no way do they represent “a generation”) — are themselves promoting exactly the kind of misinformation that they are pretending to be worried about, for clicks. A person who believes that this tiny slice of evanescent social media represents the beliefs of "a generation" is precisely as deluded as someone who thinks Helen Keller didn't exist.
The person doing all this is a Generation Z member who is sympathetic to the skepticism of Keller and defending Generation Z.
So arguing this person is deluded maybe doesn't get you where you want to go.
posted by mark k at 11:07 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
The person doing all this is a Generation Z member who is sympathetic to the skepticism of Keller and defending Generation Z.
So arguing this person is deluded maybe doesn't get you where you want to go.
posted by mark k at 11:07 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I suppose one precedent that might influence skepticism here is the scandals around things like facilitated communication, where it appears that aides did either confabulate or intentionally invent a great deal of interaction.
But my confidence that these kids actually know about/are influenced by those stories, instead of just reasoning from first principles they’ve pulled out of their asses, is not terribly high.
posted by atoxyl at 11:09 AM on January 6, 2021
But my confidence that these kids actually know about/are influenced by those stories, instead of just reasoning from first principles they’ve pulled out of their asses, is not terribly high.
posted by atoxyl at 11:09 AM on January 6, 2021
Oh my fucking Christ, this isn't kids coming to grips with distrust in institutions, and this isn't some sort of epistemological freak out in a post-truth context, it's just fucking ableism.
These kids are just ableist, and they are using the lingua franca of their cohort to justify their ableist feelings. Feel like disabled people are less than, in the very literal sense of being able to do less than and thus being less than? (let's leave the sociopathic utilitarianism underpinnings of that for another day.) well, now you can just claim you've been lied to about Helen Keller, just like you've been lied to about everything else, and you get to claim the moral high ground while still being ableist.
There is literally nothing new here. This is just bigotry, and people here are treating it as though it's either a joke (FUCKING HILARIOUS RIGHT) or some new phenomena that gives us insight into our times.
No. It's just fucking ableism.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:09 AM on January 6, 2021 [44 favorites]
These kids are just ableist, and they are using the lingua franca of their cohort to justify their ableist feelings. Feel like disabled people are less than, in the very literal sense of being able to do less than and thus being less than? (let's leave the sociopathic utilitarianism underpinnings of that for another day.) well, now you can just claim you've been lied to about Helen Keller, just like you've been lied to about everything else, and you get to claim the moral high ground while still being ableist.
There is literally nothing new here. This is just bigotry, and people here are treating it as though it's either a joke (FUCKING HILARIOUS RIGHT) or some new phenomena that gives us insight into our times.
No. It's just fucking ableism.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:09 AM on January 6, 2021 [44 favorites]
Pretty sure I'm one of the fringe of GenX that doesn't think it was a good idea that we ever descended from the trees - let alone figure out that whole fire thing... Everything since then has been a downward spiral for our species.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:15 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:15 AM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
This story reveals a deep truth: it's easy for some people to believe that people with disabilities like Helen Keller are incapable of being full, contributing members to society. It's easier for them to believe that it's a large conspiracy involving the collusion of a bunch of able-bodied, seeing and hearing people. That's the real story here. As a disabled person, this doesn't surprise me at all, but it does surprise me to see people here dismissing it as an unimportant or trivial concern. "Just a few kids on the internet" misses the entire point.
