"Bella Thorne" *cue eye roll*

If you google “the Bella Throne condition” you will likely be given an article about Bella Thorne’s childhood growing up with dyslexia. I’ve mentioned before that I, too, am dyslexic. So anytime I mention it to someone my age they have this visceral reaction to ask me about Bella Thorne. Which is normally followed by “sorry I’m sure you get that a lot HAHAHA” yes, yes I do. The reason I get that a lot is because sometime around 2010 Disney Channel started doing these “The Time I” shorts during ad breaks that featured some of their actors as well as everyday people. Arguably the most iconic was Bella’s talking about how she found out how she has dyslexia.

What’s funny about the video to me is that: Bella talking about how she mixes her b’s up with d’s and m’s with w’s… I remember thinking hmm I do that too and then moving on with my day. When I tell people about it; it starts this long-winded conversation about the nature of dyslexia and how easy it is to not notice. (Never mind the fact that as a kid I would write my name backward and no one thought anything of it). All this to say that I think it’s really interesting to talk about how the internet influences people’s perceptions on things such as neurodiversity. This example, in particular, involves 1) people acknowledging that something exists due to how heavily it was memed and 2) people comparing me to someone else they know of that has it. Another interesting example of the same idea was how mental health disorders like depression, bipolar, and anxiety are talked about so often online that they have become more widely understood and accepted. A TikToker has renamed “ADHD” to “DAVE” in order to raise awareness about how inaccurate the name is. More people are using the term “Indigenous” instead of “Indian” because we want to be respectful as well as well-educated. All of which are WILDLY different from Bella Thorne and her dyslexia, but a similar goal is being established.