Cheats, Charity Cases and Inspirations Disrupting The Circulation of Disability-Based Memes Online

Disability & Society
ISSN: 0968-7599 (Print) 1360-0508 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdso20
Cheats, charity cases and inspirations: disrupting

the circulation of disability-based memes online
Bree Hadley
To cite this article: Bree Hadley (2016) Cheats, charity cases and inspirations: disrupting
the circulation of disability-based memes online, Disability & Society, 31:5, 676-692, DOI:
10.1080/09687599.2016.1199378
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Disability & Society, 2016
VOL. 31, NO. 5, 676–692
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1199378
Cheats, charity cases and inspirations: disrupting the

circulation of disability-based memes online
Bree Hadley
Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, QLD, Australia
Downloaded by [Universidad Nacional Colombia] at 10:08 03 September 2017
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

With the increasing part online self-performance plays in day-to-day Received 22 April 2015
life in the twenty-first century, it is not surprising that critiques of the Accepted 19 May 2016
way the daily social drama of disability plays out in online spaces KEYWORDS
and places have begun to gain prominence. In this article, I consider Disability; identity;
memes as a highly specific style or strategy for representing disability performance; meme; social
via social media sites. I identify three commonly circulating categories media
of meme – the charity case, inspiration and cheat memes – all of
which offer representations that people with disabilities find highly
problematic. I then investigate the ways in which disabled people
have begun to resist the representation and circulation of these
commonly circulating categories of memes, via the production of
counter or parodic memes. I focus, in particular, on the subversive
potential of these counter memes, within disability communities
online and within broader communities online.
Points of interest
• This article looks in detail at disability-themed memes circulated on the Internet.

• The research identifies ‘charity case’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘cheat’ memes as the most com-
monly circulating disability-themed memes on the Internet, including on many social
media platforms, as the means by which everyday citizens most often create and cir-
culate content on the Internet.
• The research identifies a number of cases in which artists or activists with disabilities
have created alternate memes, or counter-memes, to challenge the stereotypes that
many commonly circulating disability-themed memes still convey.
• The research identifies both potentials and challenges in using these counter-memes
as part of political activism.
Introduction
There is no doubt that living with disability, disease or illness can be difficult. The time, energy
and effort it takes to enact the day-to-day tasks of living can be physically and emotionally
CONTACT Bree Hadley bree.hadley@qut.edu.au

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Disability & Society 677
exhausting. The challenges come partly from pain, paralysis or amputation itself, and, of
course, partly from impairment that makes it necessary to come up with creative new ways
of doing things in inaccessible physical, social and institutional contexts. Many of the chal-
lenges come, however, not from the impairment but from social factors, including the fact
that disabled people all too frequently have their day-to-day lives interrupted by social
spectators, bystanders and passers-by demanding they perform their designated role in the
daily social drama of disability (cf. Hadley 2014). The daily social drama of disability is based
on established social scripts that set out expectations about how people should perform
disability, disease or illness (cf. Snyder and Mitchell 2000, 2001, 2006). In the West, these
scripts have long been based on a medical model of disability that sees it as an individual
problem to be identified, controlled and cured by doctors. In this script, disability is not a
difference like gender, race or class that contributes to the diversity of life. It is a defect, a
mistake, that any mature adult should want to rid themselves of, or at least reduce the burden
of, although there are always going to be a bunch of immature ‘bludgers’ or ‘malingerers’
who feign it for sympathy or services (cf. Siebers 2010, 11). In the past 30 years, activists have
sought to replace these scripts with a social model of disability that sees it as a result of
unsuitable social systems, infrastructures and institutions, a preferable model, although some
still have problems with its failure to acknowledge the phenomenology of pain, paralysis or
amputation (cf. Shildrick 2009/2012).
In daily life, performing one’s designated role in the social drama of disability ‘right’ is a
requirement, to prove one is disabled, doing one’s best to overcome that disability, and not
a bitter cripple, cheat or fraudster playing on the sympathy of taxpayers. The call to perform
comes from a range of sources – those social bystanders, passers-by and spectators-
become-performers in the daily drama who ask what is wrong, what they can do to help or
what evidence of need for support, services or accommodations such as a special seat,
parking or pension a disabled person can provide. The script, plot and staging of this drama
are well established. Those with disabilities work out what to say, do and share to make these
constant calls to perform pass swiftly, so they can get past the concerned, the curious or the
self-appointed social contract police, and get on with their day. Usually, people have set
detailed, digest and dismissive versions of their ‘story’ to use as required in the situation.
Usually, these stories do not represent what people would really like to say – ‘what does this
have to do with you?’, for instance – because they have worked out that this simply prolongs
the problematic encounter, particularly with social spectators who seem to think life really
is like an episode of a medical drama on television where doctors do eventually diagnose
and control all corporeal disorder. The disabled person is supposed to be happy to answer
this call to perform, happy to share their story with doctors and self-appointed diagnosti-
cians, because this is the quid pro quo for the sympathy, recognition and access to services.
Those who will not share with a ‘well-meaning’ stranger who is ‘only trying to help’, or only
trying to help make sure nobody ‘takes advantage of the taxpayer’, are seen as malingerers,
with suspect motives for seeking support and services. Unless the disabled person them-
selves has been so indoctrinated into the social script that they do see this as fair, or as a
chance to foster understanding amongst family, friends, acquaintances and even doctors –
and, as Margret Shildrick (2009/2012) has said, disabled people can be indoctrinated into
social discourse as readily as anyone else – this can be a source of frustration. This call to
perform a role ‘right’ means that the self-performance of disabled people can sometimes be
more high stakes than the standard self-performance of the sort everyone does, because
678 B. Hadley
disabled people are forced to share and overshare in a way that is not necessarily expected
of those marked by gender, race, class or other differences (Hadley 2014). There is, therefore,
more motivation for disabled people to seek out images, mechanisms and performative
meaning-making practices that can help them resist the continued circulation of these prob-
lematic social scripts which can have such a significant impact on their lives.
With the increasing part online self-performance plays in day-to-day life, it is not surprising
that the social drama of disability has begun to play out in similar ways on the Internet – or,
indeed, that disabled people have sought out mechanisms to resist the terms of this drama
on the Internet. In this article, I use performance theory to unpack the way disabled people
are using one mechanism – memes – to do this. I will look firstly at memes about disability
commonly circulated by non-disabled people, and the ways in which these perpetuate prob-
lematic stereotypes. I will then look at memes about disability circulated by disabled people,
and the ways in which they seek to subvert the problematic stereotypes presented in the
first set of memes. I will then consider what value these subversive memes might have in
challenging the common assumptions, attitudes and interactions that can make day-to-day
life difficult for people with disabilities. As Alison Hitt notes:
[d]iscussions of disability and computers and writing often focus on issues of access: accessible
web design, assistive technologies, accommodation. Less frequently do these discussions attend
to the use or composition practices of people with disabilities. (Hitt 2013, n.p.)
Although this is in a sense understandable, Hitt is correct in suggesting that analysing
self-performance online can provide insight into the performances and counter-
performances of disability we do not always see so clearly in daily life (Hadley 2014). This
makes it a worthwhile way of investigating the images, modes and mechanisms by which
disabled people seek to subvert the performative social practices that stereotype them as
‘cheats’, ‘charity cases’ or ‘inspirations’.
Modern online memes