Yes, you're right that this story depicts ableism, and that it's a serious and real problem. I was mostly reacting to the way that this story seems to have been inappropriately generalized in order to characterize all of Gen Z, but I'm sorry if I ended up minimizing the importance of ableism in the process.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:16 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yes, you're right that this story depicts ableism, and that it's a serious and real problem. I was mostly reacting to the way that this story seems to have been inappropriately generalized in order to characterize all of Gen Z, but I'm sorry if I ended up minimizing the importance of ableism in the process.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:16 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Cyberpunk 2077? More like Cyberpunk V3.0
The aftermath of the Fourth Corporate War has resulted in widespread corruption of the Net and major losses of hardcopied data, to the point that all data is intangible and recent recorded history is in doubt. An example that pops up in Pondsmith's demos at conventions, releases on the Internet, and in the finished game is that knowledge and recorded history has become lost or corrupted. Many people in the world now believe Richard Nixon, instead of resigning over Watergate, committed suicide on camera and that memes such as the moon landing being a hoax become prevalent.posted by Apocryphon at 11:24 AM on January 6, 2021
It does go along very well with refusal to believe that women wrote their books (must have been written by their husbands, etc).
I think there's something new because of the reaching back into the past (why Helen Keller?) and because of the totality of the skepticism. It's not like there's only one obscure book about her; she was a well-known public figure who left a tremendous mark in the historical record and lived until 1968. You don't just have to believe that she couldn't have done what she did - you also have to believe that there is an enormous, successful, multi-generational conspiracy producing all these lies and a huge body of fake material about her.
The "why Helen Keller" part feels like the cultural influence of the far right to me - not just diffuse ableism but a focused attack on a well-known and symbolic person to mobilize ableism around. It doesn't even need to be a far right thing, just the way that the far right has created a cultural style in the present. I just feel like conspiracy-mindedness is a mark of the moment and is really never separate from racism, anti-Semitism, specifically Nazi ableism, etc. If there weren't a bunch of anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy stories floating around in the world, "Helen Keller is a fraud" wouldn't be zeitgeisty.
posted by Frowner at 11:26 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think there's something new because of the reaching back into the past (why Helen Keller?) and because of the totality of the skepticism. It's not like there's only one obscure book about her; she was a well-known public figure who left a tremendous mark in the historical record and lived until 1968. You don't just have to believe that she couldn't have done what she did - you also have to believe that there is an enormous, successful, multi-generational conspiracy producing all these lies and a huge body of fake material about her.
The "why Helen Keller" part feels like the cultural influence of the far right to me - not just diffuse ableism but a focused attack on a well-known and symbolic person to mobilize ableism around. It doesn't even need to be a far right thing, just the way that the far right has created a cultural style in the present. I just feel like conspiracy-mindedness is a mark of the moment and is really never separate from racism, anti-Semitism, specifically Nazi ableism, etc. If there weren't a bunch of anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy stories floating around in the world, "Helen Keller is a fraud" wouldn't be zeitgeisty.
posted by Frowner at 11:26 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
Please tell me that wasn't in response to the research on Protactile. Which, if not, look! A paper literally just published in Language about all of this. Ugh.
Of course it was!
I don't think that they read it, which just adds an additional, depressing layer to the story. It's not just that they were ignorant, but they also just disregarded information right in front of them.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:30 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Of course it was!
I don't think that they read it, which just adds an additional, depressing layer to the story. It's not just that they were ignorant, but they also just disregarded information right in front of them.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:30 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sigh, dystopian science-fiction was never supposed to be a road-map. Unfortunately, there are so many people that just get swept-up into believing almost anything these days. Trump, Qanon, Reptilians, flat-earth, faked moon landings. It used to be ironic, comedic to embrace the absurd - but now, if everyone has a platform and current reality is subjective, we really are living in a miasma of crap already.
From a Slate review of "Fall, or Dodge in Hell":
In the 12th chapter of Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Fall, a quartet of Princeton students set out on a road trip to Iowa to visit the “ancestral home” of one of the students, Sophia. This part of the novel is set about 25 years in the future, in an age when self-driving cars are the default and a de facto border exists between the affluent, educated coasts, where Sophia and her friends live, and the heartland they call “Ameristan.” The latter is a semi-lawless territory riddled with bullet holes and conspiracy theories, where a crackpot Christian cult intent on proving the crucifixion was a hoax (because no way is their god some “meek liberal Jesus” who’d allow himself to be “taken out” like that) literally crucifies proselytizing missionaries from other sects. You have to hire guides to shepherd you through this region, men who mount machine guns on top of their trucks “to make everyone in their vicinity aware that they were a hard target.”
