Humans don't just make up disabilities to get out of trouble, but because victim status is both highly prized and carefully cultivated in contemporary western human society.
Claiming the status of victim is prized? Or is the status itself is prized?
I think the former can be true, because it can win attention in the attention economy, and some people pursue attention no matter what. But who actually values being a victim of someone or something?
I'm skeptical about the "carefully cultivated" idea because everyone except masochists agrees that it sucks to be victimized. It's odd that lots of people like to declare that "life isn't fair" (true enough) but then also insinuate that virtually no one is a victim but only play one on TV.
These people aren't actually victims however. As DeBoer points out they seem to be leading perfectly happy middle class lives. Victim status is something they pursue for clout while enjoying none of the downsides of actual mental illness.
People who lie or persuade themselves of an illness they don't have aren't victims. That's different than saying they tell the lies *because* Western society prizes victims.
I'd actually argue that, if anything, being an actual victim in Western societies is shameful and people more often hide it from others or disavow it to themselves.
I have a tough time believing that somebody who switches between "personalities" at will for the benefit of a TikTok video actually believe that they suffer from a mental illness.
If they're not actually mentally ill then what can explain this behavior? Societal incentives are a pretty good explanation.
People have an incentive to get social attention––for some people that's their strongest appetite. Certain people do perverse things to get attention, like fake a mental illness. That doesn't mean Western societies prize those who are victims of mental illness. Or victims of scams, crimes, accidents, disabilities. People who get cheated on by a partner, kids with parents in prison, people who get fired for crossing a boss or joining a union.
My point is that I don't see a societal incentive to be an actual victim.
Not sure what you mean by social victimhood––does it include people who are actually harmed by social attitudes or hierarchies or neglect? If you lose a job or get beat up for being gay, do you really get social capital? Seems to me like you are harmed.
In certain circles there's a power that comes with being part of a minority group. It's slightly perverse as obviously systemic injustice exists in the wider world but in a given room, office, or a conversation, it is possible to wield power via victimhood.
Veteran groups engage in this behavior--hardly on the left. Cops and firemen, too. We might be talking more squarely about "entitlement" than proper victimhood in those cases, but the dynamic is the same.
I’m genuinely not sure what your point is with that…
Some members of those groups focus incessantly on being treated poorly by non-members, not completely without cause, but often hyperbolically with the intent to capitalize on the sympathy they know they’ll receive (often in fungible form) in return. I don’t see how that’s different than the “certain circles” you’re referencing?
Oh really now? Have you listened to Trump lately. He's always claiming he's a victim of something. His followers also join in the the victim claiming too. Usually they're claiming they're victims of the "libs".
You seem to be saying such people are at least situationally powerful and therefore not in fact a victim.
I'm trying to figure out why people think the status of victim is prized by Western societies. The idea seems quite strange to me: who would chose bad fortune (a mental illness, a maiming accident, being born in poverty) or chose to be subjected to an injustice (losing an job or being attacked because of your ascriptive identity)?
My suspicion is that lots of people think *others* "cultivate" or invent the status of victim when they aren't actually a victim. That happens, I'm sure. But it's also possible that hostility to "victimology" may be about more than contempt for just those non-victims who claim to be victims, but also a discomfort or hostility toward actual victims. If that's true, it's a symptom of how Western societies *don't* prize victim status––quite the opposite.
Because certain social justice circles have tried to fix the ills of systemic racism, sexism, etc., by inverting the messed-up hierarchies involved in those ills. So, for example, whereas the broader Western world often gives men higher status than men, or whites higher status than minorities, etc., within those social justice circles, that status hierarchy is turned upside down. This is often described sarcastically in terms of an "Oppression Olympics".
My sense is that anyone who uses the sarcastic phrase "Oppression Olympics" is highly skeptical that there is actual victimizing going on.
I think I know what you are saying: that there are contextual situations where belonging to a victimized group can give you leverage. But I'm disputing the idea that they acquire that leverage because, as claimed above, Western societies prizes being a victim.
Those instances when women are harmed by being women, or when a non-white person is harmed because they aren't white, are actual victims, no? And then the very fact that they were harmed qua woman or qua non-white person means society doesn't value being a victim.
I think you need to separate out two things: the consequences of *being* a victim, and the consequences of being *perceived* as one.
The consequences of actually being a victim are, generally speaking, negative. That's a natural consequence of being, well, a victim.
The consequences of being perceived as a victim are another story. Broadly, in Western society, being seen as a victim often invites sympathy and compassion, which for the most part is not a bad thing. Furthermore, in certain subsets of Western society -- especially the ones where the "Oppression Olympics" is at play -- being seen as a victim can even help one accrue status.
"This is often described sarcastically in terms of an "Oppression Olympics"."
Or "Wokemon", which is a dreary game played in certain circles where the participants argue about gripping matters, such as a cishet differently abled Native American abuse survivor has more or fewer Wokeomon points, attack and defense, tnan a genderqueer Latinx.
probably a lot of selection effects here. people with social difficulties are going to spend less time with friends and more on the computer, and people who have a hard time modulating attention more easily get sucked into social media scrolling.
