The disabled character from 24 years ago getting me harassed today | Global News Avenue

I could feel the anger rising. How do I face this abuse again 20 years later?

My name is Alex. But more and more young people are shouting “Timmy” to me on the street. This isn’t an admission of guilt – it’s ridicule because I use a wheelchair.

I should have ignored it, but this time, I reacted. I turned around to see a group of teenage boys giggling in front of me. “I heard you,” I told them. “I know exactly who Timmy is.”

I know this because although we don’t share a name, I’ve felt Timmy’s presence since I was a kid—never by choice.

He is a disabled character in the darkly humorous and satirical cartoon series “South Park” who is in a wheelchair and can only shout his own name loudly and uncontrollably.

Growing up during the show’s original peak at the turn of the century, Timmy followed me through school hallways, classrooms and playgrounds, no matter my friends, social skills or relatively good grades.

Now, I’m in my 30s and he’s back. For the third time in a year, this time I was wheeling to the local train station and heard the familiar, rough drawl: “Timmaaah.”

A laugh. A snicker. Assumptions that I either wouldn’t hear or couldn’t understand.

When I confronted the group of boys, one of them feigned innocence and claimed that he had been talking to his friend.

“You’re not,” I said. “I’ve been watching this show since before you were born.”

I was initially confused as to how this phenomenon had returned to a new generation of young people 24 years after the character first appeared.

The answer lies in social media, especially TikTok, where hundreds of user-edited clips of Timmy and audio of him saying his name are sparking a renaissance.

TikTok users often participate in trends by using audio from popular videos and overlaying it with their own clips.

This is what many people have done with Timmy, with the name being used as a punchline or played over irrelevant footage of wheelchair users, reinforcing harmful and dehumanizing stereotypes.

Ironically, the character of Timmy was presented with warmth in South Park, with depth given to the character by co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

True to the show’s unflinching satire, his disability isn’t necessarily the brunt of the jokes.

Timmy is a recognized member of the class: he fails to complete his homework, faces adversity, and causes trouble for his disabled best friend, Jimmy. His personality is expressed through the different intonations in his voice when he says his name.

In an episode of Timmy 2000, he won a Battle of the Bands as the lead singer of Metallica. The adult characters’ reactions are overprotective and condescending – a strong criticism of the way society treats people with disabilities.

Nearly 20 years ago, a poll conducted by Ouch! – the former name of the BBC’s disability department – crowned Timmy the Most popular disabled TV characters.

The late Seattle Times disability critic Jeff Shannon described Timmy as one of the most “The most progressive, provocative and socially relevant disability humor ever presented on American television”.

“Instead of telling viewers what to think, ‘South Park’ challenged[viewers’]own fears and vulnerabilities about disability, and Timmy prevailed,” he wrote in 2005.

Stone and Parker discussed in interviews how carefully and purposefully They integrated him into the show.

But twenty years later, the fact remains that upon meeting Timmy, certainly upon first sight, many people find him offensive.

South Park has always worked on multiple levels – delivering shockingly taboo shock value for schoolchildren while delivering biting satire for adults.

None of these nuances are reflected in the TikTok trend, which reduces Timmy, as well as wheelchair users and disabled people, to one-dimensional ridicule.

This twisted revival is similar to Joey DeaconIn the 1980s, a man with cerebral palsy appeared in “Blue Peter,” sparking playground jeers with children shouting “You’re Joey!” and “Put on Joey’s face.”

TikTok said its community guidelines strictly prohibit hate speech and content that promotes discrimination, violence or harm based on disability.

It removed videos flagged by the BBC as violating this policy. But it doesn’t remove Timmy’s voice used in several other videos – meaning it can be used again.

TikTok did not respond to specific questions about removing the offensive audio.

Ciaran O’Connor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank focused on online hate, said voice was a “blind spot in TikTok’s content moderation practices”.

He said that even if a platform removes a video with “original sound,” the audio is often not removed.

This makes it a common way to bypass TikTok’s content moderation guidelines – including harassment and abuse.

Bullying and trolling of people with disabilities remain common online. A survey of 4,000 disabled people by charity Scope showed that three in 10 said they had experienced this.

My last experience of being verbally abused on the street struck me not with the abuse, but with the lack of remorse even when challenged.

This reflected an experience last year when teenagers again laughed at me, shouting “Timmy is going to run us over.”

Ross Hovey, a wheelchair user and Liverpool fan, recently posted an almost identical experience on LinkedIn.

As he traveled to Liverpool to watch a match with his 79-year-old father and care assistant, a group of young men shouted “Timmy” to him. They also tried to claim innocence when Ross challenged them with “I hear you.”

The abuse raises questions about the role platforms should play in providing context for young users.

“Short, context-free clips and participatory trends are at the core of TikTok’s popularity,” O’Connor said.

“This is often good, positive, and funny… but when these updates are used to disparage, ridicule, or slander others, it does raise the question of whether TikTok should be doing more to inform or educate users.”

Alison Kerry, head of communications at Scope, told the BBC: “These ableism trends are very harmful. They don’t exist in a vacuum, so social media trends can quickly lead to people facing abuse in their daily lives.”

The real-world implications are certainly becoming more apparent.

Disabled TikTokers have been posting about their experiences, and one teacher recently wrote a post on Reddit titled “Tired of the Timmy Trend,” expressing frustration with the lack of awareness among students.

That’s why I issued a challenge to the teens at the station—I feel a responsibility not just to my 12-year-old self (who once burst into tears feeling helpless at similar ridicule), but to today’s students with disabilities.

When I came back the second time, after I turned to leave, the boys called out “Timmy” again.

“Why?” I asked forcefully. silence. One of them eventually apologized, admitting that the behavior was wrong.

“Talk to your friends,” I plead, feeling a glimmer of hope. “Maybe then they’ll listen.”