Things can only get b3ta

Do you have to be an Alpha to love b3ta? Digital creative Max Zadow ponders the dilemma the site poses for disabled people

According to a tee-shirt I wear often, and my choice of TV programmes, career and facial furniture: I am a Geek. For this reason I love the digital online community ‘b3ta’. According to another of my tee-shirts, the bigoted sympathy of general society and the DLA: I am a disabled person.

For this reason I have issues with b3ta.

B3ta is a site that encourages users to make funny animations, collaged pictures and cartoons, as well as share amusing written stories about unusual experiences. They are rewarded by the status that making people laugh gets in this community.

Regular posters call themselves “b3tards”. Anyone can join and the only basis for your stuff getting shown is whether it makes people laugh.

There is evidence that disabled people under 45 have better internet awareness than the average, and if one thing unites disabled people (apart from the obvious), it is humour. This site should be made for us. Even the written element, the Question of the Week, favours those with extreme lives who have been in bizarre situations. A given for the disabled community.

So, I should love this site. In fact, I am extremely ambivalent. Yes, there have been stories in the Question of the Week where disabled people have revealed their lives, and got laughs and support. And that made me hopeful for mankind.

Of course, the problem is that anyone can join, so there are a lot of b3ta contributors still full of stereotypical fear/sympathy/disgust towards disabled people. This is fine; all of us who go into the world know that it is partly full of annoying inadequates, out to make themselves feel better by putting us down. That is something we deal with, online or off.

Forum members don’t put me off a site. What does annoy me is the officially sanctioned material, raised to permanence and placed forever on the right side of the page. In the ‘Movies’ section there is Stephen Hawking & Davros Together in Electric Dreams. Described by people who run B3ta as the “funniest animation we’ve ever seen.” The punch line? They are both wheelchair users. Ha. Ha. Ha. Tucked away on this side is another b3ta project ‘Sickipedia’, a collaborative joke book full of racism, homophobia, sexism and disablism. It is amazing how sick jokes in large numbers stop being at all funny.

At the same time, we are the Ouch generation, fond of comedians like Laurence Clark, Mat Fraser and the Nasty Girls. Some of their material gets very close to the above animation. The Ouch Podcast has even been personally recommended by the b3ta team in their official Newsletter. Even so, as we all know, jokes about a community only work when told by a representative of that community.

B3ta? Give it a go, but be prepared for the disablism behind the dancing kittens.