I think we are all probably very much more susceptible to social pressure and social signals and even social contagion than we want to believe. Those kids suddenly "discovering" they've got a weird rare disorder (I recall a story about a sudden rash of social-contagion Tourette's) all at once are easy to see from the outside, but I think when you're inside that kind of phenomenon, it all probably feels real. You can see these occasional episodes where a whole society seems to kind-of go crazy for a few years--witch trials, the Satanic panic, any number of totalitarian political ideologies that took over the society and wrecked it (from Germany to Cambodia), etc. I bet none of that seemed like madness or horror to the people caught up in it, even though later on lots of people looked back with some kind of "My God, how could we have done that stuff?" reflection.
Apparently, a lot of people lose their minds when kept in solitary confinement for too long. I suspect this is part of the same thing--we imagine ourselves as rational self-contained beings, but we actually are constantly gauging ourselves against those around us, looking to higher-status people for guidance, looking for approval/disapproval from those around us, etc., and without all that feedback, we easily go off the deep end. (I suspect you can see a lot of this with very famous and powerful people, too--once nobody dares give them any feedback other than "brilliant idea, Elon!", it's easy for them to wander off a cliff.)
Thinking about things this way makes me question my lifelong support for unrestricted free speech. You'd like to have some way to stop this kind of destructive social contagion. But probably the mechanisms we'd put in place to stop it would just give us worse problems.
Well, those totalitarian ideologies were not exactly fans of free speech, and neither is the modern social justice movement. Free speech is what enables Freddie to write an article saying that TikTok DID is bullshit. It's what allows us to call out fakers, even if there are social consequences for doing so. I'm not sure if free speech makes this problem better or worse on net. A censorship regime may suppress social contagions among a disfavored outgroup, but as soon as one of those contagions reaches the people who set the speech rules, you are fucked.
Yes, social contagion only dies out by being challenged. Totalitarian regimes often eventually end up being the creators and spreaders of these types of paranoia and fear and get people accusing each other of wacky paranoid bullshit, and there's no way out because it can't be challenged until the regime says so.
Free speech, on the other hand, might result in some weird social hysterias spreading that wouldn't elsewise, but they don't often take over whole societies or last for prolonged periods of time because different segments can push back.
I don't think it's free speech as much as being overwhelmed by information. And having the leisure time and resources to look at all that info and pick out the parts we want to hear.
The Stephen King effect. It is clear that no one is editing his novels outside of basic grammar and spelling, and definitely not going "cut this part, and gut the first dozen chapters." Why? He is the biggest selling author since the seventies.
The incentives that produce this kind of behavior are very specific to Western countries. Obviously there are plenty of places where mental illness is still very much stigmatized, but in the West victim status is prized.
In addition I have to comment on the spectacle of a bunch of TikToker's canceling a professor. There are plenty of places where a bunch of kids wouldn't be able to mount such a campaign against somebody that is a) older and b) occupies a distinguished position such as a professor. Western society places a premium on youth and the effects are not always positive.
I wonder how often something like "spirit possession" is faked in other, more religious cultures who tend to express mental illness through that lens rather than our more diagnostic way of viewing it. It seems like a good way to gain importance and attention in certain places.
There are a lot of different places kn the earth and I'm sure some of share the West's focus on self aggrandizement and clout chasing. My guess is that it's not any healthier in those places than it is here.
I think it's not about where power ultimately resides, but about which constituency gets overaccommodated; sort of like Cubans in Florida, except Cubans aren't as ignorant.
Thank you for saying what needs to be said! As someone who has actually suffered with a mental disorder since at least age 13 and who has all of the horrible consequences to show for it, it is offensive. And, it's tacky. There are real people who need real help and we get this nonsense. I'd be willing to put money on the complete bs that is this gross little cry for attention. Most (almost all) people who have a debilitating mental illness are not going to be found online performing it.
This is also true for some physical illnesses. I'm thinking of all the young women who claim to be raising "awareness" of EDS/POTS/MCAS/Gastroparesis online. Those diseases do exist but not at the prevalence and severity they're claiming. See r/illnessfakers for a real trip down this rabbit hole.
My partner has quite bad hypermobility and POTS requiring Ivabradine, but she lives a totally normal life. The wheelchair EDS people are mostly faking, I think.
Who raised these young people to not take responsibility for their lives? I'm beginning to think we have 40 or 50 years of high numbers of dysfunctional people because of lousy parenting aided and abetted by television, social media and professional child rearing experts who don't know shit.
I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't want to have kids, they look around and see miserable kids and miserable parents.
NO life doesn't revolve around you! YOU are not going to get everything you want...as a matter of fact you're only going to ever get a little of what you want, and then with a lot of effort. That's life, suck it up buttercup.
I'm sorry but this "disability" phenomenon is selfish and attention seeking. These are not positive personal characteristics. I can't count how many parents I've seen making excuses for their kids and acting like doormats. So what do their "kids" do when they grow up and they aren't getting constant attention? What happens when they don't get what they want and life disappoints?
There's a balance between love, affection, attention that's necessary as a parent and enabling bratty behavior. (old fashioned meaning of brat)
We need to start seeing two year olds throwing temper tantrums in public again because they didn't get what they want.
I think Freddie will do a good job as a parent because he's not afraid of imposing discipline on the unruly. I really appreciate the moderation on the comments section.
Really enjoyed this Freddie. It’s a real issue and it needs to be said. I also didn’t know your “cancel” story. As someone who has experienced public shaming, I deeply respect the way you’ve continued and prevailed beyond it. I’m an even prouder supporter of your writing than I was before know your story. Thanks for the inspiration, sincerely.
