TikToker Under Fire for Joking About Stealing From Service Dog Handlers

For members of the disability community, service dogs can be immensely important in helping people perform everyday tasks. In some cases, they can even alert their owners of an impending possible emergency. For example, a service dog for someone who is diabetic may be able to detect changes in blood sugar.

If their owners are in danger, some service dogs can even try to find someone to help. This is something that TikTok user @onlyjayus, whose name is Isabella Avila,  brought attention to their 13 million followers in an extremely ableist way.

In the TikTok video below, which has the title “Illegal Life Advice,” Avila said, allegedly jokingly, that people should steal from those who use service dogs when they’re experiencing a medical emergency. “If a service dog ever approaches you but they’re alone, that means that their owner’s in trouble, and they probably can’t move,” they said in the video. “So you should follow them because you’ll get a free wallet.”

@onlyjayusIllegal Life Advice… for reasons this is a joke #fyp #lifeadvice #lifehacks #lifeprotips #protips #hacks #advice #illegal #illegalhack #onlyjayus♬ Build a B*tch – Bella Poarch

Avila is a member of the disability community themselves. According to Insider, Avila has spoken up about their experience with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Their ableist and harmful “hack” TikTok has over one million views.

In a TikTok responding to Avila, Black disability activist Imani Barbarin, also known as Crutches & Spice, explained why Avila being a member of the disability community does not give them permission to be horribly ableist. Barbarin said the following:

I don’t care that they’re neurodivergent. I don’t care that they’re a part of the disability community. But what I do care about though is people who let them slide because you have been sold a bill of goods that tell you that white disabled people are inherently children. Even if it’s a joke or not, the people who will be most affected by somebody taking it seriously are probably going to be Black or brown disabled people.

Avila’s “joke” is disturbing for multiple reasons. People who use service dogs face way too much discrimination already, and many have reported being denied entrances to stores with their service dogs in the United States, despite the fact that their ability to do so is protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

In an article for The Mighty, Brad Morris wrote about how airlines discriminate against people with psychiatric service dogs, despite the fact that the federal law Air Carrier Access Act should prevent this from happening. “A psychiatric service dog is a service dog that helps someone with a mental health disability,” he wrote. “By lumping together people who use psychiatric service dogs with people who use ESAs, airlines couldn’t be more clearly singling out people purely on the basis of having a mental health disability.”

Instead of apologizing, Avila doubled down on their joke. Insider reported that Avila responded to a critical TikTok of their joke with the comment “read the caption, dummy.”