Sickfluencers, the Covid-Conscious Lesbian Bar and the Algorithmic Ableism Trap

View the full episode transcript.

When viral stories like the Last Ditch bar masking controversy and the “sickfluencer” debate whipped the internet into a frenzy, disabled people found themselves in the crosshairs. Researcher and creator Jess Rauchberg saw a common driver behind the vitriol: algorithmic ableism. The term describes how social media platforms and their algorithms suppress disabled creators while amplifying ridicule of them. Jess has seen it first hand as a disabled content creator, and has explored it in a research paper and an upcoming book.

Morgan talks with Jess about the history of disabled people in public life, how some people with disabilities get turned into “lolcows,” how algorithms push ableist rage, and why social media platforms are the ones who come out on top.

• Jess Rauchberg, creator culture expert and lecturer at the University of Leeds

• Greenfield lesbian bar Last Ditch faces mask-rule backlash — Annalisa Quinn, The Boston Globe
• The Insidious World of Lolcows — Emily Topping, Current Affairs
• An Honest Review of the WorldofTShirts Experience  — Steven Asarch, Passionfruit
• Illegal to be ’ugly’? The history behind one of America‘s cruelest laws — National Geographic
• Articulating algorithmic ableism: the suppression and surveillance of disabled TikTok creators — Jess Rauchberg, Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 34, Issue 8
• A Long-Ignored Syndrome Is Drawing Unprecedented Attention — Laurie Tarkan, Medscape
• TikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor  — Sam Biddle, Paulo Victor Ribeiro, Tatiana Dias, The Intercept
• No One Should Be Shamed for Using a Mobility Aid — Nicole Clark, TIME

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This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Morgan Sung: Hi, Tabby Cats. Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture, or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed.org/podcast/Close All Tabs, to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show. 

Morgan Sung: Hey, just a note. This episode contains mentions of substance abuse and self-harm, so listen with care. 

Morgan Sung: Last month, Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue announced that it was closing its doors and seeking new ownership.  

[Clip from TikTok user @brettcooper] 

Brett Cooper: Breaking news, I know that this is going to be just such a shock to everyone, but the COVID conscious lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts has officially announced that they are closing. 

[Clip from TikTok user @rudeboybrody] 

RudeBoyBrody: Have you heard of the COVID conscious lesbian bar on the verge of civil-war after going mask optional?

[Clip from TikTok user @holdensmith962]

HoldenSmith962:  Oh my god you’d have thought they were burning people at the stake at that establishment.  

Morgan Sung: Last Ditch, better known as the COVID conscious lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts, was at the center of a super viral Boston Globe article in September. The bar had opened last year as a safe space for immunocompromised and COVID conscious queer people and required all patrons to wear a KN95 mask or better. But Last Ditch struggled to stay afloat. Between the slowing foot traffic and visitors not spending enough money at the bar, Last Ditch just couldn’t turn a profit. So, in an effort to attract more patrons, the bar announced that it would lift its masking policy on Saturdays. 

Morgan Sung: And it’s worth noting that this part of western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley, is very progressive and very queer, thanks to the concentration of liberal arts and women’s colleges. The Boston Globe article detailed the community firestorm that followed that announcement. Commenters on Instagram accused the bar of being complicit in a mass disabling event and claimed “people like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.” In response, the bar hosted a mediation session with community members, which seemed to provoke detractors even more. This was ultimately a story about how community infighting and interpersonal drama derailed what was supposed to be an inclusive third space for queer people who practice COVID safety, at a time when lesbian bars in the U.S. are already dying out. The Globe article was packed with juicy details that were primed to go viral, like how one of the bar’s original owners stepped down to go to clown school. The story immediately sparked a ton of discourse within queer and disabled communities. 

[Clip from TikTok user @charlotteswebtattoos] 

CharlottesWebTatoos: I need to sit down with a bunch of gay people and we need to break down this article sentence by sentence. 

