>>84037393I should probably provide a bit of context for that.
Perhaps a big catalyst for it all was mid-2010. An infamous YouTuber named BlackBusterCritic put out a video asking fans of Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine and Sonic fans why they were still fans of those respective franchises, only maybe the last two or three minutes of which he was talking about Barney.
Enter Jeremy Crispo, who soon after, uploaded his own video response detailing why he still likes Barney and Thomas and Sonic. At the time of the upload, he was only 16 or 17 years old, and an obvious autist by his tenuous grasp of the English language, and how he tended to capitalize random words in his sentences when typing. Problem is, he came across as more of a manchild, especially since he focused more on Barney than the other two, and he went off on Barney trivia tangents unrelated to the original argument.
He became easy fodder for people to dump on, there are a shitton of commentaries from around that time that were essentially just harping on him for the fact that he was still watching Barney at the age of 16 or 17, and I feel like he basically became the face of the fandom in their eyes because of their own lack of experience with the show.
There was another Barney fan from that time named tooner1994 who also got caught in the crossfire. He was not even trying to make intelligent points about the show. He just wanted to show his friends his Barney-related hauls from Goodwill or what have you. People did not care. Again, they made commentaries just dumping all over the fact that he was still watching it at such an advanced age.
Problem was, I was encountering similar autists who also liked Barne in my special ed area at high school. So was I supposed to go after them as well? The ableist beliefs from people online regarding the show at that time made me believe I should.