Never underestimate the human capacity to differently interpret the same human experience. I know many, many healthy people who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ -- complete with ongoing daily conversations. I don't think they are faking it. They've just chosen to interpret their inner mental dialog as having a divine origin, because that's what their culture tells them it is, and because they find it comforting. The church willingly participates in this kayfabe, so long as Jesus doesn't make any unrealistic demands. Maybe Jesus really _is_ talking to them . . . but I doubt it. It's not that such useful fictions are offensive -- it's how they are deployed to garner attention and power that is intolerable. And that, I'm afraid, is the real problem we're dealing with here: the overweening, voracious, insatiable need for attention and validation.
Oh, is THAT what people mean when they say they have a personal relationship with Jesus? That's interesting. If I had been raised in a different faith, I probably would be thinking that the logical side of my brain was Jesus.
Just a correction - as I understand it, that is *not* what most people mean by a "personal relationship with Jesus." Most people mean that they have an emotionally close relationship and see him as a close friend and mentor, not that they hear his voice in their head. (Google it and see!)
I, and I suspect most Christians I know, feel that if you pray and spend time in prayerful contemplation (i.e., listen to God), then some of the intuitions and experiences you will have are a gift of the Holy Spirit, but that it's very hard to know for sure which of your feelings are you, which are the devil, and which are the Holy Spirit.
God's guidance can be a great inspiration and a comfort, but I don't know anyone who hears God speaking words in their head on the regular.
Clearly McClain is in the pole position to llead the way in developing new chemical therapies for healthy people who want to be certifiably somewhat unhealthy but not excessively so. Virgin martinis maybe?
They are probably all claiming to have hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Yes it exists but it's really unlikely that many of them have it, or have it that severely.
I know a woman in her 20s who has started using a cane in the past few years. She has an actual connective tissue disorder diagnosed by actual doctors. If the online disability movement influenced her, it was just by pointing out that it's okay to use something that helps you be more active with less pain, even if it's not literally the only way you can move around at all.
I bring this up not to argue against the main thrust of your article (which is great, as is most of your writing on this topic) or even to argue that nobody uses a cane purely as a fashion accessory (I'm sure there are some). I just wanted to bring up this complication, that "need" exists on a spectrum. Some people are aghast when a person in a wheelchair is able to walk for any distance, believing this is "faking", but there are lots of people in this world who can manage a short walk to the bathroom but not (say) a full day on their feet at the state fair. And lots more who probably COULD manage the full day if their life depended on it, but who would end up extremely fatigued and/or in pain as a result.
Anyway, my point is that as society becomes more accommodating of disabilities, and also wealthier in general, you can expect to see more people who don't absolutely "need" assistive devices but nonetheless benefit greatly from using them. I don't know if this explains even one of the nine "otherwise healthy" young women with canes (how does the lecturer know who's "otherwise healthy"? do they get access to students' medical records?) but it's something to keep in mind.
I think it can be really hard for society to determine when physical discomfort becomes a disability. We all have physical discomfort at times from activity. Is having your feet really, really hurt after a day of walking (this would be me) a disability or is it just on the continuum of normal human experience? Where's the dividing line?
Sure, and there are cases where it's important to draw that line -- like if accommodations impose a burden on someone else, or could give some healthy people an unfair advantage in a competitive environment. But there are other cases where I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt. Bringing a cane to class doesn't impose a burden on anyone else, it doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage, it's not using up a scarce resource like disabled parking spots. I don't think progressive identity silliness is the only reason why it's inappropriate for a lecturer to confront students about whether they really need a cane or not.
Oh I agree it's not appropriate for a lecturer to ask a student why they're using a cane unless it's somehow relevant to the subject (disability studies maybe?) but it sure as hell is a statistical anomaly to have several young women in a class of forty actually needing canes. They're probably only hurting themselves because this is going to color the instructor's view of them and not in a positive way.
I agree it's quite an anomaly, but I still think the instructor should try his best not to discriminate against those students, if they are just bringing a cane to class and not being disruptive about it or anything like that. He really doesn't have the full story and neither do we. The fact that fakers exist doesn't really give you the right to assume any given person is faking or to treat them worse because of that assumption.
Thank you for saying this. My daughter uses a cane because she has congenital muscular dystrophy, which was diagnosed through genetic testing. (She has mutations in two of the three genes that code for the protein that forms the matrix on which muscle cells align.) She would love to be able to walk more than a couple of blocks, climb stairs, run, ride a bike, dance, get up from a seated position without needing to grab onto something for help—all the things her disability makes impossible for her. The cane helps her get around. In fact, she is so far from using the cane for sympathy that she resisted getting it as long as she could. So it boils my blood that the existence of fakers will make my daughter’s very real disability look like a plea for attention or a grift.
My daughter does have accommodations at her college. Her dorm is in the center of campus to minimize the amount of walking she has to do, and her room is on the ground floor and next to an accessible bathroom with a seated shower. In order to get these accommodations, we had to submit the results of her genetic testing and a doctor’s report. No one is getting ADA accommodations without proof of actual disability. So maybe some young women do carry canes to get sympathy, but they won’t be getting academic and work accommodations without a real diagnosis.
I guess I hope Freddie will read this comment and maybe consider not being so contemptuous of young women with canes in the future, especially if they are just going about their lives and not trying to monetize their cane-carrying on TikTok.
I mean it should be obvious to most people that your daughter has a real disability because she’ll have the normal attendant muscle wasting that is ALWAYS absent in the bedazzled canes.
But tell her never to decorate her cane, it is a massive red flag for a crank in the medical field, unfortunately.