[Clip from TikTok user @allegedly_erin]

Allegedly_Erin: And if I, a queer disabled woman, roll up to the COVID conscious lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts sipping my iced coffee 

[Clip of juno_aventurine from Instagram]

Juno_Aventurine: I am not interested in making fun of or looking down on people who are COVID conscious, particularly not at immunocompromised people who want more spaces that are more accessible for them. 

[Clip of overcookingmytoast from Instagram] 

OvercookingMyToast: I lived in Western Massachusetts for many years. I am telling you right now that this situation would only fucking happen in Western Massachusets. 

Morgan Sung: But then, it broke containment. More mainstream outlets picked it up, and commenters on the left and on the right ran with it. And as more people outside the community got ahold of it, with social media algorithms fueling the spread, the context got lost. The discourse became less about the story itself and more about ridiculing disabled and COVID-conscious people. 

Jess Rauchberg: It becomes a way to stoke and instigate people’s rage or big emotions or reactions at the expense of, like, what was this very niche community conversation. 

Morgan Sung: This is Dr. Jess Rauschberg. She’s a lecturer at the University of Leeds and she studies the politics of the creator economy. And as Jess pointed out, the COVID conscious lesbian bar debacle happened amid a bigger cultural pylon of disabled people. 

[Clip of redblaquegolden from Instagram] 

redblaquegolden: It’s been like over a week now, and we’re still having this conversation about this bar. Fundamentally, the thing that bothers me the most about this is that right now, the government is currently working on legislation that will make it a thousand times harder for people with disabilities to receive care in their homes. 

Morgan Sung: This story about the drama in a small Western Massachusetts community snowballed out of control, pulling in other queer disabled people who had nothing to do with Last Ditch. Commenters accused creators of faking their disabilities for attention. Social media erupted in debate over young people using mobility aids, like canes. People who still mask in public spaces, whether it’s because they’re immunocompromised or just don’t wanna get sick, where he cried as too woke. Disabled people have long been a favorite target online, and social media has only accelerated that. 

Jess Rauchberg: These platforms reward rage. Reward being upset, they reward big feelings or strong opinions, and they reward humiliation. I think of like an old school platform, that could be a gallow or like the place where you would hang somebody as a public spectacle. Okay, we still have that now with these digital platforms. Obviously, like, it doesn’t physically work the same way, but when you are the main character of the internet that everyone is turning on or you’re the digital punching bag, algorithmic ableism really, I think, intensifies that even more. 

Morgan Sung: Algorithmic Ableism. Jess coined the concept in a paper published last year to describe how social media recommendation algorithms discriminate against disabled people and uphold long-standing biases of who deserves to exist in public. She’s also writing a book about how algorithmic ableism shapes the creator economy. Today, we’re diving deep into what algorithmic ableism looks like in practice, how social-media platforms profit from it, and how the old spectacle of the ‘freak show’ has been reborn online. Buckle up. 

Morgan Sung: This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung:, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. 

Morgan Sung: Like always, let’s open a new tab. What is algorithmic ableism? First, let’s talk about what ableism is. 

Jess Rauchberg: So ableism can be defined in many ways. And I think of it as a form of political oppression that is really concentrated on the devaluation of bodily and cognitivie difference. 

Morgan Sung: This includes accessibility barriers, like train stations without lifts, which are inaccessible to wheelchair users, or public events without captions or sign language interpreters, so they exclude people who are deaf or hard of hearing. But underneath all of it are beliefs and biases — prejudice against bodily and cognitive differences — that bleed into every single aspect of society, both on and offline. 

Morgan Sung: For example, when creators post about asking for accommodations at airports, or post fit checks with their mobility aides, they’re accused of attention seeking. Comments like, just running around undiagnosed, or are you acoustic? Have become common responses to neurodivergent users. 

Jess Rauchberg: Those ideas are so intrinsic to everything that we do online, to the ways that we program algorithmic recommendation infrastructures, to ways we believe we should treat each other in a comment section. 

