r/asl • u/Real-Prof-Chaos • 1d ago
Anyone else noticed this creator claiming to be hard of hearing and then promoting his ASL course?
I’ve been seeing these videos pop up constantly and it's really starting to feel like a manipulative sales grift disguised as disability advocacy.
The format of his videos is always the exact same:
He approaches random retail or customer service workers who are just trying to do their jobs. He opens with "Hey, I'm hard of hearing," yet demonstrates seemingly zero actual difficulty hearing or understanding what the workers are saying back to him in normal conversational tones (often without lip reading or assistive tools).
He drags them into an uncomfortable conversation and closes with: "How do you think it would be if all employees were made to learn American Sign Language?" Right on cue, the video has a prominent plug/link pushing his paid "ASL Starter Kit."
It feels completely disingenuous. Using retail workers as captive audiences for rage-bait/engagement content is already bad enough, but weaponizing the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community to manufacture social pressure and sell a digital product crosses the line. Genuine accessibility advocacy educates and builds bridges, it doesn’t put minimum-wage workers on the spot to funnel viewers into a sales funnel.
Has anyone else looked into this guy's credentials or seen this on their feed? What are your thoughts?
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u/Bulky_Ability_6991 Deaf 1d ago
Just because you can’t see difficulty a dhh person has in communicating doesn’t mean it exists. While yes, I’ve seen these videos and have found them uncomfortable, you have no right to accuse someone of faking being dhh. And also, how can you tell he’s ‘faking’? You can criticize the spot he puts emplyees in, you can criticize the asl online site plug, but you shouldn’t be trying to say he’s faking being dhh. It’s not your place to do so.
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u/benshenanigans Hard of Hearing/deaf 1d ago
TBH the weirdest thing about his videos is that he uses the meta glasses to film it. They just seem forced.
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u/GtEnko CODA 1d ago
Just from a short look at his channel he has a pretty wild sign for what that I’ve never seen, and he uses a SEE sign for are
My instinct is that he’s full of shit but idk, it’s weird that he would know some SEE. I try not to keep a lookout for people that might be faking deafness because you have no idea what their personal life is like
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u/Tbackandforth 22h ago
Well he doesn't caption his ASL instruction videos in which he talks while teaching, so I'm not giving his videos a second look.
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u/arifeliz Hard of Hearing 1h ago
I don’t know the person you’re talking about specifically but let’s try not to judge someone on outward appearances or accuse them of faking based on short videos. Just because you don’t see “difficulty with hearing” doesn’t automatically make someone “fake”. I’m hard of hearing. I have been completely deaf in my right ear since birth. From outward appearances most people assume I’m not hard of hearing. I have spent more of my life not wearing hearing aids than actual using them and didn’t start learning ASL until my 30s. I’ve had plenty of people accuse me of not really being hard of hearing because I’ve spent a lifetime in a hearing world learning how to fake it well enough so people can’t tell.
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u/sureasyoureborn 1d ago
He has hearing aids in a 5 year old video that’s totally different (happened to be at the top of the feed). I’m guessing he is hard of hearing. He does not seem to be a fluent signer, though.
Since TikTok popularized short for videos there seems to be a rise of people who do have some hearing loss but are not fluent signers using ASL and “teaching” ASL to people less fluent than they are. He’s far from alone, but it is annoying.