Image description

Alice Mander is holding a phone and wears a knitted jumper. She looks at the camera and there are colourful squiggles around her.

Clickbait & Crutches: A fiercely disabled web series

I’ve always loved telling stories. I think the desire to tell your own stories is particularly strong when you don’t feel represented by those already out there. As much as I wanted to insert myself in existing fictional worlds, the voice of realism was always whispering in my ear that I was too disabled to attempt the moving staircase at Hogwarts, would never be like Katniss Everdeen, and, if anything, I was bound to end up like the sad little boy in A Secret Garden.

Over time, the medium through which I told these stories changed, but the desire to tell them remained. As a little girl, I was captivated by stories about fairyland and adventure, dreaming of becoming an author (or an actual fairy). As I grew older, I discovered my own taste in music, and songwriting became my chosen medium. Then came film, leading to a somewhat canonical phase of obsession with David Lynch. I tried my hand at theatre. Poetry. Speech making. Fiction writing. Nonfiction writing. Script writing. It didn’t matter what the medium was; I just had stories to tell. As I became an adult, I also learned a humbling - albeit crucial - lesson: my story isn’t all that unique or interesting, really. There are disabled people everywhere, each with their own stories, heroes and villains. I wanted to tell their stories.

What I learnt when making Clickbait & Crutches is that they’re already telling them.

... the desire to tell your own stories is particularly strong when you don’t feel represented by those already out there.

Initially, when Red from The D*List told me about this project, I didn’t think ‘the internet’ was a very sexy topic for discussion. Throwing in ‘disability’ made it a bit more exciting, but ‘disability and the internet’ still felt like the type of brief you might have received in 2008. Maybe it’s because I don’t consider myself very internet savvy. Or, maybe it's because I was born in 1999, so, for me, the internet has basically always been around. Either way, the brief didn’t immediately spark many ideas.

However, the more people I spoke to while making Clickbait & Crutches - like the awesome and proudly autistic Luna Lee or “Cerebral Palsy gang” member and comedian Dave Batten - the more I realised that the internet itself isn’t the star of this story. The main character is the rich and diverse community I could find through the internet, with a simple click of a mouse. The most empowering part of the internet is that it is a place where we - the users - can create and find our own stories without the gatekeepers of mainstream media.

We’re all familiar with the dark side of the internet, especially in the age of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, not to mention increasingly icky AI platforms. Like other minorities, disabled people often face the worst of the internet - from hate comments to skepticism about our diagnosis. For some, the very idea that a disabled person should speak frankly about their experience online means we must be faking it. While these things are undoubtedly harmful, everyone I spoke to for Clickbait & Crutches agreed on one thing: the internet’s power to allow us to show up as our authentic selves, and connect with others who share similar experiences, can be life-saving.

There are disabled people everywhere, each with their own stories, heroes and villains. I wanted to tell their stories.

And the more people I spoke to, the more I realised that my own journey with my disabled identity is largely thanks to the internet. Without the internet, I wouldn’t have found many of the amazing disabled people I now consider my friends, mentors and, in the case of this documentary, employers and producers. Without the internet, I wouldn’t have learnt that my disability could be described in social justice terms, instead of the passive and dehumanising medical terms I was used to. I experienced ableism before I had a word for it, and I found that word on the internet. I wouldn’t be aware of injustices happening on the other side of the world, or be able to bring as many people’s attention to injustices happening in our backyard. I wouldn’t have gotten through university, or been able to stay in touch with my best friends in London or Bangkok. With all its problems, I think the internet has the power to keep us connected in an increasingly disconnected world.

So, I invite you to add Clickbait & Crutches to your internet algorithm. I hope it makes you smile, laugh or even cry. I’m confident you will recognise yourself in the stories it tells. And, if not, I hope it inspires you to tell your own.

Full episodes will be available to stream on Wednesday 29th May at thedlist.co.nz.