Morgan Sung: Jess started thinking about algorithmic ableism almost 10 years ago, just before she started her PhD. 

Jess Rauchberg: As a grad student, it felt really isolating and lonely sometimes when I wanted to share my experiences or just have someone to relate to about being disabled in graduate school. And I thought one day, I want to see who’s online and who can I connect with because maybe there has to be someone else out there. 

Morgan Sung: Jess started posting under the handle, Disabled PhD. 

Jess Rauchberg: And I saw how, on the one hand, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok and At the time, Twitter could be these really cool hubs for disabled and chronically ill and neurodivergent people to work, to play, to live, and find community when the offline world can be really inaccessible. But at the same time, the way algorithmic recommendation works, the way that we treat each other in platform environments is increasingly at the expense of disabled people existing. 

Morgan Sung: She channeled her own experience as a disabled creator online into her academic research, and now, her upcoming book.

Jess Rauchberg:  We’re in an environment where ableism and to be openly ableist is acceptable and it’s also encouraged by the platforms and that in turn is shaping how we treat each other. So like I often compare this to this idea of like, why do we treat each other like NPCs or non-playable characters from video games? It’s just so easy to dismiss them. It’s really easy to want to make assumptions about who they are because of like how I’ve received the ways they present themselves, that’s also tied to ableism too. 

Morgan Sung: This is apparent in the way the COVID-conscious lesbian bar debate blew up. The discourse around disabilities had already been brewing online, separate from the bar fallout. A few weeks before the Boston Globe article propelled Last Ditch into the national spotlight, across the pond, the Telegraph published an op-ed titled “How Having a Disability Became Cool.” It claims that sickfluencers were turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend. 

Jess Rauchberg: And so sick influencers is kind of this derogatory term. It’s a way to kind of push back or devalue and dismiss influencers and content creators who make chronic illness, like advocacy or awareness content. It’s not new. I think essentially what this article did was basically accused being a chronic illness influencer as just this desire to participate in a trend that these people are faking it. That they’re scamming their audience, and that we are getting duped by these women who just really wanna be oppressed while they line their pockets. 

Morgan Sung: The article highlighted a condition called POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a nervous system disorder that affects blood flow. It causes rapid heart rate, dizziness when standing, extreme fatigue, brain fog, headaches, and fainting. There are medications that help, but treatments also include compression therapy, doing certain exercises to keep blood circulating, and increasing salt and fluid intake. However, the severity of pot symptoms can really vary, and some people manage flare-ups by using mobility aids like walkers and canes. 

Morgan Sung: The op-ed claimed that many so-called sickfluencers had diagnosed themselves with POTS and questioned whether they were also faking comorbidities like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. It insinuated that young women were playing up or even faking their disabilities for attention and clout. Soon enough, it was all over the internet. 

[Clip from TikTok user @desmondfambrini] 

Desmondfambrini: Why does everybody have a cane and a walker now? It’s driving me crazy. 

[Clip from TikTok user @fleccastalks] 

Fleccastalks: These are all people who are disabled for fun.  

[Clip from TikTok user @horriblemeanwoman] 

HeatherShaw: And how come every time I see somebody hop on TikTok and say that they can’t work because they have POTS and extreme migraines and fatigue and they can’t understand time so they just have to stay in their room in their pajamas and maybe their short hair and septum rings uh they can’t work. It’s always just a white lady.

Morgan Sung: That last clip was from comedian Heather Shaw, who is also white. She since deleted the video. Here’s Jess again. 

Jess Rauchberg: This is very fascinating how this all kind of happened within like a three to four week period. You have like this, why are all white women just like trying to cosplay as marginalized and saying they’re disabled or like they’re queer and why is it always a trope? So you have that discourse happening on TikTok. You have the Last Ditch bar discourse happening all over the internet. And then you have the Telegraph published this very controversial op-ed decrying sickfluencers.

