Toss a Coin at the Village Idiot and Feel Better Because Its Not You.

I was recently perusing a message board I frequent and found a post ridiculing a autistic man that had been getting a lot of attention on the web due to his Youtube uploads, online comics he had crudely drawn, and sometimes disturbing rants on his myspace page. Basically he is becoming a viral star because of his online antics. People have even gone as far as scouring the web for mentions of him in the blogs of people that know him personally and staking out places he goes in order to photograph him... wow. He has a page devoted to him on the wiki-style Encyclopedia Dramatica where all this information is consolidated and anyone can basically make fun of him or out right accuse him of anything... true or not.

I didn't know that the teasing of people who are different had gone so digital and global and brutal!

I won't mention details on this guy since that would only be adding fuel to the fire. But I can tell you he is not always the most pleasant fellow. He seems to be a bit intolerant towards minorities and gay people. Not a hate spitting, loud mouth mind you, he just strikes me as someone that was raised by closed minded parents and since he is autistic, he doesn't always know how to filter those ideas, or make his own decisions. He will say things like "Ladies" should only kiss "gentlemen" or other such over simplifications that if they came out of the mouth of a kid we might find them cute but since he is a 25 year old man the words come off as super creepy. Also he tends to get arrested for loitering in his attempts to find a girlfriend. So he does have some bad behaivior, but mostly it seems that he is just a big, socialy inept, creepy guy.

What follows is my response in the thread about why I think using a person that acts "creepy" as a form of web entertainment might be showing us something even more disturbing about ourselves.

*snip*
Assuming we take the information on encyclopedia dramatica at face value, the bottom line for me is that the dude seems to have problems... possibly both physiological and psychological. For that reason, I don't know if I want to participate in mocking him publicly.

He IS putting himself out there to be mocked for sure... but if we choose not to take the bait, then other people will be less likely to seek fame from encouraging ridicule of their shortcomings. And to be honest, I am not so sure he "gets" the underlying tone of his "popularity" he is unable to successfully interact socially after all. I wonder if any attention at all satisfies a need in him, even if it is negative and can only add to his issues down the road. Will making him "famous" stop him from acting badly in public and getting arrested in places he goes to look for girls? Nah.

To me his "star status" just seems like a digital equivalent to an old circus side show. Something we as a culture thought we were beyond but in fact we are still starring at the people who are vastly different from what is considered average because it helps us each individually feel more "normal".

As far as him having psychological issues that go beyond being autistic, who is to say how much being autistic screws with your self esteem and general mental health? Aspects of your brain function may be normal or even superior to average but I think that could be a serious detriment to being otherwise balanced because you may have the ability to comprehend just how your autism effects your life and limits what you can accomplish. I think thats gotta mess with ya.

Brain dysfunction has a wide range of effects on people and we are nowhere near being able to understand it fully. I think at some point in the future we will have a better grasp of just how unique and different each persons "mind" is and we look back on the idea of thinking that people are either "normal" or "abnormal" as naive.