Thanks for the tip about decorations! Her cane is plain black, with no rhinestones or other gewgaws. And she has no muscle-wasting—she doesn’t have Duchenne, thankfully—but her gait and difficulty getting up do make it clear that she has a real disability.
The key thing about the attention seekers is they’re proud and show-offy about their “disability” and will do everything they can to draw attention to it- talk about it constantly, bedazzle the canes, have lots of patches and badges etc. it’s a dead giveaway.
I think there's an interesting piece to be written about how this intersects with the current interpretation of disability accomodations in higher ed. I'm a pretty recent college grad and I noticed how it seemed like nearly 50% of my graduating class had some kind of accomodations through the disability office and that there seemed to be little effort on the part of the school to separate moderate anxiety disorders from the kinds of severe mental illness that can present during college (such as your own bipolar).
At my school single dorm rooms were a scarce resource, and up until 2018ish requesting a single room for "medical reasons" was very rare. By 2022, the number of medical singles requested by women had more than quadrupled (the increase for men was much smaller). A similar thing occured with emotional support animals in dorms - by 2022, there was at least one emotional support cat per floor. It's blatantly obvious that people will exaggerate and fake illness for this kind of gain and I think our higher ed system of disability accomodations encourages it.
It's not just housing, too. You can get all kinds of academic accomodations from the school for all kinds of reasons. There's very little effort/ability to filter between the kids with moderate anxiety vs the kids who have the kinds of severe mental illness that present around college age (thinking of bipolar 1 here). Same with physical illnesses - the same accomodations might get put in for a student with fibromyalgia and one with cancer.
Yeah, and this issue absolutely starts at the high school level, and needs to be resolved there too. For one, colleges are often contacting high schools to check that accommodations, especially academic ones, were implemented during high school in order to verify and implement similar accommodations. So many of the 'fake' and 'weak' requests are from average-intelligence richy kids who pay for these psych or therapist notes. The problem is also that even if testing shows weak numbers for certain disorders, the notes themselves will often encourage high schools to still accommodate the students in some way. Or the parents will 'shop' for doctors who will give them the answer they want, rather than face the truth that their kid is a B or C students (even with inflation). The truth of the severity of the student's condition -- if they have one at all -- gets lost over time.
I wonder how much of this is started by the parents. My wife teaches kindergarten. She used to get an autistic or adhd kid once every few years. Now it’s 3-5 in every class. Her teacher friends all report the same. At this age it’s 100% the parent’s decision.
The consequences of having parents who prize a diagnosis are worrisome.
Just curious (our son was in Kindergarten last year with a shared para): How long has your wife taught Kindergarten, and have the standards of acceptable behavior by students changed in that time?
I struggle a bit with our decisions about our son, and the reports of behavior and encouragement to classify him as ADHD. I can’t help but think of my own childhood at his age, and whether we had a less regimented classroom than what seems to be expected these days.
15 years now. Hard to say on standards. They’ve moved much more to active play-based learning. So you’d think this would allow for young boys with lots of energy to succeed. In reality it means sitting quietly at one play station for 20mins using calm voices.
There’s likely been more change at home than at schools since we were kids. Especially since Covid. She says that before diagnosing, make sure you are doing zero screen time, he’s getting at least an hour to run around every day to exhaustion, and is only eating real food. Many of her “ADHD” kids are on the iPad at home and have pedialite or something for breakfast.
growing up immersed in a technical apparatus (internet and video games) that allows instant changes in form and identity generates these kinds of compensatory responses - and makes the hard truth of being only one person in one given body, set on a singular specific planet for a limited amount of time, painful and hard to adapt to
I find the change in attitude towards disability and widening of the definition of what a disability is are quite interesting. I have had chronic illness for half my life (mostly not fully diagnosed), which would absolutely not have been considered a disability in 2005 when I first became unwell, but today very much would be.
When I complete a form now, the definitions around disability would 100 per cent make it valid for me to say I have a disability, if I wanted to. I never do this because in my mind a disability is something more serious than my illness. That's just how I feel. And I guess defining myself as 'well' is part of how I deal with my health. But I think that's generational and a lot of people today would do the opposite and feel the opposite.
Humans don't just make up disabilities to get out of trouble, but because victim status is both highly prized and carefully cultivated in contemporary western human society.
And it's only the West. There's plenty of countries where mental illness is still terribly stigmatized.
Ain't just mental illness, but anything seen as maladaptive.
Polish people freshly arrived in the US were shcoked to see handicapped people working in the grocery store. "But what if the customers see them?"
They weren't even bigoted, just pleasantly surprised.
Yeah. When I was in Japan people in wheelchairs in public was a huge no no.
Absolutely right. Same reason we see people faking ethnicity.
Claiming the status of victim is prized? Or is the status itself is prized?
I think the former can be true, because it can win attention in the attention economy, and some people pursue attention no matter what. But who actually values being a victim of someone or something?
I'm skeptical about the "carefully cultivated" idea because everyone except masochists agrees that it sucks to be victimized. It's odd that lots of people like to declare that "life isn't fair" (true enough) but then also insinuate that virtually no one is a victim but only play one on TV.
These people aren't actually victims however. As DeBoer points out they seem to be leading perfectly happy middle class lives. Victim status is something they pursue for clout while enjoying none of the downsides of actual mental illness.
People who lie or persuade themselves of an illness they don't have aren't victims. That's different than saying they tell the lies *because* Western society prizes victims.