Morgan Sung: In all of its speculation over the uptick in POTS cases among young women, the Telegraph op-ed neglected to mention that POTS has been directly linked to viral infections, like the flu, Epstein-Barr, and the big one: COVID. An estimated 40% of people with report having COVID months before their POTS symptoms started. A University of Toledo study analyzed medical records of more than 65 million Americans and found a dramatic surge in POTS cases between March 2020 and June 2025, a more than five times increase since the pandemic started. Other recent medical research has linked POT symptoms to autoimmune signals after infection. 

Jess Rauchberg: We kind of have glossed over the devastation of COVID and like how people are experiencing long COVID where POTS is a comorbidity for long COVID. So a lot of people have developed these chronic conditions from a mass disabling event. And I think we really forget that. 

Morgan Sung: POTS also overlaps with multiple chronic illnesses and disabling conditions. Connective tissue disorders, for example, can impact circulation. As a nervous system condition, POTS is also linked to chronic pain and gastrointestinal issues. It also often presents with autoimmune conditions like lupus, celiac disease, and mast cell activation syndrome. So there’s a lot of overlap between people who have POT and other chronic illnesses, people who have mobility aids, and people who still wear masks to protect their immune systems. The Boston Globe story about Last Ditch just added fuel to the fire. It was like a perfect storm. And it created this online environment where any young person who used a mobility aid or wore a mask in public or even talked about having a disability was both accused of faking it and also ridiculed for having it. 

Jess Rauchberg: It’s not just like a really horrific example of algorithmic ableism, but the ways algorithmic ableism is tied to a larger rage bait economy and how the internet or like platform cultures are now not just a forum where we can all share our ideas and show up and maybe we disagree and maybe there are arguments, but at the end of the day, we’re all participating fully. This is like being in a gladiators arena where you get to watch somebody else’s humiliation public punishment and you seek pleasure from that. 

Morgan Sung: And that spectacle becomes more enticing when stories like Last Ditch go through something called context collapse. 

Jess Rauchberg: Knowing a little bit personally about the cultural context this comes from, this is like a really niche community disagreement that became central to a national news story, right? It’s covered in the Boston Globe, but then it travels online. And so now you’re bringing in all these other people who have no experience with like Western Massachusetts lesbian culture or like COVID conscious culture. And now it’s like, everyone gets a chance to dunk on these people. 

Morgan Sung: And social platforms themselves profit off this rage because it drives engagement. 

Jess Rauchberg: And then when these perfect storm stories happen, platform economies reward the rage because TikTok, Instagram, X, they’re not really making money off of existing as a platform. They kind of exist as the space that hosts user-generated content. And the more traffic, the more attention they can bring to the platform by hosting a viral discourse or being the spot where the top creators and influencers are working. That’s not just lucrative to the platform, it’s also lucrative to the advertisers. 

Morgan Sung: It’s a vicious cycle. The people doing the mocking and the people being mocked are feeding the same content machine. Platforms profit off of all of it. All of this intersects with this other online phenomenon that Jess has researched extensively, lolcows. LOL as in L-O-L like laughing out loud and cow as in something to be milked. A  lolcow is someone who goes viral for their eccentric behavior and is seen as a laughingstock. Audiences mock them to provoke more reactions. The idea is that their discomfort is milked for entertainment. Often, the people the internet labels as lolcows are disabled, many with an intellectual or developmental disability. It’s about who’s easiest to target. They go viral for looking different and behaving in a way that the audience sees as cringe, depraved, or otherwise socially unacceptable. People dunk on them, and then they keep going viral because their reactions are seen as more entertainment. 

[Clip of Josh Block from World of Tshirts on YouTube] 

Josh Block: Get that camera out of my face! 

Morgan Sung: Although algorithmic ableism is a relatively new phenomenon, Jess says the concept of lolcows isn’t. Audiences have turned people into spectacle for entertainment throughout human history. Writings about the so-called village fool date back thousands of years. That history and the modern lolcow phenomenon is a whole new tab, which we’ll open right after this quick break. 

