16
votes
My disabled son’s amazing gaming life in the World of Warcraft
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- Title
- My disabled son - 'the nobleman, the philanderer, the detective'
- Published
- Feb 7 2019
- Word count
- 3463 words
I'm torn about this article.
When I fell ill, I was forced to drop out of high school. I'd never been particularly social outside school, so when I became essentially housebound for the first few years of my illness I only had a few close friends who stuck with me. Luckily I randomly decided to join a forum for a webcomic and started posting in the creative writing section. It was a social outlet that wasn't as exhausting as interacting with people in person, and I met a bunch of folks who became good friends (and one person who became my current partner).
My parents didn't understand it at first. It helped that eventually I met several of my online friends in person, making it more "real" to them, but after my mum read this article she mentioned to me that she wishes she'd understood sooner.
I would guess that many of us on tildes would agree that online friendships, whether formed in forums, chat rooms, or gaming guilds, have as much potential to be deep and meaningful and fulfilling as ones formed in-person. That's true no matter who you are, and when other people devalue those friendships it's a weird feeling. But there's an added importance of online friendships for many chronically ill and disabled people like me; for some of us, the majority of our friendships are online. When people scoff at those friendships and talk about how the internet is less "real" and how kids these days are so antisocial, spending their time on the computer and their phone... it stings.
So on a personal level, this article spoke to me. I don't know what it's like to slowly become more disabled and face an early death, but I do know what it's like to feel isolated and alone because of physical limitations and find friendship online. And if this helps some people realize that it's no less "real," that's great.
But on another level, the way this article is written makes me uncomfortable. I know it's one story, but unfortunately it reinforces some harmful ideas about disability. It isn't an issue when you take such a personal story by itself, but when taken in context with the common ways disability is portrayed in media...
I'm having a hard time articulating it, so for now I'll just link this tweet by a reporter who writes about disability.
My hope is that will change as the millennial generation ages since they have so much experience with online gaming and friendships.
I have very little experience with the disabled and I did not pick up on that. Thank you for pointing it out. Looking at it now, I can see it has a bit of the same problems as the "Jerry's Kids" fundraiser.
My big takeaway was how the parents missed an opportunity to understand their son in a very different way, so as someone with kids, my hope is that others see that message and take it to heart.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
The saddest part for me wasn't what the article focused on as being sad, but the fact that while Mats was alive his parents never understood what gaming meant to him. Perhaps things like an early bedtime couldn't have been feasibly changed, but it sounds like they never tried to understand why staying up later would be important to him.
It also seems that for a long time Mats didn't share anything about his disability with his online friends because he didn't want to be treated differently. A personal story might not be the place for it, but I wish there was some acknowledgement of what it would be like to hide a large part of your life from people. I imagine he had experiences with ableism that made him want to hide it.
(As an aside: generally "disabled people" comes across better than "the disabled." The latter kind of has the same feel as "the blacks" or "the gays." Not a big deal or anything, and it's not something every disabled person will care about or agree with, but thought I'd mention it~)
Thanks for that (sincerely). I'll do my best to use that going forward. I actually stopped for a moment and considered "differently-abled" but that felt like pandering or something.
It would have been very interesting to have heard Mats side of this story.
Some highlights:
This was a great read while at the same time really sad. As a World of Warcraft player myself, I understand how it's kind of a different reality, but I know I won't ever be able to understand it the way a person like Mats would.
Wow, this sent shivers down my spine.