I'd actually argue that, if anything, being an actual victim in Western societies is shameful and people more often hide it from others or disavow it to themselves.
I have a tough time believing that somebody who switches between "personalities" at will for the benefit of a TikTok video actually believe that they suffer from a mental illness.
If they're not actually mentally ill then what can explain this behavior? Societal incentives are a pretty good explanation.
People have an incentive to get social attention––for some people that's their strongest appetite. Certain people do perverse things to get attention, like fake a mental illness. That doesn't mean Western societies prize those who are victims of mental illness. Or victims of scams, crimes, accidents, disabilities. People who get cheated on by a partner, kids with parents in prison, people who get fired for crossing a boss or joining a union.
My point is that I don't see a societal incentive to be an actual victim.
Not all cultures: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down".
What's the explanation for those TikToker's? They clearly believe that mental illness will allow them to attract followers and gain popularity.
economic victimhood i.e. being poor is shameful; social victimhood is capital
Not sure what you mean by social victimhood––does it include people who are actually harmed by social attitudes or hierarchies or neglect? If you lose a job or get beat up for being gay, do you really get social capital? Seems to me like you are harmed.
In certain circles there's a power that comes with being part of a minority group. It's slightly perverse as obviously systemic injustice exists in the wider world but in a given room, office, or a conversation, it is possible to wield power via victimhood.
Let's not kid ourselves: those "certain circles" are all on the left.
Sort of, tho not necessarily? Like the average workplace isn't necessarily a leftist organisation and this could be true of a workplace.
I am kind of skeptical this stuff would fly in your average machine shop or warehouse.
Well some of those places may have unionised workforces, wouldn't that make them more of the left than the average office?
those are libs not leftists
Veteran groups engage in this behavior--hardly on the left. Cops and firemen, too. We might be talking more squarely about "entitlement" than proper victimhood in those cases, but the dynamic is the same.
Men tend to focus on the obstacles that they've overcome as testament to their masculinity. Complaining would be counterproductive to that goal.
I’m genuinely not sure what your point is with that…
Some members of those groups focus incessantly on being treated poorly by non-members, not completely without cause, but often hyperbolically with the intent to capitalize on the sympathy they know they’ll receive (often in fungible form) in return. I don’t see how that’s different than the “certain circles” you’re referencing?
True about those certain circles, but let's also not pretend that playing the victim is exclusively a left-wing thing either.
Victim status as social signifies is largely a left wing thing.
Oh really now? Have you listened to Trump lately. He's always claiming he's a victim of something. His followers also join in the the victim claiming too. Usually they're claiming they're victims of the "libs".
You seem to be saying such people are at least situationally powerful and therefore not in fact a victim.
I'm trying to figure out why people think the status of victim is prized by Western societies. The idea seems quite strange to me: who would chose bad fortune (a mental illness, a maiming accident, being born in poverty) or chose to be subjected to an injustice (losing an job or being attacked because of your ascriptive identity)?
My suspicion is that lots of people think *others* "cultivate" or invent the status of victim when they aren't actually a victim. That happens, I'm sure. But it's also possible that hostility to "victimology" may be about more than contempt for just those non-victims who claim to be victims, but also a discomfort or hostility toward actual victims. If that's true, it's a symptom of how Western societies *don't* prize victim status––quite the opposite.
Because certain social justice circles have tried to fix the ills of systemic racism, sexism, etc., by inverting the messed-up hierarchies involved in those ills. So, for example, whereas the broader Western world often gives men higher status than men, or whites higher status than minorities, etc., within those social justice circles, that status hierarchy is turned upside down. This is often described sarcastically in terms of an "Oppression Olympics".
My sense is that anyone who uses the sarcastic phrase "Oppression Olympics" is highly skeptical that there is actual victimizing going on.
I think I know what you are saying: that there are contextual situations where belonging to a victimized group can give you leverage. But I'm disputing the idea that they acquire that leverage because, as claimed above, Western societies prizes being a victim.
Those instances when women are harmed by being women, or when a non-white person is harmed because they aren't white, are actual victims, no? And then the very fact that they were harmed qua woman or qua non-white person means society doesn't value being a victim.
I think you need to separate out two things: the consequences of *being* a victim, and the consequences of being *perceived* as one.
The consequences of actually being a victim are, generally speaking, negative. That's a natural consequence of being, well, a victim.
The consequences of being perceived as a victim are another story. Broadly, in Western society, being seen as a victim often invites sympathy and compassion, which for the most part is not a bad thing. Furthermore, in certain subsets of Western society -- especially the ones where the "Oppression Olympics" is at play -- being seen as a victim can even help one accrue status.
"This is often described sarcastically in terms of an "Oppression Olympics"."
Or "Wokemon", which is a dreary game played in certain circles where the participants argue about gripping matters, such as a cishet differently abled Native American abuse survivor has more or fewer Wokeomon points, attack and defense, tnan a genderqueer Latinx.
Which potentially explains why such a huge proportion of young people online seem to have adhd/autism.
At one time, dyslexia was a favored diagnosis among young humans. Then it was ADD and ADHD, followed by Asperger's.
I wonder to what extent this has been supplanted by non-cishet gender?
probably a lot of selection effects here. people with social difficulties are going to spend less time with friends and more on the computer, and people who have a hard time modulating attention more easily get sucked into social media scrolling.
Some people can’t tell the difference between a developmental disorder and a lack of normal socialisation.