How did things get so bad? For one thing, residents of Ameristan, unlike Sophia and her well-off pals, can’t afford to hire professional “editors” to personally filter the internet for them. Instead, they are exposed to the raw, unmediated internet, a brew of “inscrutable, algorithmically-generated memes” and videos designed, without human intervention, to do whatever it takes to get the viewer to watch a little bit longer. This has understandably driven them mad, to the degree that, as one character puts it, they even “believed that the people in the cities actually gave a shit about them enough to come and take their guns and other property,” and as a result stockpiled ammo in order to fight off the “elites” who never come.
posted by rozcakj at 11:42 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
From a Slate review of "Fall, or Dodge in Hell":
In the 12th chapter of Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Fall, a quartet of Princeton students set out on a road trip to Iowa to visit the “ancestral home” of one of the students, Sophia. This part of the novel is set about 25 years in the future, in an age when self-driving cars are the default and a de facto border exists between the affluent, educated coasts, where Sophia and her friends live, and the heartland they call “Ameristan.” The latter is a semi-lawless territory riddled with bullet holes and conspiracy theories, where a crackpot Christian cult intent on proving the crucifixion was a hoax (because no way is their god some “meek liberal Jesus” who’d allow himself to be “taken out” like that) literally crucifies proselytizing missionaries from other sects. You have to hire guides to shepherd you through this region, men who mount machine guns on top of their trucks “to make everyone in their vicinity aware that they were a hard target.”
How did things get so bad? For one thing, residents of Ameristan, unlike Sophia and her well-off pals, can’t afford to hire professional “editors” to personally filter the internet for them. Instead, they are exposed to the raw, unmediated internet, a brew of “inscrutable, algorithmically-generated memes” and videos designed, without human intervention, to do whatever it takes to get the viewer to watch a little bit longer. This has understandably driven them mad, to the degree that, as one character puts it, they even “believed that the people in the cities actually gave a shit about them enough to come and take their guns and other property,” and as a result stockpiled ammo in order to fight off the “elites” who never come.
posted by rozcakj at 11:42 AM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I don't believe there are still people willing to read Neal Stephenson novels.
posted by biffa at 11:52 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by biffa at 11:52 AM on January 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
So we get Flat Earthers from YouTube and Helen Keller Denialists from TikTok--there's no limit to the real ignorance beneath the layers of ironic ignorance.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:54 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by betweenthebars at 11:54 AM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I tell people that, as an atheist, I personally not only don't believe in the deity Jesus, but I don't necessarily believe in the historical Jesus either.† And when they come back with Josephus and stuff my response is—who killed JFK?
That's an event from a few decades ago, captured on film, and we can't collectively decide the meaning of it or historical facts behind it at any level of society.
So while I don't think that Helen Keller is a particularly good example of this sort of thing to fixate on, and any intellectual trend of doubting established history really, really needs to directly reckon with Holocaust denialism and explain exactly why what they're doing is not going to also facilitate Holocaust denialism, I feel like I share the general sentiment, and I don't actually think it's a new twenty-first-century thing.
† I should note that a fair number of atheists I've talked to do seem to confidently believe in the existence of Jesus as a historical figure, so this isn't a general atheist thing.
posted by XMLicious at 12:05 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
That's an event from a few decades ago, captured on film, and we can't collectively decide the meaning of it or historical facts behind it at any level of society.
So while I don't think that Helen Keller is a particularly good example of this sort of thing to fixate on, and any intellectual trend of doubting established history really, really needs to directly reckon with Holocaust denialism and explain exactly why what they're doing is not going to also facilitate Holocaust denialism, I feel like I share the general sentiment, and I don't actually think it's a new twenty-first-century thing.
† I should note that a fair number of atheists I've talked to do seem to confidently believe in the existence of Jesus as a historical figure, so this isn't a general atheist thing.
posted by XMLicious at 12:05 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't believe there are still people willing to read Neal Stephenson novels.
