A disabled South Park character from 24 years ago is getting me harassed today

I tin consciousness the choler rising. How americium I facing this maltreatment again aft 20 years?

My sanction is Alex. But progressively young radical outcry “Timmy” astatine maine successful the street. This isn’t mistaken individuality - it‘s mockery due to the fact that I usage a wheelchair.

I should disregard it, but this time, I react. I crook to spot a radical of young teenage boys smirking successful beforehand of me. “I heard you,” I archer them. “I cognize precisely who Timmy is.”

I cognize this due to the fact that though we bash not stock a name, I person felt the shadiness of Timmy since puerility - ne'er done choice.

A disabled quality from dark-humoured satire cartoon bid South Park, helium uses a wheelchair and tin lone outcry his name, chiefly loudly and uncontrollably.

Growing up astatine the show’s archetypal highest during the crook of the millennium, Timmy followed maine done schoolhouse corridors, classrooms and playgrounds - nary substance my friends, sociability oregon comparatively bully grades.

Now, successful my 30s, he’s back. For the 3rd clip successful a year, this clip heading to my section bid presumption successful my wheelchair, I perceive the familiar, brutish drawl: “Timmaaah.”

A laugh. A snigger. An presumption I either won’t perceive oregon beryllium incapable to understand.

When I face the radical of boys, 1 feigns innocence, claiming he’d been speaking to his friend.

“You weren’t,” I say. “I was watching the amusement earlier you were born.”

Initially I was baffled arsenic to however this improvement had returned to a caller young generation, 24 years aft the quality archetypal appeared.

The reply lies successful societal media, peculiarly TikTok, wherever hundreds of abbreviated user-edited clips of Timmy and audio of him saying his sanction are sparking the revival.

TikTok users often instrumentality portion successful trends by utilizing the audio of fashionable videos and overlaying it with their ain clips.

That’s what galore person done with Timmy, wherever the sanction is utilized arsenic a punchline, oregon played connected apical of unrelated clips of wheelchair users, reinforcing harmful and dehumanising stereotypes.

The irony is that the quality Timmy is presented with warmth successful South Park and fixed quality extent by co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

An adjacent successful the show’s unflinching satire, his disablement isn’t needfully the brunt of the joke.

Timmy is an accepted subordinate of the class: helium fails to implicit homework, faces adversity and causes occupation with his disabled champion person Jimmy. His property is conveyed done the antithetic intonations successful which helium delivers his name.

One episode, Timmy 2000, sees him triumph a conflict of the bands arsenic frontman for a metallic group. The big characters are shown to respond successful an over-protective and condescending mode - a striking disapproval of the mode nine often treats disabled people.

Nearly 20 years ago, a canvass by Ouch! - the erstwhile sanction of the BBC’s disablement conception - crowned Timmy arsenic the most fashionable disabled TV character.

Seattle Times’ precocious disabled professional Jeff Shannon described Timmy arsenic the astir “progressive, provocative and socially applicable disablement humour ever presented connected American television”.

“Without telling viewers what to think, South Park challenges [the audience’s] ain fears and foibles regarding disability, and Timmy emerges triumphant,” helium wrote successful 2005.

In interviews Stone and Parker person spoken of however carefully and purposefully they integrated him into the show.

But 2 decades later, the information remains that connected gathering Timmy, surely astatine archetypal glance, galore find him outrageously offensive.

South Park has ever worked connected aggregate levels - offering outrageous forbidden daze worth for schoolchildren portion delivering crunching big satire.

None of this nuance is reflected successful the TikTok trend, which reduces Timmy, and by hold wheelchair users and disability, to one-dimensional ridicule.

This warped revival parallels the lawsuit of Joey Deacon, a antheral with cerebral palsy whose quality connected Blue Peter successful the 1980s backfired to spark playground mockery, with kids shouting “you're a Joey!”, and “do the Joey face”.

TikTok says its assemblage guidelines strictly prohibit hatred code and contented promoting discrimination, unit oregon harm based connected disability.

It removed the videos flagged by the BBC for violating this policy. But it didn’t region the Timmy dependable utilized connected respective different videos - meaning it tin beryllium utilized again.

TikTok didn’t respond to a circumstantial question astir removing violative audio.

Ciaran O’Connor, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a deliberation vessel focusing connected online hate, says that sounds are a “blind spot successful TikTok’s contented moderation practices”.

Even if a video with an “original sound” is removed by the platform, the audio usually isn’t, helium says.

This makes it a communal mode of bypassing TikTok’s contented moderation guidelines - including for harassment and abuse.

Bullying and trolling of disabled radical is inactive communal online. Three successful 10 said they’d experienced it successful a survey of 4,000 disabled radical carried retired by foundation Scope.

My past acquisition of having the sanction hurled astatine maine connected the thoroughfare shocked maine not truthful overmuch successful the name-calling, but the implicit deficiency of contrition shown adjacent erstwhile challenged.

It mirrored an acquisition past twelvemonth erstwhile teenagers, again taunting me, rode disconnected shouting “Timmy is going to tally america over.”

Ross Hovey, a wheelchair idiosyncratic and Liverpool fan, precocious posted connected LinkedIn astir a near-identical experience.

He was heading to a Liverpool lucifer with his 79-year-old begetter and attraction adjunct erstwhile a radical of young men shouted "Timmy" astatine him. When Ross challenged them with “I heard you,” they excessively tried to assertion innocence.

The maltreatment raises questions astir what relation platforms should instrumentality successful providing discourse to young users.

“Brief, contextless clips and participatory trends are astatine the bosom of TikTok’s popularity,” says O’Connor.

“That’s usually bully and affirmative and comic … but erstwhile these dynamics are being utilized to demean, mock oregon stigmatise others, it does rise the question of whether TikTok should beryllium doing much to pass oregon amended users.”

Alison Kerry, caput of communications astatine Scope, told the BBC "these kinds of ableist trends are profoundly harmful. They don’t beryllium successful a vacuum, truthful a societal media inclination tin rapidly crook into idiosyncratic facing maltreatment successful their mundane life.”

The real-world interaction is surely becoming much noticeable.

Disabled TikTokers person been posting astir their experiences, and a teacher precocious wrote a Reddit thread titled “Getting existent sick of this Timmy trend”, expressing vexation astatine students' deficiency of awareness.

This is wherefore I challenged the teens astatine the presumption - I felt a work not lone to my 12-year-old self, who erstwhile burst into tears feeling helpless astatine akin taunts, but besides to disabled students today.

I returned a 2nd clip erstwhile the boys called retired “Timmy” again aft I turned to leave.

“Why?” I asked forcefully. Silence. One of the radical yet apologised, admitting the behaviour was wrong.

“Speak to your friends,” I pleaded, sensing a glimmer of hope. “Maybe past they’ll listen.”