A disabled social media influencer has spoken out about mean comments he received on an Instagram post where he joked about not qualifying for the Olympics.
Shane Burcaw, who runs a successful YouTube channel with his wife Hannah, was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, according to his Tumblr page.
The genetic disease weakens muscles in the shoulders, hips, thighs and upper back, making it difficult for many sufferers to move.
On their various social platforms, Shane and Hannah post videos about their life as a couple and advocacy videos trying to spread acceptance about relationships like theirs.
One of their latest videos, clearly meant to be a joke, shows Hannah dunking Shane into a pool with a caption underneath that reads: ‘Sorry to announce I did not qualify for the 2024 Us Olympic diving team.’
Instead of getting laughs from his 594,000 followers on Instagram, Shane instead was slammed with a deluge of hateful comments, many of which questioned why Hannah decides to be with him.
Hannah dunks Shane into the water, with them jokingly suggesting his dive wasn’t good enough to get him into the Olympics
‘What does she get out of this relationship? I’m curious cause there’s no way anyone’s attracted to him,’ one person wrote.
‘If he can pull than I’m just cooked,’ another commented.
Someone else suggested that the only way he could have attracted her was if he had a lot of money.
Another commenter came to the exact opposite conclusion, that she was using his disability to get tax write offs.
Shane and Hannah have been married for three years and together for eight, according to a profile of the influencer couple in Business Insider.
They were also comments that that were much more violent in tone.
‘Leave him under there,’ one wrote.
Shane posted the video Saturday, and on Thursday, he made another post to address the hate he and his wife received.
The post had a black and white photo of him and Hannah alongside images containing a lengthy statement.
Shane and Hannah have been married for three years and together for eight, according to a profile of the influencer couple in Business Insider
Shane is pictured in his motorized wheelchair
‘This one hurts to write, but it needs to be done,’ Shane began.
‘We currently have a silly video going viral, which should be cause for celebration. Instead, it’s forcing me to confront the painful fact that literally hundreds of thousands of people hate me and think I’m worthless because of my disability.’
He goes onto explain that he and Hannah posted the video because they saw the online trend of people showing off their lack of athleticism, only to ironically say they didn’t make the Olympics.
These videos often have a remixed version of the Star Spangled banner playing, while the person on camera does something like belly flop into a pool or fail miserably at a gymnastics trick.
Shane wrote: ‘This kind of self-deprecating humor is right up our alley, so we joined the trend and posted a quick video of me “diving” into a pool, except my dive is obviously just Hannah gently lowering me into the water.’
He then shared some of the top comments on the original video, calling them ‘brutally ignorant and aggressively hateful.’
‘The very top comment says, “It’s always important to wash your vegetables,” referring to me as the vegetable. It has 97,000+ likes. That means almost one hundred thousand real humans on this earth agree with this humiliating insult!’ he wrote.
Shane also shared a number of comments attacking his relationship, one of which read: ‘Dating him is like doing charity work.’
Many of the mean comments Shane received focused on his relationship with Hannah and openly questioned why she was with him
Even though he was hurt by the comment, Shane said he was undeterred and plans to continue sharing his life as a disabled person
‘There are thousands more just like these. Thousands. I’m tired, guys,’ he wrote.
‘Tired of dedicating my career to educating people about the true disabled experience, only to be reminded – DAILY, by hundreds of thousands of people – that I’m still widely regarded as a “vegetable” that would be better off dead in their opinions.’
Shane’s response post got over 82,000 likes as Friday morning and thousands of supportive comments.
Many of the couple’s followers actually went back to their original video in an attempt to bury the insults and cruel jokes about his disability.
‘You guys do realize that disabled people are still people and are deserved to be loved the same. His wife clearly loves him for just being him, and I truly love that,’ one person wrote in a comment that now has over 20,000 likes.
Shane, though hurt by what people said about him, ended his statement with resolve, saying he wouldn’t quit over this.
‘I won’t give up, though. It’s too important to me and the stakes are too high. Until disabled people are embraced by our world as equals, I’ll be here, sharing my disabled life that I so deeply enjoy and cherish,’ he wrote.