#sickfluencers — Public Fediverse posts

Having a disability NEVER became cool, Poppy; being cruel did.

So, I saw a weird headline on social media today: “How having a disability became cool“. Oh dear lord, here we go again. Another author of “news” that is entirely made up… Deep sigh.

Poppy Coburn, Associate Comment Editor for The Telegraph, takes a pop at the “‘sickfluencers’, are turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend”. Except the only ones using that word are news outlets trying to sell newspapers. It’s made up.

Two years on, there’s an avalanche of results talking about it. The thing is, all of those pages and pages of news articles are all quoting each other. It’s as if a whole trend has been summoned into being just so the people summoning it can be outraged.

Another title for this might have been: Why is the press so keen to demonise my people? Because the right-leaning whiney-bitch newspapers (such as The Sun and The Daily Mail) lead the charge in attacking people with mental health issues, coining the term “sickfluencer” back in 2024.

Disabled people living with mental health conditions came on the receiving end of an exponential surge in corporate media attacks against benefit claimants in 2024.

REVEALED: MSM disproportionately targets mental health-related DWP claimants in attack articles

This is the thing, there’s no such thing as a “sickfluencer”. It’s a BS term that the panic merchants want to sell you because hate and panic make money.

The DWP already apply rigorous means testing. Under the Conservatives, they turned that assessment up to 11 to placate the Daily Mail. The result was chaos, suffering, and deaths. There’s no free ride on benefits.

The mind boggles that people believe that sick people are getting £60,000. If that were the case, where’s my cash? Oh, right, it doesn’t exist.

Under both Conservative and Labour governments, the DWP have colluded with the press to demonise younger claimants living with mental health issues, ADHD and autism. Ministers have joined in, to create a smokescreen which obscures the politically inconvenient truth that the majority of those at risk of losing their personal independence payment (PIP) under the Green paper proposals are older people with physical health conditions – many of whom have worked all their adult life until they became ill.

Mental health PIP claimants demonised as cover for massive assault on physical health awards

Being disabled isn’t “suddenly cool”. The truth that so frightened these journalists is that suffering in silence is a thing of the past. I certainly gave up struggling unseen – I started a whole blog about it.

Just because I picked up a physical disability, it doesn’t make the mental health crap I suffer from any less real. Now I get a pass because I have a “real” disability. I’ve got a strange brain and a broken body – that’s twice as hard, not easier.

I’m not sitting back in my mansion raking in piles of cash. I’m spending money I don’t have to try and live my life somewhat normally. Yeah, I get a bit of PIP. It’s not a fortune. It covers a few cabs and some assistance. Just like everyone else, I have to budget as well as I can to get by. I am not part of the have-yachts; I’m part of the have-to-be-careful crew. Same as most everyone else.

Rather than reposting two-year-old Daily Mail BS, can we not have a journalist with a shred of journalistic integrity willing to call out the snowballing lie? But no. Apparently, Poppy would rather repeat the attack line given to her by the hate media just so there’s someone the rabid crowd can point out as “the reason things are bad”.

If the billionaire newspaper owners can get you hating the poor and the sick, maybe you won’t notice that they were the ones that fucked up the world.

Struggling weirdo’s like me are not the reason for the cost of living. We’re not trying to be cool. You are being lied to by the 1% through the mouthpiece of the likes of Poppy Coburn.

To end on a better note, here is a podcast taking a more level-headed approach to the silly headlines, including a guest who was on the direct receiving end of it.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3UiRCxyRY7J3axVlXojyLn?si=OMPPHISjR3a_zFg5esmTfA

• website