‘South Park’s Timmy Is Inspiring New Bouts of Harassment Against Wheelchair Users
Despite the disabled community largely embracing the positive portrayal on South Park, a disturbingly widespread TikTok movement is trying to use Timmy to turn wheelchair users into a punchline.
The biggest problem with South Park’s darkly satirical portrayal of American society is that, no matter how thoughtful, purposeful and empathetic Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s approach to parodying real-life issues can be, the show’s indulgently crass sense of humor and consistent appeal to the lowest-common denominator means that the nuanced intention behind any South Park joke will go over the heads of some of the show’s biggest fans.
Put simply, many, many people who watch South Park think that they’re supposed to connect and agree with Eric Cartman the most out of any character, and in an age where social media further strips away the context around most of South Park’s more touchy takes on society, the potential for assholes to misconstrue meaning and shout “Timmayyy!” at real-life kids in wheelchairs has, sadly, never been higher.
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Like many people who need mobility devices, BBC journalist Alex Taylor has long dealt with the complicated and, at times, demoralizing realities of using a wheelchair in a world where South Park’s Timmy is so many people’s first touchpoint for the disabled community. In a recent article titled, “A Disabled South Park Character from 24 Years Ago Is Getting Me Harassed Today,” Taylor reported that, recently, he has suffered an increase in harassment as edited South Park clips featuring Timmy Burch explode in popularity on TikTok — and he’s not the only person with disabilities who is sick of it.
“I can feel the anger rising. How am I facing this abuse again after 20 years,” Taylor begins. “My name is Alex. But increasingly young people shout ‘Timmy’ at me in the street. This isn’t mistaken identity — it‘s mockery because I use a wheelchair.”
Taylor recalled a recent incident when a group of teenaged boys began yelling the name at him while laughing and smirking in his face. “'I heard you,’ I tell them. ‘I know exactly who Timmy is.’ I know this because although we do not share a name, I have felt the shadow of Timmy since childhood — never through choice.”
“When I confront the group of boys, one feigns innocence, claiming he’d been speaking to his friend,” Taylor continues. “'You weren’t,' I say. ‘I was watching the show before you were born.’”
As Taylor discovered, the South Park character first introduced in the Season Four episode “Timmy 2000” is a viral sensation on TikTok, and a staggering 64.5 million posts tagged with the trend are currently floating around the platform. In many TikTok videos that amass many millions of views, content makers mash-up audio and video of Timmy shouting his own name with images, audio and video of real-life people in wheelchairs, making disability the punchline of the joke in a way that Parker and Stone purposefully never did.
Taylor reflects on that irony — that Parker and Stone made a point to treat Timmy as just another one of the South Park kids rather than a punching bag for disability jokes — writing, “Timmy is an accepted member of the class: he fails to complete homework, faces adversity and causes trouble with his disabled best friend Jimmy. His personality is conveyed through the different intonations in which he delivers his name. One episode, ‘Timmy 2000,’ sees him win a battle of the bands as frontman for a metal group. The adult characters are shown to respond in an over-protective and condescending way — a striking criticism of the way society often treats disabled people.”
But despite disabled viewers and critics responding positively toward South Park’s empathetic embrace of its characters with disabilities, the nuance of the depictions is easily lost on assholes, and the further stripping of context by these social media trends has exacerbated the problem almost two decades after it began. “TikTok says its community guidelines strictly prohibit hate speech and content promoting discrimination, violence or harm based on disability. It removed the videos flagged by the BBC for violating this policy,” Taylor reported of the company’s response to his inquiries. “But it didn’t remove the Timmy sound used on several other videos — meaning it can be used again.”
Taylor spoke with other wheelchair users who have experienced harassment by people shouting “Timmy” who are too young to have seen his introduction to South Park, and he cited a Reddit thread started by a schoolteacher titled “Getting Real Sick of This Timmy Trend” as further evidence that ableist ridicule inspired by South Park is on the rise among young people.
Taylor concluded with his own experiences, saying of the recent group of aggravating teens, “I returned a second time when the boys called out ‘Timmy’ again after I turned to leave.
“'Why?’ I asked forcefully. Silence. One of the group eventually apologized, admitting the behavior was wrong.
“‘Speak to your friends,’ I pleaded, sensing a glimmer of hope. ‘Maybe then they’ll listen.’”