Morgan Sung: But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you. To become a member and support the show, go to donate.kqd.org/podcasts. Okay, after the break, the long history of disability as entertainment and how the internet ran with it. Stick around. 

Morgan Sung: We’re back! Let’s open a new tab, the History of Lolcow-ification. Although algorithmic ableism and the word lolcow itself are consequences of the digital age, none of this is that new. It’s inherited from centuries of hiding disabled people away. When disabled people were allowed to exist in public, they were often exploited, frequently put on display for a laughing crowd. 

Jess Rauchberg: Like Medieval Europe and Renaissance Europe had fools, so nobles would keep these people who were oftentimes we would probably understand them now to be autistic or developmentally disabled. And they were kind of kept as pets during a feast or some kind of big event. You would bring out the fool and you would just like laugh at them and you would interact with them. And it was entertaining. 

Morgan Sung: Fast forward to Europe’s so-called Age of Enlightenment, from the late 1600s to the early 1800s, when cities began locking people away for lunacy. In other words, incarcerating people who were dealing with mental illness or disability. In addition to subjecting patients to horrific living conditions and barbaric treatments, some of these asylums also put them on display. 

Jess Rauchberg: London’s very infamous Bethlehem Asylum had viewing days. So on Sundays after church, you could go to Bethlehems, give a few pence and go watch the patients on display in like these caged rooms. 

Morgan Sung: For centuries, people with physical disabilities like dwarfism had been put on display at provincial fairs, often with little say in it. By the mid-1800s, P.T. Barnum had turned that display into a commercial spectacle with his freak shows. He came up with wild backstories for performers, like claiming that a black man with microcephaly was the missing link in human evolution. His real name was William Henry Johnson, but audiences only knew him as Zip the Pinhead. Prince Randian, a Guyanese American man born without arms or legs, drew massive crowds as the Human Caterpillar. As part of his performance, he would roll and light a cigarette using only his mouth. Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins from Thailand who were brought to the U.S. As teenagers, became freak show celebrities as the Siamese Twins. At the same time, in everyday life, disabled people were often kept out of sight. 

Jess Rauchberg: So you have people whose labor and public appearance is hidden in other aspects of life because this is during the time of ugly laws but you’re also a form of entertainment. 

Morgan Sung: Ugly laws were first implemented in San Francisco, just after the Civil War. Also known as unsightly beggar ordinances, they targeted people with visible disabilities or disfigurements, banning them from public spaces. Violators could be jailed or institutionalized. This wasn’t just about cracking down on panhandling. It was about enforcing social norms by pretending that disabled people just didn’t exist. The last ugly laws were repealed in 1974, but they were part of a much larger pattern of excluding disabled people from daily life. 

Morgan Sung: With these social norms in place, and in some cases, legally enforced, freak shows were one of the few ways that disabled people could make a living. Some even achieved financial stability and were able to retire comfortably, at the cost of being mocked and ogled at every day for years. 

Morgan Sung: Social media platforms have had their own version of ugly laws. In 2019, the German digital rights news outlet NetzPolitik published a bombshell investigation revealing that TikTok had told its moderators to suppress content from people with disabilities, facial disfigurement, or facial problems. TikTok said that such users were, quote, susceptible to bullying or harassment based on their physical or mental condition. 

Morgan Sung: TikTok called the guidelines a blunt and temporary policy and said that they have since changed their anti-bullying methods. But later reporting from other outlets revealed that TikTok also didn’t want to scare away new users by allowing them to see disabled people on their For You page. 

Morgan Sung: Did it actually stop the harassment? Well, no. It’s a legacy of ableism adapted to a new medium. Platforms have a pattern of hiding disabled creators. Until the creators are being ridiculed. Then the platforms amplify their content. It echoes the same dynamic that existed in the era of freak shows. 