A meme is historically defined as a thought, text, visual or video trope that manifests itself
across media again, and again, and again, in a given social, cultural or community context
(Rintel 2014). It is, as Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone (2012) says, a culturally meaningful
‘thought, idea or image: a cultural unit’. Characterised by intertextuality, recognisability and
repeatability, a meme conveys a complex set of ideas, ideologies and discourses in a swiftly
digestible package. Memes are, Logsdon-Breakstone continues, uses to create, confirm and
circulate specific ideas:
They grow, evolve, mutate and cause other memes to occur. They are the building blocks of
culture. They encompass everything mankind [sic] has come into contact with. They aren’t inher-
ently good or bad, but their influence can have positive or negative effects on how those living
in culture are treated. (Logsdon-Breakstone 2012)
As commentators such as Garland-Thomson (1996, 1997) argue, disability, and the bodies
of people with disabilities, have been the driver of many of western culture’s most persistent
memes, motifs or tropes – victims, villains, monsters, mutants and freaks amongst others.
In contemporary digital culture, a meme is defined more specifically as an image, with a
caption, circulated through social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or
Instagram, to communicate ‘some sort of cultural element’ (Hitt 2013) to readers, spectators
or whatever we would call an online audience. A modern online meme is usually constructed
using a culture-jamming strategy, in which a recognisable line, scene or saying from film,
television, theatre or other popular media is tweaked or turned to carry additional cultural
discourses, ideas or meanings, often via the addition of that extra line of commentary, and
it almost always has a comic, sarcastic or otherwise emotive tone. It is a recognisable, repeat-
able, ‘templatable’ (Rintel 2014), intertextual package. A meme, in this sense, is designed to
be circulated swiftly through online social networks through 100, 1000 or 100,000 ‘shares’
or ‘likes’. It is meant to be seen, understood and incorporated into a social spectator’s under-
standings of the topic, issue or idea it relates to in seconds, not thought about at length.
This makes memes insidious – as spectators we see them for perhaps 10 seconds, as we
scroll through a feed, then move on, often forgetting the image, even though we incorporate
its content into our thinking. In this sense, memes allow for an instant social performance,
an instant interpretation, that in its seeming simplicity and forgetability has the most insid-
ious effects in the public sphere. ‘Understanding memes is’ thus, as Rintel (2014) argues, ‘an
important way to keep a finger on current trends or the appeal of long term trends, but more
importantly memes tell us about new literacies, how people understand crises and how they
attempt to effect social change’. Making memes is a performative, world-making practice.
Memes often circulate in communities of affinity – for example, students, teachers or
mothers – where the producers of content, participants and spectators are one and the
same, because the do-it-yourself technology allows them to become prod-users of content
without special skills or effort.
Again, disability has been a driver of many modern online memes, across three main
categories – the ‘charity case’ meme, the ‘inspiration’ meme and the ‘cheat’ meme – all of
which have been decried by members of the disability community active in the online public
sphere as problematic stereotypes.
The ‘charity case’ meme