We all want sympathy. And if you can't get any, manufacturing some is almost as good.
I think we are all probably very much more susceptible to social pressure and social signals and even social contagion than we want to believe. Those kids suddenly "discovering" they've got a weird rare disorder (I recall a story about a sudden rash of social-contagion Tourette's) all at once are easy to see from the outside, but I think when you're inside that kind of phenomenon, it all probably feels real. You can see these occasional episodes where a whole society seems to kind-of go crazy for a few years--witch trials, the Satanic panic, any number of totalitarian political ideologies that took over the society and wrecked it (from Germany to Cambodia), etc. I bet none of that seemed like madness or horror to the people caught up in it, even though later on lots of people looked back with some kind of "My God, how could we have done that stuff?" reflection.
Apparently, a lot of people lose their minds when kept in solitary confinement for too long. I suspect this is part of the same thing--we imagine ourselves as rational self-contained beings, but we actually are constantly gauging ourselves against those around us, looking to higher-status people for guidance, looking for approval/disapproval from those around us, etc., and without all that feedback, we easily go off the deep end. (I suspect you can see a lot of this with very famous and powerful people, too--once nobody dares give them any feedback other than "brilliant idea, Elon!", it's easy for them to wander off a cliff.)
Thinking about things this way makes me question my lifelong support for unrestricted free speech. You'd like to have some way to stop this kind of destructive social contagion. But probably the mechanisms we'd put in place to stop it would just give us worse problems.
Well, those totalitarian ideologies were not exactly fans of free speech, and neither is the modern social justice movement. Free speech is what enables Freddie to write an article saying that TikTok DID is bullshit. It's what allows us to call out fakers, even if there are social consequences for doing so. I'm not sure if free speech makes this problem better or worse on net. A censorship regime may suppress social contagions among a disfavored outgroup, but as soon as one of those contagions reaches the people who set the speech rules, you are fucked.
Yes, social contagion only dies out by being challenged. Totalitarian regimes often eventually end up being the creators and spreaders of these types of paranoia and fear and get people accusing each other of wacky paranoid bullshit, and there's no way out because it can't be challenged until the regime says so.
Free speech, on the other hand, might result in some weird social hysterias spreading that wouldn't elsewise, but they don't often take over whole societies or last for prolonged periods of time because different segments can push back.
I don't think it's free speech as much as being overwhelmed by information. And having the leisure time and resources to look at all that info and pick out the parts we want to hear.
The Stephen King effect. It is clear that no one is editing his novels outside of basic grammar and spelling, and definitely not going "cut this part, and gut the first dozen chapters." Why? He is the biggest selling author since the seventies.
The incentives that produce this kind of behavior are very specific to Western countries. Obviously there are plenty of places where mental illness is still very much stigmatized, but in the West victim status is prized.
In addition I have to comment on the spectacle of a bunch of TikToker's canceling a professor. There are plenty of places where a bunch of kids wouldn't be able to mount such a campaign against somebody that is a) older and b) occupies a distinguished position such as a professor. Western society places a premium on youth and the effects are not always positive.
I wonder how often something like "spirit possession" is faked in other, more religious cultures who tend to express mental illness through that lens rather than our more diagnostic way of viewing it. It seems like a good way to gain importance and attention in certain places.
There are a lot of different places kn the earth and I'm sure some of share the West's focus on self aggrandizement and clout chasing. My guess is that it's not any healthier in those places than it is here.
`Western society places a premium on youth and the effects are not always positive.'
You've noticed the make-up of congress, right? The aged seem to be doing pretty well in this country.
I think it's not about where power ultimately resides, but about which constituency gets overaccommodated; sort of like Cubans in Florida, except Cubans aren't as ignorant.
There's a cultural premium on youth. That doesn't necessarily translate into actual power.
Thank you for saying what needs to be said! As someone who has actually suffered with a mental disorder since at least age 13 and who has all of the horrible consequences to show for it, it is offensive. And, it's tacky. There are real people who need real help and we get this nonsense. I'd be willing to put money on the complete bs that is this gross little cry for attention. Most (almost all) people who have a debilitating mental illness are not going to be found online performing it.
This is also true for some physical illnesses. I'm thinking of all the young women who claim to be raising "awareness" of EDS/POTS/MCAS/Gastroparesis online. Those diseases do exist but not at the prevalence and severity they're claiming. See r/illnessfakers for a real trip down this rabbit hole.
My partner has quite bad hypermobility and POTS requiring Ivabradine, but she lives a totally normal life. The wheelchair EDS people are mostly faking, I think.
Who raised these young people to not take responsibility for their lives? I'm beginning to think we have 40 or 50 years of high numbers of dysfunctional people because of lousy parenting aided and abetted by television, social media and professional child rearing experts who don't know shit.
I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't want to have kids, they look around and see miserable kids and miserable parents.
NO life doesn't revolve around you! YOU are not going to get everything you want...as a matter of fact you're only going to ever get a little of what you want, and then with a lot of effort. That's life, suck it up buttercup.
I'm sorry but this "disability" phenomenon is selfish and attention seeking. These are not positive personal characteristics. I can't count how many parents I've seen making excuses for their kids and acting like doormats. So what do their "kids" do when they grow up and they aren't getting constant attention? What happens when they don't get what they want and life disappoints?
There's a balance between love, affection, attention that's necessary as a parent and enabling bratty behavior. (old fashioned meaning of brat)
We need to start seeing two year olds throwing temper tantrums in public again because they didn't get what they want.
