Because it was trendy in real life too.
The fucked up thing is ablism being taboo is a fairly recent thing and even then, a lot of people still use the r-word as an insult and mock mental illness.
I love the r-word
I call all people with bad or poorly thought out ideas reactionaries
You got me for a second.
At first I was :owl-pissed: but then I was :owl-wink:
I went through that bullshit. Some of it was straight up hazing.
IMO bullying should be treated the same way in kids as it is in adults. It's physical, mental, and sexual abuse being done to kids by kids, and "bullying" doesn't cover that.
And then in many places online (including Hexbear) you'll see shit like "We need to bring back bullying" getting upvoted
Bullying neurotypicals / those in power is praxis. No I will not explain.
A good chunk of liberals believes in eugenics and are only mad at hitler because he applied it to abled people too, thus "tainting" eugenics.
Isn't the story that the first people sent to death camps, gassed and experimented on by the Nazis were mental patients? Probably no one in Europe or the US would have cared if they stuck to that
they were the first ones tortured like that, but it was political dissidents, meaning communists, socialists, anarchists, and all other, first sent to camps.
Another layer of liberal eugenics is that they're also put off by the nazi's "crude" methods. Liberals prefers to do eugenics by simply neutering the victim or/and making it illegal for them to procreate. That way they can keep the victim around as trophy to show how compassionate they are while ridding the "gene pool" of the lesser.
I think alot of terminally online people, such as Channers for example, are likely autistic themselves and it's a self-hatred thing.
Hating people who aren't "perfect" is an essential part of capitalism. As autistic people had begun to be treated with some degree of kindness in real life, people who felt the need to take their failings out on others targeted them because they felt good knowing they weren't "born wrong." And many of them probably were or are autistic, but they need to be different, "better" than them. It's just bullying.
You kind of see this split in folk tales start around 1600.
You've got the older ones where the ugly poor beggar woman is definitely Aphrodite/Saint Holyperson/A Fae Enchantress in disguise so you better be kind to poor and unfortunate people or you get the lightning's. Usually ones made up either by the lower classes or the feudal class
Then you have the guild capitalist tales, where there's a beautiful diligent kind woman who overcomes many troubles by being extra pretty and working herself to the bone and ends up making her ugly rivals dance on a fire till they die.
That makes so much Sense, I can't believe I never realised that! Now I have to figure out the hedgehog man/Blue Beard split.
I'm pretty sure it's 4chan trends.
4chan originally liked the words "f**got" and r-slur. As time went on, they eventually transitioned out of this and into "cuck" and "autist".
Eventually they will transition out of these and into something else.
Any autism hate that comes out of 4chan or reddit is probably projection.
The other online autism hate spaces, like parenting blogs or 'autism mom' groups, are completely different beasts.
I think some of it is some combination of ironic, self-mocking and/or internalized hatred. I’m not at all saying that’s an excuse.
since they could no longer openly use removed or down syndrome as insults. At least not as openly. That, and autism is pretty high-profile right now. ADD was getting a lot of shit about ten to twenty years ago
I think a lot of it is fear honestly. Like in the back of their heads internet people know they share probably 90% of the same interest and hobbies as a lot of people who are autistic, they just didn't realize it until recently when people began talking more openly about autism. They are using hatred to try and create distance again.
I feel at least a good amount of it came from Channers and their obsession with trolling/harassing/stalking people online (e.g. a certain person who has an entire wiki dedicated to them). It doesn't really matter to those people if any of their targets actually have autism, it just became a catch all term for anyone "different" online that generated "cringe." Then it basically became an insult people would use in arguments used interchangeably with the r-slur.
Edit: to be clear, I don't think autism is "cringe," I'm using the terminology of people who liberally throw around autism as an insult.
I think it’s people projecting their own fears onto others. I was in denial about being on the spectrum for a long time when I was younger.