In the ‘charity case’ meme, an image of a disabled person is overlaid with a caption that
pushes a presumed-to-be-able spectator to take pity on, and help, poor sufferers to lead
better lives. The charity case meme is an example of what commentators have called ‘des-
peration porn’ (Ayers 2012; Pulrang 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). In its original pre-online form,
discussed in Sheila Moeschen’s (2013) book on charity, the charity case meme was created
via a poster child with a condition such as polio pleading with the spectator to help them
to walk. It was firmly in the medical model of disability, in which it was a child’s individual
problem, with which the spectator-as-Samaritan was able to help. An example that caused
a stir more recently was an Enable Scotland campaign, which circulated a campaign image
showing the face of a white woman with what might be presumed to be Down syndrome
facial characteristics with a caption saying ‘If I ate out of a dog bowl would you like me more’,
drawing attention to the fact that people are more benevolent to animals in need than
people in need (BBC News 2007; Mottram 2007). In its online form, the charity case meme
is still primarily linked to the medical model of disability, not to the social model of disability
that points much more strongly to the social causes of disability, and the social responsibility
to help fix disability. Giving charity is the responsibility of the good citizen, yes, but it is still
more an individual than a social matter. The Enable Scotland meme, for example, suggests
that good citizens taking an interest in the plight of the disabled can stop their suffering,
without necessarily going so far as to suggest what society as a whole might do.
680 B. Hadley
The charity case meme is made mostly by welfare agencies, friends or family trying to
raise desire to help those with a disability, disease or illness that puts them in a pitiful, des-
perate situation, and, in the process, feel good about the contribution they have made.
‘Posters seek short-term gratification of crisis support needs’, as Ayers (2012) notes, ‘with
little thought as to the implications of these images’ in the public sphere. The inculcation of
pity and charitable sentiment that characterises this sort of meme comes, as Moeschen
(2013) argues, straight out of seventeenth-century ideas espoused by enlightenment phi-
losophers such as Adam Smith, about intelligent man’s ability to see, pity and seek to lessen
the suffering of their fellow man – which, almost instantly, was also tied to the ideas about
intelligent man’s ability to spot fraudsters seeking to benefit from such pity that I will turn
to in a moment. In this sense, the charity case meme takes up where a range of cultural
performances to build benevolent sentiment in society – poster children, pageants, telethons
and so forth – leave off (Moeschen 2013, 12–13), the new technology allowing such signs,
symbols and stories more swiftly than ever (2013, 161). Just as twentieth-century changes
in enacting charitable sentiment allowed citizens to ‘help’ by pledging support for an agency,
purchasing tickets to shows, pageants or appeals put on by that agency, the charity case
meme allows social media users to ‘help’ via a ‘like’ or a ‘share’ – again allowing them to sup-
port the needy without actually engaging with the needy in a non-mediate encounter in
which a real relationship might emerge (2013, 41–43)
The ‘inspiration’ meme

In the ‘inspiration’ meme an image is overlaid with a caption saying ‘no excuses’ or ‘the only
disability in life is a bad attitude’ or some similar sentiment. In the most well-known inspi-
ration meme, for example, an image of once-lauded athlete Oscar Pistorius running with a
small child who also uses two prosthetic legs is overlaid with a Scott Hamilton quote that
reads ‘the only disability in life is a bad attitude’ (Rowley 2012). In another popular inspiration
meme, an arty black-and-white image of an attractive young white woman holding her
prosthetic feet in the air is captioned ‘What’s your excuse?’ (Bonzer 2013). In yet another
similar meme, side-by-side before and after images of a young white man with one leg who
has succeeded in building a weightlifter’s physique is titled ‘Excuses’, with the line ‘Let’s hear
yours again?’ below (Build a Hard Body 2012). The ‘inspiration meme’ is an instance of what
Stella Young, and many members of the disabled community, call ‘inspiration porn’ (Bunnika
2012; Duyvis 2013; Hartmann 2012; Kinbar 2013; Pulrang 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Romham a
bear 2012; Willitts 2012; Young 2012, 2014). Whether created through an image of a child
running with a pre-controversy Oscar Pistorius, or of children with cognitive, sensory or
corporeal differences joining sporting teams, or adults with corporeal differences doing
body building, this meme is always designed to inspire non-disabled people to strive for
more success in their own lives. With so many commentators noting their consternation
with this meme, it is the one disability-driven meme that has been subject to significant
critique in recent years, some of it scholarly (Hitt 2013), some of it taking the form of pleas
from social commentators, based in scholarship but delivered in lay language, to those
creating and circulating such memes to stop and think about what they are doing (Adams
2012; Bunnika 2012; Duyvis 2013; Hartmann 2012; Kinbar 2013; Pulrang 2013a, 2013b, 2013c;
Romham a bear 2012; Willitts 2012; Young 2014). The first problem, of course, is that the
‘inspiration meme’ is created by and for non-disabled people, co-opting images of disabled
people in service of non-disabled people’s social agendas. It advertises the benefits of over-
coming, to ‘inspire’ others to overcome their own problems, whether by encouragement or
by shaming. This co-option, as Willitts says, ‘[r]emoves a person’s humanity and individuality
in order to present them in a way that will goad a non-disabled person to buck up’ (2012,
n.p.). The second problem is that this meme also starts to goad or guilt disabled people into
trying to perform the role they have been cast into in the meme in real life:
Inspiration memes create a public argument that disability is a deficit that must either be inspir-
ing or pitiful … [They] forward arguments about overcoming … These images are intended to
invoke inspiration –whether it is inspiration to overcome our own obstacles, to shame us for
not ‘choosing’ success, and to be inspired by these achievements. (Hitt 2013; original emphasis)
The ‘inspiration meme’, like the medical model posters of the past that Moeschen discusses,
‘convey[s] a very specific but limited narrative about disability’, in which ‘… disability is a
condition that with hard work and treatment can be overcome’ (2013, 78–79). In this sense,
Romham a bear (2012) says it ‘call[s] on non-disabled people to buck up and stop making
excuses for not doing something, and guilt[s] other disabled people into feeling like crap
for not being able to pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps’. Again, the swift,
apparently simple circulation of such memes fails to consider their impact in the public
sphere, where they confirm the idea that whilst we have to help sufferers, we also have to
watch out for malingerers who feign suffering for sympathy and services, so that society is
not burdened by them.
The ‘inspiration meme’ thus confirms the idea, found in both medical and social models
of disability, that the best sort of cripple is the one who works to overcome their disability,
thus becoming an inspiration, and broadcasting characteristics of persistence, resilience
and problem-solving all of us should aspire to, so all of us can be productive members of
society. It affirms, in other words, that current social, systemic and institutional accommo-
dations are enough, and, if they are in place, then disability is more about ‘attitude’ than
actual pain, paralysis, amputation or impairment, an idea that critics of medical and social
models of disability regularly rile against (cf. Shildrick 2009/2012, 157). ‘[A]s long as non-
disabled people can happily dismiss disability as a matter of attitude’, Willetts says:
they then have no need to start tackling the real causes of disability such as inaccessibility
and discrimination. That disabled woman who complained because she couldn’t attend your
inaccessible meeting? She’s just got a bad attitude! A good attitude would presumably have
magicked up a ramp and a large-print leaflet. (Willitts 2012; cf. Young 2012)
The ‘inspiration meme’ celebrates the victorious overcomer, and blames the victim for any
inability to overcome. It only further obscures the fact that people with disabilities are, as
Hartmann (2012) says, neither victims, nor villains nor heroes, but just people, and can there-
fore – as the subsequent story of Oscar Pistorius shows – be nice, or nasty, or smart, or stupid
or anything else anyone else can be.
The ‘cheat’ meme