I think Freddie will do a good job as a parent because he's not afraid of imposing discipline on the unruly. I really appreciate the moderation on the comments section.
It's a reaction against the previous (also harmful) paradigm of "life sucks, shut up about it."
Really enjoyed this Freddie. It’s a real issue and it needs to be said. I also didn’t know your “cancel” story. As someone who has experienced public shaming, I deeply respect the way you’ve continued and prevailed beyond it. I’m an even prouder supporter of your writing than I was before know your story. Thanks for the inspiration, sincerely.
The man is honest about his past for a reason. Show the respect at least of not so obviously ignoring everything he's said about it.
Never underestimate the human capacity to differently interpret the same human experience. I know many, many healthy people who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ -- complete with ongoing daily conversations. I don't think they are faking it. They've just chosen to interpret their inner mental dialog as having a divine origin, because that's what their culture tells them it is, and because they find it comforting. The church willingly participates in this kayfabe, so long as Jesus doesn't make any unrealistic demands. Maybe Jesus really _is_ talking to them . . . but I doubt it. It's not that such useful fictions are offensive -- it's how they are deployed to garner attention and power that is intolerable. And that, I'm afraid, is the real problem we're dealing with here: the overweening, voracious, insatiable need for attention and validation.
Oh, is THAT what people mean when they say they have a personal relationship with Jesus? That's interesting. If I had been raised in a different faith, I probably would be thinking that the logical side of my brain was Jesus.
Just a correction - as I understand it, that is *not* what most people mean by a "personal relationship with Jesus." Most people mean that they have an emotionally close relationship and see him as a close friend and mentor, not that they hear his voice in their head. (Google it and see!)
I, and I suspect most Christians I know, feel that if you pray and spend time in prayerful contemplation (i.e., listen to God), then some of the intuitions and experiences you will have are a gift of the Holy Spirit, but that it's very hard to know for sure which of your feelings are you, which are the devil, and which are the Holy Spirit.
God's guidance can be a great inspiration and a comfort, but I don't know anyone who hears God speaking words in their head on the regular.
Clearly McClain is in the pole position to llead the way in developing new chemical therapies for healthy people who want to be certifiably somewhat unhealthy but not excessively so. Virgin martinis maybe?
I discuss all of this in a long-form conversation here with a psychiatrist: https://www.jdhaltigan.com/p/psychiatry-psychology-and-society
I dunno, could the cane girls just be indulging in fashion? Like dandies back in the day with their walking sticks?
Or do they really pretend to be lame?
They are probably all claiming to have hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Yes it exists but it's really unlikely that many of them have it, or have it that severely.
Where is there good info on actual credible DID cases? you refer to some in the article...
I know a woman in her 20s who has started using a cane in the past few years. She has an actual connective tissue disorder diagnosed by actual doctors. If the online disability movement influenced her, it was just by pointing out that it's okay to use something that helps you be more active with less pain, even if it's not literally the only way you can move around at all.
I bring this up not to argue against the main thrust of your article (which is great, as is most of your writing on this topic) or even to argue that nobody uses a cane purely as a fashion accessory (I'm sure there are some). I just wanted to bring up this complication, that "need" exists on a spectrum. Some people are aghast when a person in a wheelchair is able to walk for any distance, believing this is "faking", but there are lots of people in this world who can manage a short walk to the bathroom but not (say) a full day on their feet at the state fair. And lots more who probably COULD manage the full day if their life depended on it, but who would end up extremely fatigued and/or in pain as a result.
Anyway, my point is that as society becomes more accommodating of disabilities, and also wealthier in general, you can expect to see more people who don't absolutely "need" assistive devices but nonetheless benefit greatly from using them. I don't know if this explains even one of the nine "otherwise healthy" young women with canes (how does the lecturer know who's "otherwise healthy"? do they get access to students' medical records?) but it's something to keep in mind.
I think it can be really hard for society to determine when physical discomfort becomes a disability. We all have physical discomfort at times from activity. Is having your feet really, really hurt after a day of walking (this would be me) a disability or is it just on the continuum of normal human experience? Where's the dividing line?
Sure, and there are cases where it's important to draw that line -- like if accommodations impose a burden on someone else, or could give some healthy people an unfair advantage in a competitive environment. But there are other cases where I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt. Bringing a cane to class doesn't impose a burden on anyone else, it doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage, it's not using up a scarce resource like disabled parking spots. I don't think progressive identity silliness is the only reason why it's inappropriate for a lecturer to confront students about whether they really need a cane or not.
I think the point is that it is because of “progressive identity silliness” that these girls are walking around with canes in the first place.
Oh I agree it's not appropriate for a lecturer to ask a student why they're using a cane unless it's somehow relevant to the subject (disability studies maybe?) but it sure as hell is a statistical anomaly to have several young women in a class of forty actually needing canes. They're probably only hurting themselves because this is going to color the instructor's view of them and not in a positive way.
I agree it's quite an anomaly, but I still think the instructor should try his best not to discriminate against those students, if they are just bringing a cane to class and not being disruptive about it or anything like that. He really doesn't have the full story and neither do we. The fact that fakers exist doesn't really give you the right to assume any given person is faking or to treat them worse because of that assumption.