I just re-read Anathem 3 weeks ago.
posted by sideshow at 12:12 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I just re-read Anathem 3 weeks ago.
posted by sideshow at 12:12 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah, this is a boring manifestation of an extremely common form of ableism. It's not specific to Gen Z at all. This specific permutation went viral with Gen Z but other permutations go viral with other generations all the time. It's easy for someone to present some evidence that fits with the conception "disabled people can't do things" and for people to nod along and repeat that. I've seen his happen in real time with parents of autistic kids. One mom says autistic kids can't learn to x and suddenly it sweeps through the whole group and they're all repeating it, despite their kids succeeding at all sorts of things that would fully suggest they can, in fact, do x. When I provide diagnoses, I routinely have to debunk parent's ideas that an autistic kid can't learn to drive, go to college, get married, or do most anything at all, really.
Like... this isn't weird. The amount of times I have heard "but you can't be disabled, you do x." Jesus Christ, I heard tenured faculty say "if x were truly disabled, they wouldn't have graduated middle school." I think as a highly educated group who reads a lot about social issues, it may be difficult for MeFites to realize that your average person knows nothing about disability other than "it's bad." Given any random disabled person's accomplishment paired with their disability, their reaction is likely to be disbelief unless it's specifically framed in an inspiration porn narrative.
This is the most banal, common form of ableism around. It's not unique to Gen Z and there's nothing surprising about it at all. Yes, this is ableism and it's horrible, but it is also deeply unremarkable to me as a disabled person who has accomplished one, maybe two things in their life. Continue to call it out but don't make this about Gen Z and whatever unique factors you think came together to produce this specific phenomenon. Sure there's weird conspiracy-related stuff but that's not the central problem.
posted by brook horse at 12:15 PM on January 6, 2021 [25 favorites]
Like... this isn't weird. The amount of times I have heard "but you can't be disabled, you do x." Jesus Christ, I heard tenured faculty say "if x were truly disabled, they wouldn't have graduated middle school." I think as a highly educated group who reads a lot about social issues, it may be difficult for MeFites to realize that your average person knows nothing about disability other than "it's bad." Given any random disabled person's accomplishment paired with their disability, their reaction is likely to be disbelief unless it's specifically framed in an inspiration porn narrative.
This is the most banal, common form of ableism around. It's not unique to Gen Z and there's nothing surprising about it at all. Yes, this is ableism and it's horrible, but it is also deeply unremarkable to me as a disabled person who has accomplished one, maybe two things in their life. Continue to call it out but don't make this about Gen Z and whatever unique factors you think came together to produce this specific phenomenon. Sure there's weird conspiracy-related stuff but that's not the central problem.
posted by brook horse at 12:15 PM on January 6, 2021 [25 favorites]
It doesn't even need to be a far right thing, just the way that the far right has created a cultural style in the present. I just feel like conspiracy-mindedness is a mark of the moment and is really never separate from racism, anti-Semitism, specifically Nazi ableism, etc. If there weren't a bunch of anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy stories floating around in the world, "Helen Keller is a fraud" wouldn't be zeitgeisty.
In AskMe, there is a thread just over a week old on conspiracy theories widely held on the left. I don't think this can be classified as a left/right thing.
posted by Fukiyama at 12:42 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
In AskMe, there is a thread just over a week old on conspiracy theories widely held on the left. I don't think this can be classified as a left/right thing.
posted by Fukiyama at 12:42 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
My generation had Geocities and we didn’t believe in the lindbergh baby, dammit I never will!
