Hey! I saw in your AMA that you lost your vision to RP. I'm in a similar situation, but I'm very lucky and have only lost most of my peripherial vision so far.

So, I can't say I have faced any similar situations as you on reddit, but I wanted to comment anyways. I read through your post and a lot of the comments were pretty frustrating, to be honest. I can understand that a large majority of people have never interacted with or even thought about blind people for any real length of time, so all the questions like "how do u even use internet??" are expected. (But annoying). However, a lot of people seemed to just straight up deny that it was even possible for a blind person to respond to so many comments, or use emoticons (as if blind people don't have emotions?). Those comments were the worst, because obviously they have no idea what they're talking about, and they can't fathom that it's even possible to do things without sight.

It really sucks that you have to explain to so many people what seems so basic to us.

To answer your question: What probably gave the most pause to people was your use of emoticons and the way you structure your comments. You are very expressive with your text in terms of capitalization, punctuation, and emoticons. I'm guessing that people just wouldn't expect that from someone who can't see? Or, again, they're just really dumb and don't think blind people can use the internet in the same way sighted people can.

I saw that you edited your post to explain your setup and I think that was a good idea to help stop those comments, although with how much that post blew up I don't think you could've done much more.

Either way, it's not your fault and I'm sorry you have to deal with that. However, I'm glad you got to educate some folks, and hopefully they'll pass that knowledge on to others. Hopefully others can chime in with some better advice.

A lot of sited people are very quick to judge. After all, if they couldn’t imagine doing it, living while blind, it must be impossible.

I haven’t come across this yet but that’s because I don’t post to manysubreddits.

Oh wow - I just saw your question - that was a good one.

There are a LOT of aggressive, critical, "troll-ish" people on reddit. There are also a lot of nice people. Hopefully with the voting system as well as the ability to report it ends up fair in the end, but I would count on some aggression wherever you post on reddit - it's tough because you might get 99 nice responses and 1 mean one and it's hard not to let it stick ...

One time when I posted something, somebody commented thanking the person who wrote it for me. I’m sure they didn’t mean it in a bad way, but it still upset me a bit.

Hey, welcome to Reddit! :)

Sighted person here, but maybe I can still lend some perspective on this.

There's a few things to untangle here:

1. First and foremost, people are idiots.
2. Apparently, blind people on the internet getting accused of faking is a thing, unfortunately. Molly Burke, a popular blind Youtuber, still gets accused of faking to this day in the comment section of her videos. It makes no sense, and trying to understand what motivates these people is wasted time. Don't even bother arguing with them, you don't need to justify yourself to anyone. Feeling that you need to address or respond to personal attacks, slander, misinformation or anything like that is actually part of the problem. It's fine to let those dumb comments stand - anyone with half a brain will put them in the right context when they read them, and realize that you just didn't feel the need to dignify them with a response.
3. We sighted people can ask some pretty dumb questions of blind people, and be ignorant about how self-sufficient many of you are. It can honestly be quite surprising for us to see how well you use the internet for example. We rely on our vision so damn much that it's mind-boggling to us how well people can manage that lack that sense. It also took me a lot of reading, listening and watching to realize just how independent blind people can be. So, sighted people then react differently to this: Some with wonder and astonishment. Others unfortunately jump to the conclusion "I don't understand this, it can't be true, therefore they must be faking". Don't mistake genuine interest for accusations though: Tone doesn't come through well over the internet, and often it's just us asking a dumb, but sincere question.
4. There's some really strong groupthink on Reddit, at least in some communities. Unless you fall in line with that, you're always going to get some level of resistance, antagonism or controversy. It requires a thick skin, but it can be worth it for the 5% of awesome people or ideas you might find. But you need to develop a skill where you can quickly identify comments that aren't worth your time, and quickly brush them off. I imagine that this might be more difficult with text-to-speech though.
5. You'll always notice the ones that sting more than the positive ones. Dramatically so. It's unfortunate, but this applies to pretty much any internet media, be it Twitter, Reddit or YouTube. You may just have read 10 positive comments in a row, but that one that hurts you just stings. We all have that bias. But being aware of it helps a lot with moving on quickly from those.

