Something I learned a while ago is making fum of people's typos and/or spelling mistakes without consent is ableist and I want to talk about it.
I just recently witnessed someone comment "you're" instead of "your" on a post of mine. I ignored it and didn't focus on the mistake because
1.) That wasn't the point of their comment
2.) I still understood their comment regardless
3.) It was just that. A mistake.
If I made a joke regarding their mistake I would have been ignoring the rest of their comment, assuming they knew and remembered the difference (not everyone does), and/or assuming it wasn't just an accident - a singular mess up (possibly made by autocorrect).
Something else I see a lot is people being shamed, put down, and/or made fun of for is commenting "dead" instead of "deaf"
This bothers me because disabilities and human beings with disabilities exist.
Someone could be using voice to text (as a result of not being able to use their hands, not having hands, being blind, and/or anything else) and it could misinterpret what they said and type the wrong word.
Someone's finger could twitch and they could hit the wrong letter. (The "d" and the "f" being right next to each other on the American English language keyboard makes this entirely possible.)
Someone could have one eye or 2 eyes could be crossed and they think they're hitting the "f" when they're actually hitting the "d" (because, again, those letters are literally right next to each other).
Humans - as well as anything with autocorrect - make mistakes. (Many people with disabilities use autocorrect.) Someone could type the word "deaf" and autocorrect could change it at the last second to "dead". And because those two words share most of the same letters, the person commenting could easily not clock the error.
Automatically assuming someone meant to type the wrong word is also fatphobic. What if a bigger person with bigger fingers is typing and they hit "f" but their device picks up them touching "d" first (because, again, they're each right there)?
Yes, some people type the wrong word on purpose. But some don't. And (depending on the contents of the comment) you can't automatically tell which is which from one misspelled comment.
I've made the mistake of assuming someone meant ill will when they didn't. It happens. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn't acknowledge your mistake and perhaps apologize. And maybe don't assume someone's intentions based off a typo.
I (and many other people) have made the mistake of making jokes about someone’s mistake without consent. Let's all consciously do better going forward.
