Disabled Kid’s TED Talk Only Inspiring Because She Can’t Walk

Mathieu Boumal
2 min readMay 23, 2021

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Photo by Aatik Tasneem on Unsplash

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Giving a speech on willpower at a TEDx conference, 13-year-old paraplegic Hannah Godin only managed to inspire people because of her inability to walk and not because of any substance in her words.

“I’m here to tell you that if I can get over my fears and sit in front of you here to share my experience, so can you”, said Godin, who somehow linked being in a wheelchair to the fear of public speaking, and seemed to think her thirteen years of life experience were enough to give her credibility.

“Okay, I get it, the kid’s legs don’t work, but I mean, is that really her whole shtick?”, said Alain Stewart, one of the audience members who thought he was about to listen to an in-depth speech about something important, “like a philosophical concept or a scientific discovery or something.”

“Pretty cool that she doesn’t let that stop her from living life, I guess. But I’m here to learn about neuroscience and morning routines and stuff, I didn’t buy an all-access pass to listen to some narcissistic kid who’s just bragging about not having killed herself.”

Despite being fairly satisfied with her TED talk, Godin admitted she probably would have been more successful had she talked about being an honor-killing survivor from Pakistan.

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Mathieu Boumal

I’m a comedian and writer originally from Belgium. I write for The Daily Mash, Le Gorafi, and other things. Wanna hire me? Sweet. HTTP://boumal.substack.com