Jess Rauchberg: So you would go to fairs or carnivals and you could go into the House of the Freaks. And your difference, whether it’s cognitive or bodily or a combination of both, is something to be on display. And that was a form of amusement for the viewer. So obviously we don’t have freak shows quite like that anymore, but I would argue that our entertainment media industries are really bent on this idea of freakery. 

Morgan Sung: That brings us to the late 2000s, when the internet gave this old idea a new name. The Lolcow. 

Jess Rauchberg: Lolcow culture was something that was kind of sequestered to the bowels of the web, the 4chans, the Something Awfuls, the Kiwi Farms. And these were people who on messaging boards would antagonize these people who it was funny to see them react. We could say that the instigation of these early locales like Chris Chan or Chris Weston was an early form of reach bait. 

Morgan Sung: Chris Chan is often called the original lolcow. She’s an autistic trans woman who first went viral in 2007 with her comic series about Sonichu, an anime-inspired character that blended Pikachu with Sonic the Hedgehog. The comic was amateur, and 4chan users mocked her relentlessly for it, but when she responded to the trolls, every reaction gave them more to work with. She’s been involved in a string of controversy since then, but has also been a target of ridicule and harassment. 

Jess Rauchberg: But now, lolcow culture is not just on these messaging boards that have a bad rap. Some lolcows have been able to work and profit and make some kind of living off of their exploitation and humiliation. And not exclusively, but overwhelmingly, a lot of these little cows are developmentally disabled or autistic or neurodivergent and have high support needs or like appear to be from what we see online. But a lot of  these lolcows aren’t just on social media platforms, they live stream. And so you can watch like every day, hours of footage of the lolcow. And this has kind of evolved into like a new form of lolcow that we might call a career cow. 

Morgan Sung: A career cow is someone who makes money off of being a lolcow. Unlike Chris Chan, they’re not some random person that the internet picks up and mocks. This is specifically someone who make content and makes a living out of it. One of the most well-known career cows is Joshua Block, a content creator also known as World of TShirts. He originally went viral for giving drunk tours of New York City on camera and became something of a niche local celebrity. 

[Clip of Josh Block from TikTok user @alexholem] 

Streamer 1: Just chilling here, getting drunk with the captain. What words you got to say to them? 

Josh Block: We’re getting drunk tonight. Yes, sir! 

Morgan Sung: Josh is autistic, and viewers quickly realized that he had a serious substance abuse problem. Other streamers would take him out, get him wasted, and prompt him to do or say things for the camera. He became known for saying this meme phrase at McDonald’s. 

[Clip of Josh Block from TikTok user @crashingbad] 

Streamer 2: So then you could be like, put the fries in the bag. 

Josh Block: Put the fries in the bag! 

Morgan Sung: But the phrase became a taunt. When bystanders saw him live streaming in real life, they’d run up to him and yell. 

[Clip of Josh Block from TikTok] 

Streamer 3: Put the fries in the bag!

Josh Block: How did you find me again?! 

Morgan Sung: Which would really upset him, and his meltdowns became fodder for streamers to entertain viewers. Videos titled Josh Block Crash Out rarely went viral on TikTok. 

Jess Rauchberg: And so he would engage, when he would be instigated by his live stream comments, what’s called the text-to-speech feature. So I pay $10 and I say something or rage bait Josh Block and he would bite himself or punch himself or start screaming. 

[Clip of Josh Block from TikTok user @lolcownews5] 

Text to speech: Put the fries in the bag, you unemployed- 

Josh Block: I’m not! Ah, ah. No, no, no! 

Streamer 4: Oh god, you just threw it on the screen, Josh! 

[Tip beep]

Jess Rauchberg: And people would watch us for hours and days and days on end and they would follow his antics and his movements closely. 

Morgan Sung: For years, Josh would livestream his binge drinking. His chat sent him cash tips to buy himself more drinks or would provoke him into an on-camera meltdown. Other streamers made content out of partying with him while viewers showed up in person to give him more alcohol. His drinking often spiraled out of control, which became even more content. 