Don't forget that Reddit isn't just one community, it's thousands of small communities. If you post in a large, general-audience, poorly-moderated subreddit you'll get a lot of stupid comments no matter what. I think it has less to do with blindness and more about it being a huge anonymous open forum on the Internet.

On the other hand if you post in a smaller subreddit that's centered around a particular interest or topic, with good moderation - you'll find little tolerance for trolls and rude comments.

Meh. All the time. People are fucking idiots. Move along and find your own people.

Yep. Most people don't think we can clean ourselves after using the toilet let alone use a computer. If you want a good laugh/cry go to r/showerthoughts and search the word blind

I only reference my blindness in this Sub-R. The one time I touched on my blindness when doing a comment, I engaged in a long thread trying to prove that I cannot see anything.

One of the accusatory assholes here.

Here’s my perspective causing me to hold such a stance and my evolving view of it.

So over the last few months I’ve been finding many posts on Reddit are faked to get karma, like in TIFU, NoStupidQuestions, and relationship advice. This blind post set off some alarms triggering my skepticism.

Namely:
1. Tone of the post, and judging that looking at poo being gross when such a concept is not guaranteed.
2. Accuracy and speed of typing. Nuanced hand typing done quickly with little to no mistakes.
3. Use of visual emoticons like xD :) =)

Several things have changed my mindset over the last week or so.
First OP has been consistent and persistent, so I’m doubting it is someone faking at this point.
Second, /u/superfreq2 an older account that has been replying to comments with more details triggered me to reflect.
Third, all the above alarms suggesting a fake are not proof positive, each can be explained away.

In light of this increased trustworthiness and with no real evidence I’m becoming inclined to believe OP is telling the truth.

I wish there was a way to verify users so people knew what they were reading is an actual happening and not the figment of some writer’s imagination.

People are stupid, and it seems they are willfully ignorant. Just downvote trollish shit. If they are asking reasonable questions, even if it does sound basic to us, upvote that because it's adding to the discussion.

I apologize on behalf of sighted people. Not all of us are so ignorant.

I for one knew from the start that you read Reddit by using your Daredevil superpowers (this last part was sarcasm.)

I've posted on a few subs, mentioning my blindness, like on /r/dissidia and maybe /r/fanfiction, and those communities have been pretty welcoming. Maybe its the fact that Apple's VoiceOver has become slightly a thing in culture, or more likely Siri, so people can kind of understand screen readers that way. Of course those subs aren't that big. I'm fairly sure I've posted on r/AMA though too, but I didn't really get any comments from mine, lol.

My half-awake point being that smaller subs will probably be more welcoming, and more precise about interests, and bigger subs, like the foot long one, will be more filling.

yep! just posted about being blind on a gaming sub, and got "BUT HOW CAN YOU EVEN GAME?? BUT HOW CAN YOU READ THIS POST??"

people are ridiculous.

I've never had this, and most people are nice. What other subs do you all like? It saems not many blind people are on redit.

I haven’t necessarily received a lot of this here as I’m pretty new, but I have been on YouTube for a long time and I get a lot of comments like that. You just have to eventually learn to ignore all of the noise, and focus on the constructive comments. It’s easier after a while

I don't know what you may be getting in your inbox, but I checked both of your threads thurrally just to see what you meant and I saw that only like 2% of responses were that negative and none of those comments had any upvotes.

Basically, it's the internet, some people are jerks, but most people who might say that are just suspicious because they are ignorant about what we can do (most people are) and they think someone is posing as a blind person for kharma, as similar things happen pretty often on Reddit.

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one of the oddest things that happens to me a lot is not even by sighted people, some blind people have accused me of "faking" being VI because I can see pretty good for having ONH. When I was younger I had better eyesight and was not treated or "raised " like a blind person, I have lived a pretty independent life and some people have "called" me out on being a fake VI person

Oh yah I seen your post yesterday it was actually funny 😂