As these comments show, and as observed by Willetts, the ‘only disability in life is a bad
attitude’ meme ‘also fits in very well with the Government’s “scrounger” rhetoric around
disabled people’ (Willitts 2012). The charity case and inspiration memes thus create space
within a culture for the production of another common set of memes, circulating in another
sort of community, which conveys this rhetoric much more bluntly – but, for some reason,
682 B. Hadley
has not been subject to so much critique. This is the ‘cheat’ meme, in which an image of a
disabled or non-disabled person is overlaid with a comment suggesting they are just being
lazy to get benefits, support and services instead of being a productive member of society.
These memes suggest that if you can walk, talk or work at all, you are not a proper disabled
person, and, as a result, not properly deserving of a pension, wheelchair, walker or parking
space. In the most popular of recent years, an image of a middle-aged white woman standing
out of her wheelchair to reach a bottle on an upper supermarket shelf is titled ‘Alcohol’, with
the caption ‘Makes miracles happen’ below (Evans 2013). In a similarly popular meme, an
image of an older white man shaking a finger is titled ‘Back in my day’, with a caption below
saying ‘Wheelchairs were for disabled people, not fat people’ (Meme Collection 2013). In a
more localised version, an image of a pregnant white Australian woman with an Australian
flag and the words ‘such is life’ drawn on her belly, a flag and a beer in her hands, and a
cigarette in her mouth reads ‘Gonna go snort some fly spray …so I can get on the disability’
(Aussie Bogan Memes 2012).
The cheat meme is clearly intended to call attention to people cheating the taxpayer by
pretending to be disabled. Posted not so much by the welfare agencies, friends, family,
sympathisers and inspiration seekers as by self-appointed diagnosticians, who see them-
selves as social performance police, with some responsibility to stop the fat, lazy fraudsters.
The ‘cheat meme’ models the moment in the daily social drama of disability many people,
particularly those with non-visible pain or impairment, most fear. The moment described at
the outset of this article. The moment when bystanders, passers-by and spectators-
become-performers in this drama feel they have some right to force a disabled person to
justify their use of special support or services, and, as a result, a disabled person is forced to
figure out how to respond, explain, educate or confront their interrogator, in a way they
would really rather avoid. The cheat meme plays out the popular idea that there are lots of
lazy people who want to avoid working, or walking or otherwise taking responsibility for
themselves so they resort to deception to do this, and that this is an affront to society and
the work ethic of most members of society (cf. Moeschen 2013). The social scripts this still
popular idea creates – scripts in which people have the right to ask ‘what’s wrong with you’
– are, as Evans (2013) says, ‘why many people with disabilities who fall into the grey area
when it comes to mobility play down what physical ability they do have. The amount of
pressure to be either completely disabled or walk/move like everyone else is unbearable’. For
those who accept this social script – and, again, as Shildrick (2009/2012) says, both disabled
and non-disabled can be indoctrinated into these ideas, just as women might be indoctri-
nated into the social script that suggests they have cognitive and corporeal differences which
make them more suited to homemaking than men – taking time out of one’s day to discuss,
debate and educate about disability accommodations, who should get them, when and how,
is a small price to pay in return for the benevolence of the modern social welfare system.
The cheat meme, one of the most commonly circulating of all disability memes, also
points to the way in which notions of disability, class, race and gender intersect in dominant
social scripts. In many examples of the cheat meme, there is at least some gesture to the
social prejudice that suggests people from economically impoverished backgrounds, people
of colour or young people are more likely to cheat the system than well-to-do white men
such as the one represented in the earlier ‘Back in my day’ meme. In many examples of the
cheat meme, the cheat character is tied to a recognisably lower class character, such as a
young person who is on social welfare payments and not at work. The character represents
a social type that is despised, particularly in the current economic climate, where conserv-
ative politicians regularly suggest a need to rein in support for people who really should be
willing to work to support themselves to balance their country’s budgets. Although various
versions of the cheat meme are circulated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe,
Australasia and elsewhere, there are some cheat memes that show characters which are
quite specific to their own culture. In the earlier ‘Gonna go snort some fly spray’ meme, for
instance, the cheat character is clearly recognisable to an Australian audience as what would
in this culture be called a ‘bogan’, a distinctive social type somewhat similar to what those
in the USA would call ‘white trash’ or ‘trailer park trash’. The signifiers – the flag, the southern
cross on the flag, the ‘such is life’ quote from well-known Australian bushranger Ned Kelly
that is so popular with a specific class of Australians, the beer and the cigarette, as well as
the show of a naked midriff – are all recognisable ‘bogan’ traits for an Australian audience.
This cultural distinctiveness means the character in the ‘Gonna go snort some fly spray’ meme
may not be as immediately recognisable to US or UK audiences as more universal characters
in the US ‘Alcohol’ meme or the US ‘Back in my day’ meme. Given that austerity politics is on
the rise in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australasia and elsewhere, the
fact that the cheat meme circulates more regularly than the charity case meme, and the fact
that locally specific versions and variations are developed, is not necessarily surprising.
Challenging the circulation of disability-based memes

