Jun 1, 2020
Earlier this month, the social media app TikTok was host to the ‘autism challenge’,which encouraged people to display mocking autism behavior, including stimming and seizure-like movements on video, which was then shared with the hashtag autismchallenge. It's obvious that this was a hateful trend, and while TikTok as a platform has since appeared to have deleted the hashtag and condemned the challenge, there are significant numbers of people that are stymied, shocked and in disbelief that this happened.
But haven't we seen this before? Are the people creating these videos and perpetuating the challenge, the ones at fault? The ones to blame?
In this episode, Leo Jones discusses the origins of these disparaging and bigoted trends, the continued impact of them, and how to make it stop.