Remember Hellen Keller jokes when you were a kid (talking to millennials here)?
They were tasteless, and definitely only OK because of the time, but you have to admit they were funny. My favorite was always:
Did you know Helen Keller had a dog? Neither did she.
And closely related:
Why did Helen Kellers dog run away, you’d run too if your name was dgergbbfdnbj
Fast forward 30+ years and we’ve since learned that mocking someone with disabilities is ableist and will get you canceled — but did you know some Gen Z’ers question whether Hellen Keller was real?
Yes, Miracle Worker truthers are apparently a thing.
If you had that statement on your crisp new post-COVID Chaos Bingo card, congratulations.
The perplexing discovery of yet another conspiracy-soaked subculture was brought to light by a man on Twitter named Daniel Kunka who shared his shock at learning that his nieces and nephews apparently think Helen Keller – famous for overcoming blindness and deafness to become a public figure – was a big old phony baloney.
As Kunka tells it he at first didn’t believe his young relatives’ disbelief.
The kids’ skepticism apparently boiled down to “Helen Keller couldn’t have been blind and deaf and done everything she did because that sounds too…hard.”
Besides rather missing the point of why Keller is a famous, inspirational figure it’s the sort of conspiracy brain logic that has people doubting that the moon landing ever occurred because they didn’t see it with their own eyes and have no personal frame of reference for it.
Kunka thought this lingering brain fart was unique to his own ignorant young relations but what he found next shook him to his core.
There is apparently an entire, er, community of people who believe that Helen Keller was faking at least one of her disabilities.
I still thought I was getting trolled so I asked if I was getting trolled and they were adamant — Helen Keller was a fraud.
So then I did some Googling to find out some relevant information to prove her existence and found this: https://t.co/vnjcPhgAeS
— Daniel Kunka (@unikunka) January 5, 2021
What the what?
Kids these days are apparently very big on the old adage “seeing is believing” though they have no doubts about Abe Lincoln it would seem.
Like all inexplicable and annoying things, the real culprit was soon apparent: TikTok.
Apparently, Helen Keller skepticism began on the social media app and spiraled from there.
Kunka pointed out that we have spent the last 4 years living under the most conspiracy-friendly President in history, who routinely labels everything fraudulent, without evidence.
Yeah, that probably hasn’t helped.
As if the brains of kids who spend their whole days jockeying for social media points on their phones and swapping increasingly deep-fried memes needed any help rotting.
People were equal parts incredulous and concerned by the face-palming levels of ignorance being proudly displayed by the youngs and responded with a mix of shock and good old fashioned evidence.
Such evidence includes the fact that Helen Keller was a real person and alive not that long ago.
People were also quick to point out that ableism is commonplace, with the abilities of the differently-abled often questioned.
Others chimed in and suggested that the best way for this horrified uncle to combat the ignorance of his young relatives was to show them the ways other people who are deaf and blind are currently doing the very things that Helen Keller once did.
After his thread went viral and the suggestions poured in Kunka thanked those who had commented for their guidance and left a warning: If you see kids in your family turning into mini conspiracy theorists… you may want to nip that in the bud.