Naturally, these three categories are not the only problematic memes about people with
disabilities circulating within western culture. There are also, for example, other memes
where images of people with disabilities are co-opted to shame or make some sort of fun
of other members of the community. There is a ‘Fry from Futurama’ (i.e. a recognisable and
recognisably slow-witted character from a US television show) meme that reads ‘Not sure if
developmentally disabled … Or just Welsh.’ There is a ‘Suburban Mom’ (i.e. a socially recog-
nisable image of a selfish person for US audiences) meme that reads ‘Child has bad grades
… Must be a learning disability.’ There is a ‘Potato’ (i.e. a socially recognisable metaphor for
a stupid person for US audiences) meme that reads ‘I can count to … Potato’, amongst
others.
The charity, inspiration and cheat memes, however, are clearly amongst the moment
common, recognisable and persistent. These memes interpellate disabled and non-disabled
people alike into a performance of an all too recognisable script in which the best cripples
are the ones willing to work to cure, control or overcome their challenges, and the rest have
to be policed to be sure they are not simply fat, lazy, fraudulent people sponging off public
sympathies. Although it is true that there might be some people who feign their disability
– whether because they are a fraudster, or because they are a devotee, wannabee or pre-
tender who for some other reason wants to take on this identity – for the majority of legit-
imate disabled people these memes are problematic. They are literally problematic, as, for
instance, in the case of the meme that reads ‘I can count to … Potato’, where the creator
quite literally stole a photograph of a woman with Down syndrome without her or her carers’
permission for the purpose of producing a meme that does not represent her reality at all.
They are also symbolically problematic, in the sense that the swift, 10-second sight of such
images in a social media feed can and does impact on the way in which disabled and
684 B. Hadley
non-disabled people are forced to perform the daily social drama of disability in the public
sphere, and in a myriad of public spaces and place.
As Hitt (2013) says, to take back agency and authority over one’s own image ‘in the often
uncritical space of social media’ in the face of constant circulation of these sorts of memes –
on top of constant circulation of similar images and sentiments in film, television, theatre,
literature and other parts of social and institution life – can be tricky. This is because the
makers of these memes, and the sharers of these memes, can often be completely indoctri-
nated into the belief that they are being a Good Samaritan, and attached to the pride, power
and righteousness this Samaritan role can bring. For many, it can be literally inconceivable –
literally unthinkable, in the context of the terms that language, culture and convention gives
them to think about these things – that legitimate disabled people could be offended by
an attempt to advocate for them or an attempt to catch out cheats.
One can, of course, resist by challenging the makers and circulators of such sentiments,
one by one, on a case-by-case basis, as one comes across them in daily (online) life. But this,
like confronting and challenging the passer-by who takes it on himself or herself to policy
disability parking spaces, can be dangerous, and can be dismissed as at best a semi-public,
personal fight the rest of the world does not have any real reason to worry about, let alone
become involved with.
One can also resist by writing articles, blogs, comments in online or offline press forums,
and so forth, to call attention to the problem the makers and circulators of such sentiments
are causing. But this too can be dismissed as a personal fight that might be relevant to people
with disabilities, but again does not really warrant much more than a swift read from the
rest of the community.
In both cases, the challenges can fail to circulate too far beyond the disability community
itself, into the non-disabled community, and this makes it unlikely that there will be many
bystanders, passers-by or spectators – or whatever we would call online passers-by – who
change their opinion, or call on friends, family and colleagues to change their opinion, in
the sort of rippling circle of effect that is needed to truly challenge the currently circulating
charity, inspiration and cheat stereotypes. Accordingly, these responses, although personally
gratifying, may not carry as much political force as their authors would want if they are not
being seen, read and registered by the non-disabled community more broadly. ‘The disabled’,
as Hitt (2013) says, thus ‘need access to spaces where they can reclaim rhetorical agency and
participate in the composing practices that shape how they are represented’Hitt, 2013. This,
as I have argued elsewhere (Hadley 2014), is one reason why people with disabilities favour
popular and public space performance as platforms for their politics – the public, rhetorical
spaces where they are enable to re-enact and re-envisage the daily social drama of disability
from within, for a diverse set of spectators, that is not limited to other disabled people and
allies who happen to read the same press, watch the same show or gather in the same
(online) spaces.
This, perhaps, is why many disabled people have started constructing their own coun-
ter-memes – memes that challenge or context other commonly circulating memes – as part
of their own political resistance to the problematic stereotypes they are subject to. They
already have a clear grasp of the script, scenography and staging that subtends the charity,
inspiration, cripple and other memes already mentioned. They already have access to the
channels that support the circulation of such memes. So, with some vernacular creativity,
they have the capacity to try to tweak or turn these already-turned images again, comment
on them, and deconstruct them from within the same cultural form that creates the stere-
otypes in the first instance. This – taking the memes, turning the memes, planting other
ideas in the memes and thus in society – is a culture-jamming strategy in which disabled
people co-opt content and channel in service of their own agenda. To culture jam, as Harold
(2004, 189) says, is to co-opt and image, and the medium that conveys it, to unmake its logic,
undermine it and talk back to it:
The term ‘culture jamming’ is based on the CB radio slang word ‘jamming’, in which one disrupts
existing transmissions. It usually implies an interruption, a sabotage, hoax, prank, banditing,
or blockage of what are seen as the monolithic power structures governing cultural life …
Culture jamming is usually described as a kind of ‘glutting’ of the system, it is an amping up of
contradictory rhetorical messages in an effort to engender a qualitative change … [A]n artful
proliferation of messages. (Harold 2004, 192)
Culture jamming is a mode of resistance – and of building community, and community