Also this generation seems really influenced on Apple technology. Wait until they see these devices go the way of fax, Xerox and pagers. Anyone remember the Challenger jokes on faxes like 5 minutes after the tragedy? Just because it is TikTok and video doesn’t mean it is new.
posted by geoff. at 12:46 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also this generation seems really influenced on Apple technology. Wait until they see these devices go the way of fax, Xerox and pagers. Anyone remember the Challenger jokes on faxes like 5 minutes after the tragedy? Just because it is TikTok and video doesn’t mean it is new.
posted by geoff. at 12:46 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
For a while now I haven't been able to figure whether flat earthers, moon hoaxers, Elvis is alive running a bar in Tulsa, etc. are in it for the lolz or if there are significant numbers of people who actually believe (I mean you can always find a handful of people who believe just about anything).
And then I get worried that there are things I believe that are fake or vice versa and what if unicorns are real and platypuses are just an elaborate hoax?
And then I go lay down for a while.
1. Non-disabled (young?) people clearly have very, very little idea of how people with various disabilities live.
There certainly is a shocking1 lack of representation on television. Not that I consume much media, but I can't think of any starring TV roles featuring a deaf person since Sue Thomas F.B.Eye and I can't think of any blind starring roles that aren't super heroes. And no deaf/blind characters at all.
And this goes across the board. 10% of Americans have mobility issues and the main characters I can think of who represent them are Gregory House and Walter White, Jr. I doubt 1% of productions would pass a Disability Bechdel Test.
[1] IE: I'm not shocked but it should be shocking.
posted by Mitheral at 12:54 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
And then I get worried that there are things I believe that are fake or vice versa and what if unicorns are real and platypuses are just an elaborate hoax?
And then I go lay down for a while.
1. Non-disabled (young?) people clearly have very, very little idea of how people with various disabilities live.
There certainly is a shocking1 lack of representation on television. Not that I consume much media, but I can't think of any starring TV roles featuring a deaf person since Sue Thomas F.B.Eye and I can't think of any blind starring roles that aren't super heroes. And no deaf/blind characters at all.
And this goes across the board. 10% of Americans have mobility issues and the main characters I can think of who represent them are Gregory House and Walter White, Jr. I doubt 1% of productions would pass a Disability Bechdel Test.
[1] IE: I'm not shocked but it should be shocking.
posted by Mitheral at 12:54 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
As the Twitter thread linked from the post mentions, Haben Girma is alive and writing and Tweeting today, to name only one Deafblind person. If these youngsters were actually curious about what Deafblind people can do, they could find out. Instead they sink into their ableist unexamined assumptions, and in the process deny actual historical evidence, like the fact that we have photos of Helen Keller covering a period of 70 years and examples of her handwriting.
posted by Lexica at 2:19 PM on January 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by Lexica at 2:19 PM on January 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
Mitheral: "Not that I consume much media, but I can't think of any starring TV roles featuring a deaf person since Sue Thomas F.B.Eye"
Hey, so thank you for pondering this because it made me wonder what starring roles Shoshanna Stern and Marlee Matlin have had lately, because although I've seen them each in shows recently (Supernatural, Greys Anatomy, The Magicians) they've been supporting roles or guest appearances. And ooooh they're both in a miniseries I hadn't heard of yet so now I'm gonna check that out: This Close. And, apparently Stern played Helen Keller in the comedy series Another Period, which also has good reviews, so now I'm gonna watch that too.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 2:50 PM on January 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
Hey, so thank you for pondering this because it made me wonder what starring roles Shoshanna Stern and Marlee Matlin have had lately, because although I've seen them each in shows recently (Supernatural, Greys Anatomy, The Magicians) they've been supporting roles or guest appearances. And ooooh they're both in a miniseries I hadn't heard of yet so now I'm gonna check that out: This Close. And, apparently Stern played Helen Keller in the comedy series Another Period, which also has good reviews, so now I'm gonna watch that too.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 2:50 PM on January 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
the writer obviously doesn’t think any of her readers live down the road from the Perkins School from the Blind (like I do) or near similar orgs. In 1887, Perkins director Michael Anagnos sent graduate Anne Sullivan to teach Helen Keller in Alabama. After working with her pupil at the Keller home, Sullivan returned to Perkins with Keller in 1888 and resided there intermittently until 1893. (these fun facts from wikipedia, although like others here, I grew up reading about Keller.) for a short time, I lived in DC and had the privilege of sharing metro cars with Gallaudet University students, who, as far as I could tell, kicked butt. i guess some knowledge is a post code lottery (as they say in the UK), which is to say the extent of media coverage of and inclusive education for and about differently abled persons, depends on where you live (plus the other usual societal indicators and biases)?
