A YouTuber — the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world, in fact — made an emotional video in which he paid for a bunch of functionally blind people’s restorative surgery.
Yes, MrBeast may have done it for the clicks and social recognition — most likely it was not purely out of Jesus-like altruism. But what it was, in the end, was a net positive for the people who can see now. Decent people would take the W and call it a day.
But the Social Justice™ outrage machine must be fed.
No good deed goes unpunished.
First, he was accused of creating “charity porn,” according to the BBC:
The clip, which has over 71 million views, has divided opinion with some calling it “charity porn”.
The 24-year-old, real name Jimmy Donaldson, tweeted in response to suggestions that the video was made purely for financial gain, saying the “average MrBeast video lost $1,500,000 last year”.
He also argued the video did “raise awareness.”
Now a libbed-out “accessibility” guru at TechCrunch has authored an ultra-cringe thinkpiece in which he accuses Mr. Beast of perpetuating “systemic ableism”:
Via TechCrunch:
The video was more ableist than altruistic. In the broadest lens, the biggest problem with wanting to “cure” blindness is that it reinforces a moral superiority of sorts by those without disabilities over those who are disabled. Although not confronted nearly as often as racism and sexism, systemic ableism is pervasive through all parts of society. The fact of the matter is that the majority of abled people view disability as a failure of the human condition; as such, people with disabilities should be mourned and pitied. More pointedly, as MrBeast stated in his video’s thumbnail, disabilities should be eradicated — cured.
MrBeast Curing the Blind is Bad! pic.twitter.com/t7rj3T3yJH
— Doobus Goobus (@DoobusGoobus) February 6, 2023
Uh, what? Disabilities shouldn’t be cured?
Everything has to be “systemic” to these people to the point of self-parody.
“Ableism,” if we must adopt the bankrupt Social Justice™ terminology, is deeply ingrained in the human psyche because we are hard-wired evolutionarily to preference fitness as a function of survival. Does that make it “systemic” or necessarily wrong?
Ancient Spartans reportedly (although this legend has been disputed) threw disfigured babies off of a cliff to get rid of them. Social norms have evolved (in most places) since then, but the natural instinct is still there that physical disability in one of its members is, in fact, a liability that the social group assumes. They hunt more slowly; they’re less mobile; they’re more vulnerable to attack; extra resources must be devoted to that individual’s care.
But anyway, the modern West is absolutely nothing like Sparta in its alleged treatment of the infirm. If anything, the West is too accommodating to disability. You can’t build a 7-Eleven without a hundred mandatory regulatory accommodations for the handicapped like wheelchair ramps for the sake of accessibility. “Special education” is an entire field of study that trains teachers to take on unique learning disabilities. The entire economy was locked down for two years for the sake of a virus with a negligible death rate, ostensibly to protect grandmothers and the “immunocompromised” with weak immune systems.
All this goes to show, once again, that no gesture of goodwill is ever enough for these people.