capacity for resistance – that is characteristic of twentieth-century and twenty-first-century
activism. In the case of memes, it is one that disabled people can readily use as part of their
own struggle to take control over their self-performance of disability, and the broader social
performance of disability that contextualises it.
Hitt (2013) sees this happening in a specifically activist project like the ‘This is What
Disability Looks Like’ (2012) project, in which people with disabilities are invited to prepare
an image of themselves doing something that is representative of their daily reality with
this line pasted onto it and then post it online, including to a project Facebook page.
Van de Wetering (2013)sees this happening in social practices and social communities,
for instance via the production of animal memes – Autistic Eagle, Aspie Alligator, Tourette’s
Toucan, Dyslexic Duckling and so forth – that, with suitable commentary, allow disabled
people to share ‘the humour and frustration of our own lives with people who get it’. To share
the experience of thinking, moving, working and living differently, with different problems,
and thus also different lifestyles, desires, passions and definitions of success, with people
who ‘get it’. In one popular meme, an image of a so-called ‘chronic illness cat’ face against a
background of blue triangles radiating out reads ‘Finally appetite enough to eat’ above and
‘Not enough hand strength to open peanut butter jar’ below (Riley 2015). In another, an
image of a so-called ‘courage wolf’ face against a background of yellow triangles radiating
out reads ‘Having a disability’ above and ‘Is only playing life in a hard mode’ below (Meme
Generator n.d.).
There are also many similar practices which work not with animal memes, but instead
with other commonly circulating and recognisable memes, to promote similar sharing, com-
munity-building and community capacity-building. Many are visible on the Disability Memes
Facebook Page (2012). There is a turning of the popular ‘I don’t always … but when I do’
meme (laid over an image of a man used to advertise alcohol he always drinks in a turning
of a promotion recognisable to some groups of people from the USA, although not in coun-
tries like Australia) to read ‘I don’t always break my wheelchair … But when I do it doesn’t
get fixed for weeks’ (Disability Memes Facebook Page 2012). There is a turning of the popular
‘One does not simply …’ meme (laid over a character from The Game of Thrones describing
a mission one does not embark on lightly) to read ‘One does not simply go on a night out
… when in a wheelchair’ (Disability Memes Facebook Page 2012). There is a turning of the
popular ‘What if I told you…’ meme (laid over a character from The Matrix making a revelation)
to read ‘What if I told you … disabled people have a sense of humour’ (Disability Memes
686 B. Hadley
Facebook Page 2012). There is a turning of the popular ‘Fry from Futurama’ meme described
earlier to read ‘Not sure if staring at me because of the wheelchair … or because I’m hot’
(Disability Memes Facebook Page 2012). All are clearly seen as useful by disabled people
looking to take advantage of the popularity of these memes in many online communities,
to create their own counter-memes, to build community or to counter stereotype in the
wider community. Again, they share experiences and stories with those who ‘get it’.
There are also other more specific artistic and activist campaigns, such as Rachel Cohen-
Rottenburg’s (2013) construction of a ‘See the person … not the normalcy’ set of memes,
that turn, jam and mock the charity, inspiration and cheat memes described. For instance,
an image of an ostensibly normal older white man driving a car which reads ‘I love someone
with normalcy … Share if a normal person has enriched your life’ (Cohen-Rottenburg 2013)
is an attempt to turn the plethora of images of disabled people bearing these sorts of cap-
tions and calls to action.

There are many more such memes on sites such as the Disability Memes page on Facebook.
Some are clearly political, such as the ‘This is what disability looks like’ memes, or the ‘See
the person … Not the normalcy’ memes, emerging from Cohen-Rottenberg’s activist par-
ticipation in the discourses of social media. Others are more community or personally moti-
vated memes emerging from within disabled people’s participation in the discourses of
social media, acknowledging the reality of pain and the reality of the social construction of
disability, disease and illness at once. All are designed to get others online to smile, laugh,
think and look at disability in realistic terms. Many commentators see these as a useful
component of disabled people’s politics. Hitt (2013), for instance, suggests ‘[m]emes, as a
dominate and widely circulating genre, offer access for the disabled to speak for themselves
about issues that affect them, positing themselves as agents in a medium that usually strips
them of that agency’ via the circulation of the ‘inspiration memes’ which Hitt herself and
others take issue with.
Defamiliarising the familiar?