posted by mollymillions at 3:23 PM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mollymillions at 3:23 PM on January 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Helen Keller, writing in 1912:
The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development." Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:38 PM on January 6, 2021 [19 favorites]
The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development." Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:38 PM on January 6, 2021 [19 favorites]
Of course Amelia Earhart existed. I read her diary about how she hid from the Nazis in an attic.
(Obscure? Any FARKers in here?)
posted by TreeHugger at 8:39 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
(Obscure? Any FARKers in here?)
posted by TreeHugger at 8:39 PM on January 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
From the Medium piece:
Believing false things about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan is not the same as being a critical thinker. A lot of people here (not just the author) seem sympathetic on some level but it is not a proxy for a mindset that develops a deep understanding of the founding fathers, Columbus, or US foreign policy. Or not anymore than it's a proxy for questioning political correctness, election results, or why the FDA is hiding hydroxychloroquine facts from you. Its the mindset that believes something and then puts work into rationalizing it, instead of researching it.
It's certainly not just Generation Z thing, though it was the author who tried to make it that, while spinning it as a good thing.
The one thing is that at least young people have a chance of growing out of it and being slightly embarrassed about it.
posted by mark k at 9:17 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
Boomers and Generation X love to chirp on the younger ones, quoting the adage, “don’t believe everything you read online,” but we’re the ones who have the most trust issues when it comes to news.Being a savvy consumer of news does not involve disbelieving true things. I think this falls into the type of fallacy where adopt the vocabulary and syntax of critical thinking without actually doing the, well, thinking part. But this is the thesis of the piece--smart people ask questions, these Keller skeptics ask questions, so what more do you want from them?
Believing false things about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan is not the same as being a critical thinker. A lot of people here (not just the author) seem sympathetic on some level but it is not a proxy for a mindset that develops a deep understanding of the founding fathers, Columbus, or US foreign policy. Or not anymore than it's a proxy for questioning political correctness, election results, or why the FDA is hiding hydroxychloroquine facts from you. Its the mindset that believes something and then puts work into rationalizing it, instead of researching it.
It's certainly not just Generation Z thing, though it was the author who tried to make it that, while spinning it as a good thing.
The one thing is that at least young people have a chance of growing out of it and being slightly embarrassed about it.
posted by mark k at 9:17 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
School is the one place where we take all of what we learn as objective truth, and don’t question how reliable the information our teachers tell us is.School?
We know the power of manipulation and lies in the media, and we’re losing faith in the sources everyone once trusted.Except for school, apparently?
posted by RobotHero at 9:19 PM on January 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
>I don't believe there are still people willing to read Neal Stephenson novels.
I got turned on to Stephenson via Helen Keller's GoodReads profile. Have I somehow been duped?
posted by k3ninho at 12:08 AM on January 7, 2021
I got turned on to Stephenson via Helen Keller's GoodReads profile. Have I somehow been duped?
posted by k3ninho at 12:08 AM on January 7, 2021
I think its preferable to put my energy to worrying about terrible things that are real.This story reveals a deep truth: it's easy for some people to believe that people with disabilities like Helen Keller are incapable of being full, contributing members to society. ...As a disabled person, this doesn't surprise me at all, but it does surprise me to see people here dismissing it as an unimportant or trivial concern. "Just a few kids on the internet" misses the entire point.
As the person you're quoting (and boy it was weird to see an argument I made a year ago come back up), I would challenge the framing that this can be easily dismissed as some ignorant kids on the internet, in a way that I think is complimentary to your argument. (Grass grows, birds chirp, teenagers believe bone-curdlingly ignorant things.)
