Like Captain Planet, but instead of saving the Earth they encourage children to eat fast food
What's the problem with "Wheels" exactly? At the time that was also a hip way to refer to a vehicle. It was probably the coolest name they could have given him in that cultural context. Should we have tip toed around the topic and never acknowledged his condition or what? People are so fucking strange and self righteous sometimes
I think it's the fact that it's making his whole identity about having a disability. But it's an ad aimed at selling children fast food so I don't know what people expect.
Or, it's selling his "weakness" instead as "coolness". I don't think it's disrespectful at all, especially when you consider that ad was made probably around 1989.
I can't speak for people with disabilities as I don't have that experience myself. I just know that when we had to take sensitivity training at work there was a big part about being careful with your language when you refer to people disabilities so that you aren't identifying them solely as that. Like saying a person with a handicap vs. handicapped. This would be kind of the same thing. I don't have an opinion on it personally and like you said it was the 90s, but I think that's why the person in the Twitter was complaining about it.
I'm sure that was their thought process. My issue is that ignoring the cultural context like they are doing there is pretty dumb.
I mean even today if an ad did this I'm not sure it would be offensive but it damn sure wasn't back then. It was actually part of a movement to be more inclusive that started around that time. Call it cynical pandering if you want, but that kind of stuff is literally part of the reason that today people try to be more sensitive to differences between people.
I'm with you, the ad obviously isn't trying to make the kid look bad. The twitter person just doesn't have the same perspective and probably isn't old enough to have grown up with that sort of earlier diversity stuff. They're looking at it with a modern lens.
Yeah, I know that's what they are doing. I think it's an unhealthy tendency and it feels on the rise.
Hey I really appreciate you taking the training seriously and incorporating it into how you treat people. 👍🏻
/sincere
Wait, does you closing the sincere tag mean the rest of your day you'll be disingenuious?
Disclaimer: In no way do I endorse walking up to people and calling them things. ASK how they want to be addressed first, FFS.
I've had friends with ironic nicknames, including disabled folks. Sometimes, the situation just sucks and they seek dark humor in many things, including watching people squirm with a cringe inducing nickname.
I certainly don't. Honestly, it's so deliciously underhanded and creative. It's rare to witness and I love it.
To avoid doxing myself, let me concoct an example. Imagine meeting a blind person who introduces themselves as X-ray (or Cyclops, or Odin). Yikes. You dance around it at first, but they just smell blood in the water: "why are you avoiding my name?" I mean, you have to laugh, but that just gets you in more "trouble."
And then theres people like me. I genuinely don't remember new peoples names.
So I'm just like "Hey, uhhhhh, whats yer name.......shit, what is it again?"
"Cyclops"
"Really? I forgot CYCLOPS for a one eyed midget??? How'd I mess THAT up?"
And they're just giving me this bewildered stare.....except with an eyepatch.
A trick I use: Cop to having that weakness and use repetition to drill it into your skull.
Hi, Jen. Just to let you know, I'm one of those "can't remember names" people. I'm trying something to fix that: I'm going to use your name, Jen, a bunch in this conversation so I don't forget. Thanks Jen.
Then lean into how ridiculous this sounds after a while, like it's a game; you may get a laugh or two. It's silly, but people appreciate it when you take an interest in treating them right. You'll also find this is a very common "problem" and is very relatable to most people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtUuT8AJjQ
Censorship warning: they redacted the word midget for some reason
Do people have a problem with that now? That’s the coolest name he could have gotten
Why not complain about the nerd?
•
That’s the coolest name he could have gotten
Excuse me, there are many far cooler names:
- Mephistopheles
- Merlin
- Megatron
- Michael
Everyone is upset about using a name to highlight an attempt to be inclusive of a person with different abilities.
No one is calling out the kid literally named after the concept developed by a racist eugenicist to demonstrate that blacks and indigenous peoples were mentally inferior to the English.
Yep, checks out.
Well the IQ test concept was invented by the French to test whether children with learning disabilities needed to be separated from the general class population
My comrade in crisis, you are either misinformed or intentionally misinforming others.
Setting aside the fact the character is called "I.Q." and not "I.Q. Test," the concept of IQ, and the first test, was invented by the English statistician Francis Galton. Galton believed in eugenics and was a racist, and his research was in the pursuit of proving his racist beliefs.
Alfred Binet and two other french colleagues made their own IQ test almost 50 years later, and they eventually abandoned it because they felt IQ was better studied qualitatively.
You didn't mention it, but for the sake of dispelling another common piece of misinformation you might have, Lewis Terman brought the abandoned Binet test to the US and popularised what we now typically refer to as "I.Q. Test." Why did he do it? Eugenics!
TL;DR: IQ as a concept and IQ testing was born from eugenics, and the popularised concept in the west today was based on a later test developed by the French and adapted to suit American eugenics by a racist. To their credit, the French abandoned standardized testing because it was a bad way to look at intelligence.
I can track what they're going for with most of them except "Jaws".
(edit: maybe he talks a lot?)
I figured it had something to do with eating and I found this:
Jaws is an expert on nature and the outdoors, as well as navigation. He is very socially aware and caring, and especially in regards to the natural environment. He is also occasionally presented as a voice of reason, retaining a cooler and more normal disposition in the wake of other members' antics or strange occurrences. His name is derived from his older characterization, in which he was said to be the Super Official Burger King Quality Taste Tester, as well as an expert on food, specifically the food served at Burger King. However, these details were largely ignored in later materials.
Observe the doping process whereby, in making the words in the sentence puns, more space is created between and into which more puns are "crammed", creating a new material with superpunducting properties. In this paper we show that
My day, and perhaps life, has been improved by reading this comment. I would like to subscribe to future pun science literature.
Nobody even mentioning Drake?
The guy played a character nicknamed Wheels in the Canadian TV series Degrassi Jr High.
And it's about as bad as you'd expect.
No it's okay, they put a stylish circle around the W and have him a jean jacket so we know he's cool and down to earth.
I remember this. It was very much a product of the late 80's/early 90's that I'm surprised they kept it going until 1999. Of course, I don't remember them doing much of anything besides eating at Burger King.
What a sad continuation.
"Wanna go to space???"
"Yeah!!!"
7 years later
"Wanna go to BK?"
"alright."
this was like 10 years after we’d stopped naming shows after how obese the kids were in ‘em, so, a kind of progress.