Using memes and counter-memes as a political resistance strategy can hold great potential.
To date, however, few commentators have considered the impact or success of specific sets
of counter-memes in challenging stereotypes. This is a necessary addition when it comes to
assessing the political potential of producing memes and counter-memes because turning
memes, images and messages from within always carries the risk that spectators will fail to
see, read or register the new political commentary conveyed in the newly turned meme.
This risk is not unique to disabled people’s use of creative, comic political strategies such as
memes and counter-memes. As Shepard (2011) says, activism, and participation in commu-
nity activism where people challenge the power structures that oppress them in day-to-day
life, is often characterised by the playful, comic approach we see in some of these memes,
whatever community of affinity is taking part. By play pranks, jamming popular cultural
practices and ‘improvising with their roles and their lives rather than following stage direc-
tions’ (Shepard 2011, 28), people can ‘enact new selves, social relationships, and means of
politics’ (2011, xc). They can ‘create community as well as bring new political actors into the
arena’ (2011, 272). But, at the same time, dominant cultural images, and the dominant cultural
channels of distribution that convey, confirm and consolidate them, can be contaminated
with a remarkable number of counter-messages without necessarily coming undone. This
is because the sheer familiarity of the image, form and message means spectators can, in
those first few seconds, still see, read and react according to the established, expected mes-
sage their own past experience, and their own position in the social field, leads them to look
for. If that past experience, and that position in the social field, does not lead them to look
for disability politics in an image or a meme, they may not look for it, may not see it or may
see it as part of the phenomenon it is trying to challenge. This is especially likely if the coun-
ter-message or commentary is too subtle, or too far outside the scope of their own experi-
ence, for them to really see and make sense of it. This means that if a spectator simply sees
a turned meme, decontextualised, in their own feed that does not carry any other disability
politics, so they do not have specific cues to set them up to think the meme might be taking
the mickey out of a stereotype, then they might just see it as that stereotype. This risk is
particularly present online where, as Moeschen says in her study of the construction of the
charity mindset, ‘the saturation of information, images and sites’ (2013, 161) can make it
challenging to grapple with the content in considered, meaningful ways. The content is just
a decontextualised image in a fast-moving thread, so if the spectator does not have time or
motivation or some instant burst of meaning to prompt them to click through to see it further
or see it in its original context, they may ignore it, or interpret it out of context without
realising it.
It is, for example, easy to see how memes like these might be misread as part of the ste-
reotype rather than parodies of the stereotype. For example, memes such as that saying ‘You
say you have an invisible disability … I demand proof so that I can determine whether you
are lying or not’ (Bridger 2012) above and below an image of a judgemental-looking white
man, or the one that says ‘Thinks being obese is a disability … makes the disabled line at
Disneyland 15 minutes longer, effectively cancelling out the one cool thing about being
crippled’ (Quick Meme n.d. ), might easily be misread to support the passer-by’s right to
question a potential fraudster. The familiarity of the ‘taxpayers’ right to police for fraud’ rhet-
oric mentioned earlier, along with the non-familiarity of how frustrating this rhetoric is for
disabled people, and non-familiarity of humorous comedy about this rhetoric within disabled
communities, can mean the meaning is not obvious to spectators. They can as a result mis-
read the motivations, and assume the author is saying ‘yes, I support the austerity and
accountability agenda that asks me to report fraudsters leaching off society’, or is making
fun of disabled people who get frustrated when asked to prove themselves, particularly if
they are passing over this image quickly as they scroll through a social media feed.
The problem is only likely to be more pronounced for memes that deploy symbols or
language – such as zebras (to represent a rare disease that nonetheless does exist) or spoons
(representing energy that needs rationing) – that may not be familiar beyond the disability
community. These can be taken as part of the phenomenon they try to challenge, or, simply,
as confusing. As a result, they may not have the power to take hold or be taken as parody
beyond a particular community of affinity in which they were created and in which their
circulation commenced. They may be dismissed as mere entertainment, misread or made a
resource in service of the stereotyping they struggle against (Shepard 2011, 271).
This does not mean such memes and counter-memes are altogether unsuccessful. In
many cases, they may well still build the bonds that strengthen a community and create
critical mass, which can support a range of other sorts of activism. In this sense, they are
successful in supporting the development of bonding social capital, and self-empowerment,
in a disability community, even if they are not so successful in building bridging social capital,
688 B. Hadley
between disabled and non-disabled communities, and educating non-disabled communi-