My original argument was that the object of our derision in these kinds of stories tends to reflect things that we are anxious about and aren't dealing with, as a culture. The open ableism of these kids is absolutely part of the story, indeed it's part of the reason it got traction, because it allows able-bodied people to jump over that floor-level bar of believing that Helen Keller (exceptionally) actually could learn to read and communicate, without actually needing to put effort into thinking about how their own behaviour might be influenced by ableism. How many people called these kids "stupid", or "idiots"? How many people are tweeting screenshots of text, inaccessible to a screen reader, without putting in alt text descriptions? How many of these people could confidently say that they've thought about the accessibility of what they do at work?
This is not to have a go at people, but to point out that these kinds of stories are a way to reflect on one's own cultural anxieties and give you an opportunity to try to address them. Maybe this one can be your impetus to, if you're a web developer, to read up on semantic tags instead of using classes for every heading, or make sure that your colour-coded labels can still be distinguished by your colour-blind colleagues, or bring up that step to the health and safety officer.
posted by Merus at 3:31 AM on January 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Mark Twain was a friend of Helen Keller. When people said "she's a fake! How can she know her own mind? She only knows what other people tell her!", he replied: "that's true of all of us."
(There's a great scene in her second autobiography "Midstream," where he invites her to his home in Connecticut and carefully describes the layout of her guest room, including the thermos of bourbon on the nightstand that is there for any guest.)
posted by Melismata at 7:57 AM on January 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
(There's a great scene in her second autobiography "Midstream," where he invites her to his home in Connecticut and carefully describes the layout of her guest room, including the thermos of bourbon on the nightstand that is there for any guest.)
posted by Melismata at 7:57 AM on January 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
I guess I'm fixating on the school comment because it's framing this as whatever sort of "there's just so much information online and we don't know who to trust." But this is historical revisionism, it's not like Helen Keller was unknown until the Internet came around.
And that framing does not at all address why Helen Keller specifically? Ableism? Pissing off the Libs?
It's also, there's tonnes of things that happened that you didn't learn in school. They don't have the time to cover everything. I'm used to the Internet's approach to stuff like that is: "Buckle up chuckleheads, I'm here to tell you about Helen Fucking Keller."
The most sympathetic framing I can think of is, Helen Keller often gets used as a blunt instrument of inspiro-shaming abled people? Like, "Look at what she accomplished in spite of the obstacles in her path. What's your excuse, lazy bum?" Where the last part is not always stated outright but implied.
So I could see if someone isn't prepared to closely examine the way that use of disabled people as inspiration for abled people is itself kind of dehumanizing, they could end up lashing out at Helen Keller instead.
posted by RobotHero at 10:01 AM on January 7, 2021
And that framing does not at all address why Helen Keller specifically? Ableism? Pissing off the Libs?
It's also, there's tonnes of things that happened that you didn't learn in school. They don't have the time to cover everything. I'm used to the Internet's approach to stuff like that is: "Buckle up chuckleheads, I'm here to tell you about Helen Fucking Keller."
The most sympathetic framing I can think of is, Helen Keller often gets used as a blunt instrument of inspiro-shaming abled people? Like, "Look at what she accomplished in spite of the obstacles in her path. What's your excuse, lazy bum?" Where the last part is not always stated outright but implied.
