i said recently that i'd make a new thread about why anyone who cares about disability justice or social justice in general should stop using the random-caps meme, so here it is.

(some old threads about this are currently unavailable; some other good ones are still available.)

here is what the random-caps meme looks like. sometimes it's every alternate letter, sometimes it's truly randomized.

"sO i guEss eVeryOnE sHouLd gEt iNcoMe eVeN iF thEy dOn'T woRk?"

it's used, as you can see you from my example, to quote or paraphrase a person or a viewpoint that you wish to put a bad slant on.

the person doing the random-caps meme is conveying their own disapproval or sarcasm about the original point; they're calling the original point evil or uninformed or willfully obtuse or bigoted or selfish. something like that.

and those are fine things to convey about a viewpoint! but not with this meme. here's why:

the random-caps meme targets a lot of people who aren't the intended target.

1) the random-caps meme targets people with many types of disabilities. cognitive, intellectual, developmental, and motor disabilities are all things that can sometimes lead to non-standard capitalization.

2) the random-caps meme targets people with low literacy skills, which can come from disability and/OR non-disability circumstances.

3) the random-caps meme comes originally from spongebob, which showed it with a "distorted" face -- a visual portrayal that targets disfigured people.

i have a severe multi-system illness called #MECFS. it has many physical components but also cognitive ones. when writing with a pen, i sometimes put a capital letter in the middle of a word by mistake. i don't care much -- except when i see that meme. that's a gut punch.

the random-caps meme is ableist, disfiguremisic, & classist.

when we (often validly!) want to point out bigotry, willful ignorance, selfishness or whatever else about a quote, paraphrase, or viewpoint, let's not do it via association w disability, disfigurement, or low literacy.

credit as always to the lovely @guysmiley22 for the terms disfiguremisia & disfiguremisic.

it also evokes, to me, children who are just learning to write because they're, y'know, children. they use non-standard capitalization all the time! they may not see the random-caps meme in use, but i still strongly dislike the way this meme evokes them for mockery.

if you know of categories or people the random-caps meme is targeting that i didn't know to mention, feel free to add them here.