ties. They can create a counter public sphere even if they do not counter the norms circulating
in the dominant public sphere. There may, however, be need for a more comprehensive
strategy – which goes beyond turning a meme and sending it out through the typical chan-
nels – to achieve the latter outcomes.
As indicated earlier, what makes memes and counter-memes more susceptible to mis-
reading than some other sorts of activism is the nature of online space as a new sort of public
space or ‘agora’ in which a community can come together to negotiate ideas, discourses and
dominant social scripts. For activists, it is harder to ‘camp’ in online space than it is to camp
in offline space, because there is no way to push their sign or their slogan in front of the
passer-by so forcefully that they simply cannot ignore it the way they can in a street. Which
means there is no way to make sure that their cause – if not the argument they convey to
support their cause – cannot be missed by passers-by. It is harder to be sure their content
will be seen in the context they set around it. It can easily end up in a far corner of cyberspace,
hidden from the public, along a path they never travel, in sites, sub-sites and threads they
never see. It is, therefore, hard to be sure that people will click through, read and register
the commentary, context and commentary of a meme such as the ‘I demand …’ meme, rather
than letting it flick by in a feed in a flash, presuming it even makes it into their feed in the
first place.
Analysis of this issue suggests that serialising memes and counter-memes, sending out
multiple counter-memes, from multiple sources, via multiple makers and sharers, with links
non-disabled makers and sharers might already be interested in, might be necessary to
increase the likelihood that non-disabled people will see, click through to and consider
disabled people’s politically motivated memes. This is particularly true in cases where they
are turning, jamming or playing with recognisable tropes in more subtle ways. Although
she does not discuss it, this may, for instance, be the reason why Hitt (2013) sees the one set
of counter-memes she discusses – the ‘This is what disability looks like’ memes – as politically,
socially and personally successful in allowing disabled people to take back their own images.
Because this is a set of memes that is multiplied, serialised, in a mode that prompts new
people to constantly produce more memes, promoting more sharing, in more places, than
might otherwise happen. A set of memes that also contains some potentially confrontational,
or controversial aspects, engaging as it does in representations of people with disabilities
as full, social, sexual, adult citizens in a way that western culture does not always respond
well to (cf. Shildrick 2009/2012). In this sense, if the ‘This is what disability looks like’ memes
work, it may well be partly because they are co-opting the meme, as a form, on Facebook,
as a challenge to dominant images of disability circulating on Facebook, but also partly
because makers and sharers prompted literally thousands of people to produce, circulate
and push their family, friends and colleagues to click through to this set of memes. This
increases the chance that the ‘This is what disability looks like’ memes will capture some sort
of attention in the public sphere, in online spaces and places, and create the rippling circles
of effect – the ‘viral’ effect – that tends to characterise successful online self-performances,
commentary, critique and challenges to stereotypes, and forestall against the risk of them
being recuperated back into typical discourses, ideas and meanings without much thought.
If memes and counter-memes circulate in this way, there is a much greater chance that
they will become part of the negotiations which typify the dominant public sphere, and
push for the emergence of new ideas in the dominant public sphere. It is an outcome that
may not be possible if a meme’s circulation is narrow, decontextualised and thus not nec-
essarily creating the cutting edge commentary or comedy for people who do not fully under-
stand the intertextuality, recognisability and repeatability this meme’s maker is drawing on
to make their point. If it is, as Van de Wetering says, ‘known only to the people who make
[it]’ (2013, n.p.), or funny only to the people who make it, and their community.
Conclusion
In this article, I have analysed the ways in which making memes and counter-memes, as a
sort of politicised social practice, might resist the dominant discourses about disability, dis-
ease and illness that can play such a big part in how disabled people are called on to perform
in the daily social drama of disability. If there are a ways of performing particular ideological
and discursive positions that are characteristic of the Internet today – the Internet today as
a new form of ‘agora’ in which the public negotiate ideas – these sorts of memes are certainly
amongst them. They are positioned as fun, frivolous distractions from day-to-day life. But,
as demonstrated here, this is in fact one of the things that helps them to do productive,
performative, world-making cultural work. This, certainly, is what happens with the charity,
inspiration and cheat memes that have become a source of consternation for many com-
mentators. When this impact is considered, it is not surprising that disabled people would
want to push back, and to push back by producing their own memes and counter-memes.
What this analysis shows, however, is that taking back the channels by which people in our
culture communicate, perform, reproduce or ridicule dominant ideas about disability as a
political or activist strategy does have both potentiality and risks, for people with disabilities
looking to find a platform for their activist politics – and, in a broader sense, anybody looking
for a platform for their activist politics. The density, proliferation, pace and ephemerality of
online space means it can be difficult to disseminate these memes beyond the disability
community, and do so in a way in which spectators will have some chance of registering the
commentary, and comedy, that makes them different to – turns or jams of – the charity,
inspiration and cheat memes themselves. The lesson for would-be users of the very vernac-
ular form of activism would, therefore, be to be clear about the outcomes a meme or coun-
ter-meme is created to achieve, and, if the aim is to go beyond setting up a counter public
sphere, and actually challenge the dominant public sphere to change shape, scope or obses-
sions, it is necessary to adopt a multi-faceted strategy. It is necessary to turn or tweak the
meme, but, at the same time, come up with ways to increase its circulation into a number
of online communities, a number of times, with a number of options for new people to take
up the idea too, to give it the best chance to gain traction in an overcrowded online world,
where so much content flies by so swiftly that it fails to register in conscious and thought-
provoking ways.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
690 B. Hadley
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Cheats, Charity Cases and Inspirations Disrupting The Circulation of Disability-Based Memes Online

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Cheats, charity cases and inspirations: disrupting the

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

• This article looks in detail at disability-themed memes circulated on the Internet.

CONTACT Bree Hadley bree.hadley@qut.edu.au

Modern online memes

The ‘charity case’ meme

The ‘inspiration’ meme

The ‘cheat’ meme

Challenging the circulation of disability-based memes

Culture jamming is a mode of resistance – and of building community, and community

tions and calls to action.

Defamiliarising the familiar?

between disabled and non-disabled communities, and educating non-disabled communi-

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• This article looks in detail at disability-themed memes circulated on the Internet.