Thank you for saying this. My daughter uses a cane because she has congenital muscular dystrophy, which was diagnosed through genetic testing. (She has mutations in two of the three genes that code for the protein that forms the matrix on which muscle cells align.) She would love to be able to walk more than a couple of blocks, climb stairs, run, ride a bike, dance, get up from a seated position without needing to grab onto something for help—all the things her disability makes impossible for her. The cane helps her get around. In fact, she is so far from using the cane for sympathy that she resisted getting it as long as she could. So it boils my blood that the existence of fakers will make my daughter’s very real disability look like a plea for attention or a grift.
My daughter does have accommodations at her college. Her dorm is in the center of campus to minimize the amount of walking she has to do, and her room is on the ground floor and next to an accessible bathroom with a seated shower. In order to get these accommodations, we had to submit the results of her genetic testing and a doctor’s report. No one is getting ADA accommodations without proof of actual disability. So maybe some young women do carry canes to get sympathy, but they won’t be getting academic and work accommodations without a real diagnosis.
I guess I hope Freddie will read this comment and maybe consider not being so contemptuous of young women with canes in the future, especially if they are just going about their lives and not trying to monetize their cane-carrying on TikTok.
I mean it should be obvious to most people that your daughter has a real disability because she’ll have the normal attendant muscle wasting that is ALWAYS absent in the bedazzled canes.
But tell her never to decorate her cane, it is a massive red flag for a crank in the medical field, unfortunately.
Thanks for the tip about decorations! Her cane is plain black, with no rhinestones or other gewgaws. And she has no muscle-wasting—she doesn’t have Duchenne, thankfully—but her gait and difficulty getting up do make it clear that she has a real disability.
The key thing about the attention seekers is they’re proud and show-offy about their “disability” and will do everything they can to draw attention to it- talk about it constantly, bedazzle the canes, have lots of patches and badges etc. it’s a dead giveaway.
I think there's an interesting piece to be written about how this intersects with the current interpretation of disability accomodations in higher ed. I'm a pretty recent college grad and I noticed how it seemed like nearly 50% of my graduating class had some kind of accomodations through the disability office and that there seemed to be little effort on the part of the school to separate moderate anxiety disorders from the kinds of severe mental illness that can present during college (such as your own bipolar).
At my school single dorm rooms were a scarce resource, and up until 2018ish requesting a single room for "medical reasons" was very rare. By 2022, the number of medical singles requested by women had more than quadrupled (the increase for men was much smaller). A similar thing occured with emotional support animals in dorms - by 2022, there was at least one emotional support cat per floor. It's blatantly obvious that people will exaggerate and fake illness for this kind of gain and I think our higher ed system of disability accomodations encourages it.
It's not just housing, too. You can get all kinds of academic accomodations from the school for all kinds of reasons. There's very little effort/ability to filter between the kids with moderate anxiety vs the kids who have the kinds of severe mental illness that present around college age (thinking of bipolar 1 here). Same with physical illnesses - the same accomodations might get put in for a student with fibromyalgia and one with cancer.
Yeah, and this issue absolutely starts at the high school level, and needs to be resolved there too. For one, colleges are often contacting high schools to check that accommodations, especially academic ones, were implemented during high school in order to verify and implement similar accommodations. So many of the 'fake' and 'weak' requests are from average-intelligence richy kids who pay for these psych or therapist notes. The problem is also that even if testing shows weak numbers for certain disorders, the notes themselves will often encourage high schools to still accommodate the students in some way. Or the parents will 'shop' for doctors who will give them the answer they want, rather than face the truth that their kid is a B or C students (even with inflation). The truth of the severity of the student's condition -- if they have one at all -- gets lost over time.
I wonder how much of this is started by the parents. My wife teaches kindergarten. She used to get an autistic or adhd kid once every few years. Now it’s 3-5 in every class. Her teacher friends all report the same. At this age it’s 100% the parent’s decision.
The consequences of having parents who prize a diagnosis are worrisome.
Just curious (our son was in Kindergarten last year with a shared para): How long has your wife taught Kindergarten, and have the standards of acceptable behavior by students changed in that time?
I struggle a bit with our decisions about our son, and the reports of behavior and encouragement to classify him as ADHD. I can’t help but think of my own childhood at his age, and whether we had a less regimented classroom than what seems to be expected these days.
15 years now. Hard to say on standards. They’ve moved much more to active play-based learning. So you’d think this would allow for young boys with lots of energy to succeed. In reality it means sitting quietly at one play station for 20mins using calm voices.
There’s likely been more change at home than at schools since we were kids. Especially since Covid. She says that before diagnosing, make sure you are doing zero screen time, he’s getting at least an hour to run around every day to exhaustion, and is only eating real food. Many of her “ADHD” kids are on the iPad at home and have pedialite or something for breakfast.
growing up immersed in a technical apparatus (internet and video games) that allows instant changes in form and identity generates these kinds of compensatory responses - and makes the hard truth of being only one person in one given body, set on a singular specific planet for a limited amount of time, painful and hard to adapt to
You arguing that Ovid readers didn't experience this way back when? :)
I find the change in attitude towards disability and widening of the definition of what a disability is are quite interesting. I have had chronic illness for half my life (mostly not fully diagnosed), which would absolutely not have been considered a disability in 2005 when I first became unwell, but today very much would be.
When I complete a form now, the definitions around disability would 100 per cent make it valid for me to say I have a disability, if I wanted to. I never do this because in my mind a disability is something more serious than my illness. That's just how I feel. And I guess defining myself as 'well' is part of how I deal with my health. But I think that's generational and a lot of people today would do the opposite and feel the opposite.