Given my experience with Clickhole in the past I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s friendly ribbing from a friend, not right wing trolling from an enemy… I think? Like it didn’t seem vicious or anything like that.
Edit: TheOnion usually makes it clear they aren’t friends of regressives in bits like this, whereas Clickhole seems remarkably afraid of stepping on toes. Hmm… curious.
I'm not making a broad judgment on either The Onion or Clickhole - I've enjoyed both for a long time. And I don't care about the intention of the article. I don't doubt that the author didn't have the worst intentions.
Nevertheless, it's doing the thing that I described in my comment above.
Uh, no, they always had that streak. He sold it because he wanted to devote himself to making a Drudge-report style right wing news site for Christians. Ford did have a better sense of humor than the people who bought it, but he was just as mean and bigoted.
I'm surprised to be asked. It's not, like, a secret that many people with physiological differences express frustration with being patronized and being asked overly personal questions about their condition. The responses in the article very obviously mock an individual trying to educate on how to talk to people with disabilities while respecting their dignity, autonomy, and privacy of the sort that we'd afford to any person without disability or notable physiological difference.
There's a lot of satire on Clickhole that comes from left-leaning, even leftist, viewpoints.
I think this is a case of "leftist satire or right-wing trolling?" I'm willing to lean towards the former because of other Clickhole pieces I've read, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter, either.
You know, you can actually apply some level of critical thinking to the article and try to determine it yourself.
Firstly, what sort of article is it parodying? It would be something like "12 things you should never say to someone with [disability]". Is there an issue with these sorts of articles, such that they need to be made fun of? Maybe. I don't read them.
Take a look at the specific things it tells people not to say.
>“You’re so brave to go on like this. If my brain got uploaded into a vending machine, I’d beg for someone to kill me.”
These parallel insensitive things that might be said to a disabled person in real life.
And what is the purported explanation for why you shouldn't say them?
>Believe it or not, getting your consciousness trapped inside a vending machine isn’t a death sentence. Your friend might be totally adjusted and content with living life as an immobile food dispenser. Save your pity for someone who needs it.
The joke here is that being a vending machine is much worse than the person writing the article is making it out to be, and they probably do need your pity.
So yeah it is pretty clearly making light of efforts to raise awareness about how to better treat disabled people. Does this make it 'right wing'? Maybe? It doesn't seem as actively malicious (or frankly, as unfunny) as I would expect something made by a right-winger for the explicit purpose of mocking disabled people.
I think the real answer is that there was not a lot of thought put into the political ramifications of this and the writer simply parodied something they thought they could make a good bit out of. Not exactly the best way to use satire imo.
>These parallel insensitive things that might be said to a disabled person in real life.
Am disabled, can confirm. The amount of people who think "If I had to live that way, I'd kill myself" is a completely neutral and non-offensive thing to say to a disabled person is incredible.
And yeah, the author of this piece seems to be confused on the first rule of satire: you have to make it clear that you disagree with the thing that you're satirizing.
(goes back to lurking)
I don't know what meaningful difference is going on between satire and trolling but it's certainly not impossible, or even rare, of left-leaning/leftists being shitty in ways that contradict their stated views and values. Punching down is easy, culturally encouraged, and mostly consequence-free. I know from the experience of doing it myself.
Unfortunately, openly mocking people they deem as acting too 'fragile' or 'sensitive' is just generally a fairly popular passtime in certain (online) leftist spaces
'fragile' here being defined as wanting to change literally any behavior they dont already trivially realize is harmful, or even just as acting different in a way they consider weird (aka cringe culture)
It really is just mocking disability and body positivity.