On social media

We have a love/hate relationship with social media. The dopamine machine works as intended. It can build beautiful online communities— and in fact, it is an essential tool for many disabled communities to connect with each other because of reduced access barriers— but it can also be vicious, take on black-and-white framings, and erase all nuance on important topics.

One of the influencers on our list of resources, Kaelynn Partlow, made a video with some problematic generalizations in late 2025. Kaelynn is autistic and a registered behavioral technician. She makes lots of great videos that are very informative, with concise and neurodivergence-affirming messages and helpful visual illustrations to support understanding. We’ve learned a lot from her and sometimes use her video clips in our trainings.

The problematic generalization that caught fire on social media was about accommodations that are offered to individuals with varying levels of support needs. It would have been fair to say that individuals with low support needs often have invisible needs that go unnoticed and unaccommodated by others, and that it’s important to take care to remain attuned to all levels of unmet needs. This video took more of an “us vs. them” framing and claimed that high support needs individuals get lots of support because their needs are obvious, while lower support needs individuals don’t get necessary support.

Other neurodivergent influencers called Kaelynn out. She issued, to our knowledge, two apologies. The first one, to many, didn’t seem very regretful. The second one used more statements committing to continued learning.

We think that Kaelynn did err in the video in question, and likely in others, but she is still an important voice in these spaces and at this moment in history. We are not canceling her from our recommendations, although we hope that she will actively work at listening, learning, examining her privilege, and using her platform for inclusion at all levels. If we see continued or increasingly problematic content from her, we will re-evaluate this decision.

We are not as chronically online as the influencers and spectators who focused intensely on critiquing Kaelynn during this episode. We have seen only a fraction of her videos and are not fully informed about all of her existing content, so maybe she has more-problematic tendencies than we realize. We do know that the backlash to Kaelynn had characteristics that were in themselves problematic. The content against Kaelynn was sustained over weeks. It became nonspecific, not citing any meaningful issues, but simply attacking her personally. It ridiculed and belittled. We saw videos that blatantly sought attention simply for being against Kaelynn and not for making any positive or productive points to support anyone. It appeared that folks were trying to build community out of being anti-Kaelynn. And we’re not really here for that.

We are all about access, inclusion, and belonging. We try to critically evaluate all of our sources. If we threw out every resource that had some sort of issue or failed to live up to our highest ideals, we would have nothing left to work with. That includes our own materials— we’ve changed some things in our trainings after we learned better on specific topics. We are in favor of giving second chances, doing better once you know better, and making space for disagreement in details. It’s how you build enduring communities.