Morgan Sung: Following an arrest in California, Josh went to attend a court ordered rehab program earlier this year. He announced that he has to abstain from drinking for one year to avoid further charges. But he did resume streaming and said that he plans to resume drinking when he’s legally cleared. 

[Clip of Josh Block from TikTok] 

Josh Block: When all that is over, I’ll just do it in moderation. 

Streamer 5: In moderation, that’s his plan. 

Streamer 6: Of course. 

Streamer 5: To drink in moderation. 

Jess Rauchberg: When Josh said he plans to drink again, viewers celebrated. With comments like, we’re so back, and knew the sobriety thing was too good to be true. Jess says this is part of a broader pattern. Earlier this year, she published a paper on platform authoritarianism, the idea that digital spaces are fueled by suppressive, surveillance-based practices. Platform authoritarianism is the use of algorithms and censorship to maintain power. 

Jess Rauchberg: And I kind of looked at this from the lens of disability in class. So if ableism in the creator economy, algorithmic ableism, devalues or dismisses the contributions of disabled creators, influencers, street builders, platform workers, is there another side of this? And so this idea of platform authoritarianism is trying to wrestle with what I call the fictions of algorithmic ablism in a creator economy that there’s no nuanced conversation about. Disability and internet culture, but rather there’s a single narrative that kind of blurs the boundaries of any potential for nuance. And disability can be useful in authoritarian culture when it’s something that can be extracted from and exploited. 

Morgan Sung: She says it’s a familiar role but in a new world. 

Jess Rauchberg: This is drawing on centuries of a practice that we’ve had in Western culture for a really long time, but platforms make it so much more palpable because it’s not just the village idiot that’s sequestered to this one space and we all laugh at them. Like, you’re the internet’s village idiot. And that’s very, very scary. 

Morgan Sung: So to recap, disabled creators are often shadow banned and suppressed, as shown by TikTok’s own moderation roles. When they do break through, it’s often to be ridiculed and mocked, like the sickfluencer debate. And some disabled creators have become career cows, turned into a modern digital freak show where they’re repeatedly exploited for entertainment. All of this drives engagement, which social media platforms profit off of. 

Morgan Sung: Is there any way to stop fueling it? That is a new tap, how to fight algorithmic ableism. 

Morgan Sung: A common response to the stigma around disability is to flip the script, relabeling it as a strength. But that approach comes with its own issues. For example, Paris Hilton has been very public about her ADHD diagnosis and has been trying to rebrand neurodivergence. In 2024, she released this song called ADHD. 

[Clip of Paris Hilton’s song “ADHD” from YouTube] 

Paris Hilton: Look at me, I’m the best I can be. I was so down, thought I’d never be free. My super power was right inside, see… It was ADHD.

Jess Rauchberg: She’s been raising money to support neurodivergent children with a merch line emblazoned with this motto, ADHD is my superpower. And last month, she hosted the Unstoppable Creator Summit, a day-long gathering of celebrities and creators who have ADHD and autism. It was packed with programming about portraying neurodivergence as a strength to be proud of. 

Jess Rauchberg: There were, like, a NeuroSpicy drinks bar, or this wall, content wall, where it’s like, here’s what my mind feels like. And it’s the whimsy trend, where all the jewels are the little doodads kind of clustered together. It’s cute and it’s fun, but it also is very dismissive of some of the real experiences of ADHD. And I think for me, my critique is disability isn’t a brand. And also, I think it’s really dangerous to brand it as a superpower because this really reads as a media event. It’s not really an awareness event. I think there’s a difference between empowerment and how disability can also be disabling. And it can impact your ability to work, to participate in life. And I don’t think that’s solved by having like a creator event. I’ve got a chance to learn from a lot of other disabled creators who are not upset because they weren’t invited, but because they want something better. There’s a better way to talk about disability. 

