A fellow tourettic recently linked me to a video of a man pretending to have Tourette Syndrome, by shouting a bunch of ridiculous obscenities in a bid to be ‘humorous’. Now, there are tons of these cropping up all the time, but someone’s comment on this particular video incensed me; they wrote: ‘LOL tourettes is such a funny disease’.
This upset me on so many levels. Apart from the obvious, I was shocked that someone could actually recognise it as a ‘disease’ and yet still call it ‘funny’. Is this what we’re teaching children these days? To laugh at illness? When you see someone dying of cancer, is that now the subject of comedy and ridicule? When someone loses their legs in a terrible accident, is it somehow alright to point and laugh?
Against my better instincts, I felt moved to reply – but of course if I could change this person’s mind, they probably wouldn’t be writing such hateful comments in the first place. In fact, they went so far as to say that they highly doubted I have Tourette’s myself and am in fact jobless and sponging off the government. It was…interesting.
What shocked me further was that I looked at this person’s profile and he’s 30!
There are 2 points to this anecdote: 1) I took the time to flag the video as inappropriate for hateful / abusive content – I strongly urge you all to do the same, if you ever come across videos like this on ANY subject, and 2) I finally responded to him by pointing him in the direction of our book, suggesting he might learn something from it.
I just want to remind people that THIS is why Conditional Publications was founded. It’s not about selling books – I promise you we’re all making next to nothing off Check Mates. Much of the profits are going to OCD charities, and much of the money I’ve taken from it is being sunk into the next book, covering schizo-affective disorder.
Check Mates was written to offer comfort to those suffering in silence, to give a voice to a handful who were ready to come out and speak about what OCD is really like…and to get the truth out there, in a bid to start stamping out hateful prejudice against such conditions. Please, please, please tell everyone you can about the book.
And if you’d like to flag that video as inappropriate, you can find it here.
Andre Norris says:
Yes I co-sign we should get videos like that banned.It’s not right for people with Brain Disorders or any kind of disorder to but mocked, ridiculed, made fun of. Did you know that there was a controversy a few years back where A radio host rush limbaugh made fun of and accused Actor and Parkinson’s Suffer Micheal J.Fox of acting or exaggerating his symptoms.Autism is often made fun of and that really stings cause I have family members who suffer from it. Epilepsy is made fun of in videos on YouTube again it’ runs in my family.Of course ADHD is certainly made fun of. I even have family members who give me and another family member of mine who has it a hard time about it. Like they don’t don’t believe it’s real.