So I could see if someone isn't prepared to closely examine the way that use of disabled people as inspiration for abled people is itself kind of dehumanizing, they could end up lashing out at Helen Keller instead.
posted by RobotHero at 10:01 AM on January 7, 2021
So I'm supposed to believe this "Isabella" exists? That some gen Z author came up with this article? I think in have a right to be skeptical here- its more likely some boomer used messing learning to whip this up.
posted by happyroach at 2:21 PM on January 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by happyroach at 2:21 PM on January 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
have these kids not heard of google, where they can look up things to figure out if something is true or not? ffs
posted by evening at 5:36 PM on January 7, 2021
posted by evening at 5:36 PM on January 7, 2021
It really is amazingly lazy. It's fine to be skeptical of the processed version of a story and look for alternate views and primary sources. They could start by reading Keller's memoirs, available on Gutenberg, or first hand accounts of her such as Mark Twain's. But no, it's all "blind-deaf people couldn't possibly do that stuff" and taking someone's Tiktok as gospel.
posted by tavella at 6:31 PM on January 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by tavella at 6:31 PM on January 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
There certainly is a shocking1 lack of representation on television. Not that I consume much media, but I can't think of any starring TV roles featuring a deaf person since Sue Thomas F.B.Eye and I can't think of any blind starring roles that aren't super heroes. And no deaf/blind characters at all.It’s been a few years, but Switched at Birth had a bunch of Deaf characters, including one of the two lead characters, and a lot of stuff about Deaf politics and culture.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:52 PM on January 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
It really is amazingly lazy. It's fine to be skeptical of the processed version of a story and look for alternate views and primary sources. They could start by reading Keller's memoirs, available on Gutenberg, or first hand accounts of her such as Mark Twain's
The problem is right now they feel smarter than everyone else because they have "figured out" something that we rubes never suspected.
Your suggestion involves work, and the likely outcome is they'll go back to just being no smarter than the rubes. It's lose/lose.
posted by mark k at 11:03 PM on January 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
The problem is right now they feel smarter than everyone else because they have "figured out" something that we rubes never suspected.
Your suggestion involves work, and the likely outcome is they'll go back to just being no smarter than the rubes. It's lose/lose.
posted by mark k at 11:03 PM on January 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
School is the one place where we take all of what we learn as objective truth, and don’t question how reliable the information our teachers tell us is. As I mentioned, Helen Keller is not a part of most school curriculums...
I would suggest that every assertion in that excerpt deserves closer examination. There certainly are students who question what their teachers tell them; indeed, the best teachers encourage this. As for whether Helen Keller is part of most school curricula, that might be true worldwide, but here in the US she seems pretty widely taught. At the very least I would need to see some evidence to support the implication that most students are never taught about her.
But in another sense, most Americans haven’t believed in the real Helen Keller for generations. They know all about the heroic caricature that is presented in most texts. But Helen Keller the suffragette, the birth control advocate, the ACLU founder, the radical socialist? This person does not exist for most Americans. The reasons for this run deep, and are enhanced by ableism and misogyny.
posted by TedW at 2:43 AM on January 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
I would suggest that every assertion in that excerpt deserves closer examination. There certainly are students who question what their teachers tell them; indeed, the best teachers encourage this. As for whether Helen Keller is part of most school curricula, that might be true worldwide, but here in the US she seems pretty widely taught. At the very least I would need to see some evidence to support the implication that most students are never taught about her.
But in another sense, most Americans haven’t believed in the real Helen Keller for generations. They know all about the heroic caricature that is presented in most texts. But Helen Keller the suffragette, the birth control advocate, the ACLU founder, the radical socialist? This person does not exist for most Americans. The reasons for this run deep, and are enhanced by ableism and misogyny.
posted by TedW at 2:43 AM on January 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Surely this is just children being naughty. TikTok is a laboratory for generating attention, if something gains traction then others pile on. None of these kids knew anything about Helen Keller before this started but it turned out to annoy adults so they do more of it and justify themselves with whining self pity.
posted by epo at 3:58 AM on January 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by epo at 3:58 AM on January 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
What these kids need is a good old-fashioned Žižek Maneuvering.
posted by thelonius at 8:40 AM on January 8, 2021
posted by thelonius at 8:40 AM on January 8, 2021
They could start by reading Keller's memoirs, available on Gutenberg, or first hand accounts of her such as Mark Twain's.
And the file FBI had on her.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:47 AM on January 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
And the file FBI had on her.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:47 AM on January 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
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