Which “haha person is stupid” kinds of things are making fun of people who are mentally handicapped? And which ones are just making fun of people for being plain old stupid? Or is it ablesist to say that a person behaving stupidly is stupid?
Kinda, yeah. And this is somewhere some hard conversations have to happen in leftist anti-ableist spaces to figure out the way forward. Memes play on stereotypes and cultural shorthand to communicate with very few words, and the culture is ableist so our memes sometimes will be too. There’s a split in definitions - stupid can be a perjorative for disabled people, or it can be a remark on willful ignorance and self-sabotaging malice. And using SAT words to more accurately describe their behavior leads to the wall 'o text leftist ‘memes’ that nobody wants to read. But calling them stupid is still ableist.
In some cases you can get around this by playing on anti-intellectual stereotypes but then you’re usually just using classist stereotypes… am I just forgetting some or is every insult that doesn’t make you sound like an egghead punching down on someone?
There comes a point where you can drive yourself crazy trying to be perfectly ethical with your speech. Personally, I say choose your battles and this isn’t one of em.
Kinda, yeah. And this is somewhere some hard conversations have to happen in leftist anti-ableist spaces to figure out the way forward. Memes play on stereotypes and cultural shorthand to communicate with very few words, and the culture is ableist so our memes sometimes will be too. There’s a split in definitions - stupid can be a perjorative for disabled people, or it can be a remark on willful ignorance and self-sabotaging malice. And using SAT words to more accurately describe their behavior leads to the wall 'o text leftist ‘memes’ that nobody wants to read. But calling them stupid is still ableist.
In some cases you can get around this by playing on anti-intellectual stereotypes but then you’re usually just using classist stereotypes… am I just forgetting some or is every insult that doesn’t make you sound like an egghead punching down on someone?
IDK. Everything is fucked.
There comes a point where you can drive yourself crazy trying to be perfectly ethical with your speech. Personally, I say choose your battles and this isn’t one of em.