‘We ride at dawn’: Disney World underdog gets floored by a shove and everyone’s instantly ready to throw hands

Stacey and her family were at EPCOT, Thanksgiving. After going on the Journey Into Imagination With Figment ride, they decided to get in line to take a picture with the purple dragon. As they awaited their turn, they suddenly heard “a lot of commotion and a giant crash, which ended up being Figment’s head hitting the ground.”

Although Stacey did not get to record – or even witness first-hand – the key moment in question, she still managed to get the aftermath on film. Judging from fallout alone, we could reasonably wonder: Who would do such a thing?

More to this story than meets the eye

In this 23-second video, we see a few people helping the Disney employee behind Figment back on their feet. “I think this meet-and-greet is over,” Stacey can be heard saying during the recording. What we may be able to surmise from the video, based on Stacey’s subsequent Storytime TikTok, and other s as well, is that, heartwarmingly, Figment can be seen gesturing a heart towards the very apologetic mother of the autistic boy who shoved the mascot in the first place.

Yes, that’s the context that should get you to lower your torches and pitchforks if you’ve rushed to get them upon learning someone pushed Figment seemingly unprovoked – and, it must be acknowledged, the actor should be applauded for their professionalism. People on the autism spectrum, with their neurodivergent brains, experience reality and react to stimuli in ways that neurotypical brains don’t. Stacey remarked in her explanation of the incident that it is her understanding that the child “got spooked.”

Responding to this incident, Amanda, a TikTok and professed Disney lover, had the same progression of opinion and perception that people ought to have upon first watching the video of Figment on the ground and then acquiring the relevant context:

Similarly to Amanda, who has an autistic nephew, I have an autistic niece. She may not be blood-related – she’s the daughter of a really good friend who’s a single mother of two – but like others in the friend group, I’m labeled an aunt and that’s the role I’ve undertaken. My 6-year-old niece is infinitely special, and by that, we do not mean better or worse, there should be no such qualifier, but simply different, a term which should hold no negative connotation.

While autistic people may struggle more with some aspects of daily life, like social communication, many are also endowed with unique skills and capabilities. Unfortunately, autism – like other neurodivergences – to dispel the misconceptions associated with the stigma.

“No excuse he shoulda punched the kid back,” one netizen wrote under Amanda’s video. This is, unfortunately, the immediate, unnuanced opinion many people tend to adopt. No matter the circumstances and its intricacies, netizens too often jump to demand an eye for an eye. While we shouldn’t condone violence, and it’s up to the parents to do their best to address these behavioral challenges, these kinds of hard-boiled views are incapable of extending empathy and likely belong to people who have never dealt with neurodivergence on a regular basis.

Nowadays, it can feel like, especially on the Internet, people are eager to judge before they make an effort to understand a situation’s nuances. In this case, everyone here deserves a portion of our comion, and perhaps the taming of the impulse to disperse any chastising scrutiny.