Morgan Sung: Jess says that rebranding disability as a superpower is not helpful, but neither is framing disability as something to be fixed or overcome. Both of these approaches are dismissive of real experiences of disability. It’s important to recognize how societal barriers impact those experiences. Another way to talk about disability, according to Jess, is to really deconstruct who is seen as disabled. Another critique of Paris Hilton’s unstoppable summit was that the guest list was overwhelmingly white women. Disabilities are just as prevalent in non-white populations, but racial bias affects who gets support. Studies show that healthcare professionals prefer to treat disabled white people over disabled people of color. Disabled people of color are less likely to receive workplace accommodations than their white counterparts. Black, Latino, and non-English speaking children are less likely to be diagnosed with autism and less likely receive support in school. 

Jess Rauchberg: And I think that’s also reflected in diagnostic criteria. So like for ADHD or autism, a lot of the criteria for how people or how practitioners diagnose patients is based off of research that was largely conducted with white men, sometimes white women. So for black, brown, and indigenous neurodivergent or disabled people, it’s so much harder to be believed because so many people don’t understand disability or it’s been hidden for us for so long. We don’t think of it as part of larger political progression or larger liberation. But this has always been part of social justice movements. 

Morgan Sung: Jess points out that disability intersects with many other marginalized identities. The sickfluencer debate, for example, incited a fresh wave of harassment toward young people who are both queer and disabled. 

Jess Rauchberg: During a time when platforms are removing protections that prevent homophobic and transphobic hate speech, we also see like repeals of laws that maybe protect LGBTQ Americans. This kind of converges together or it’s like the ultimate dunking session where it’s, like, wow, this person has so many identities and they just want to be so oppressed. Like, you’re so different, I don’t understand you, and so you deserve to be humiliated. And now, you know, disabled creators are getting doxxed simply for wanting to exist a little bit differently. 

Morgan Sung: But Jess says it’s possible to opt out of the public pile-ons and digital freak shows. Just don’t take the bait. 

Jess Rauchberg: I think sometimes it’s a matter of logging off. Something that’s helped me at least is like, hmm, I’m having this kind of reaction to this content. Maybe I need to log off or I need to talk about it with somebody. So figuring out where to have these conversations is really important. Platforms want us to keep using TikTok or Instagram or X if you’re still on there or Blue Sky. And they encourage us to Keep talking. But sometimes talking in those spaces is not helpful because… The rage bait is only going to be rewarded. 

Morgan Sung: Some of the details of the COVID conscious lesbian bar story were primed to be clipped and spread. The clown school part? Bound to go viral. But instead of remaining a one-off story about one specific bar in a small town, it snowballed into open season on any disabled person existing online. Jess said it didn’t have to be like this. 

Jess Rauchberg: Again, I’ve been ablelist, I’ve upheld some of these beliefs. I’ve been wrong. And when I have stepped away from the internet, believe it or not, it’s been helpful. Logging off and spending some time to think it through, not having a quick response has been helpful to not participate in algorithmic ableism, even when it feels really tempting to like, oh, I just want to dunk on this person. But at the end of the day, who wins? The platform companies win. 

Morgan Sung: Refusing to engage with ableist content won’t address the whole system, but it does avoid giving platforms the engagement they crave. So you heard Jess, you can always log off. With that, let’s close all these tabs.

Morgan Sung: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Cayla Mihalovich and Francesca Fenzi, and edited by Chris Agusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. 

Morgan Sung: The Close All tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon, additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts, and Ethan Toven Lindsay is our editor in chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. 

Morgan Sung: This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PPT keycaps. This episode includes clips originally posted by these content creators: brettcooper, rudeboybrody, holdensmith962, charlotteswebtattoos, sackettc, allegedly_erin, juno_aventurine, overcookingmytoast, redblaquegolden, Heather Shaw, fleccastalks, and World of TShirts. Thanks for listening.