User:HumanxAnthro/sandbox/Quaden Bayles

Quaden Bayles (born 13 December 2010) is an Australian kid with Achondroplasia who lives in Queensland with his Aboriginal Australian family. He became known for a viral video filmed by her mother, Yarraka Bayles, depicting him crying over being bullied for his dwarfism, expressing desire to commit suicide with a knife.

Biography
72 hours after Quaden's birth, her mother, Yarraka Bayles, received two papers from a doctor diagnosing the kid with Achondroplasia and quickly reacted with shock and disbelief. For the next four years, he had to go through two more operations to treat other complications, such as obstructive sleep apnea and otitis media, which involved the insertion and replacement of tympanostomy tubes and the removal of adenoids. On the kid's fourth birthday in December 2014, shortly after noticing his inability to use his arms and legs properly, she received a MRI that reported Quaden having intracranial pressure. In April 2015, a decompression operation was done at Quaden's hospital to fix the problem.

Since their relationship began, Quaden's parents had problems with alcoholic addiction which came from living in drug-and-crime-ridden areas such as those in Redfern, New South Wales. However, bad luck especially struck the Bayles family since their son was born, such as the deaths of several relatives. Yarranka admitted going from a healthy, sober lifestyle to facing suicidal thoughts and depression in the first two years of her son's life. In late 2014, his father was sentenced to jail, leaving Yarraka to not only have to raise her children herself but also have to deal with a new set of financial struggles, having to pay for two houses (including her father's) and three vehicles; she had to quit her catering job to raise her son, making her sign up to a disability pension. One year, Yarraka's twin daughters, Lili and Lala, had to miss several days of school for the two to raise Quaden and for Yarraka to pay the bills. Yarraka's husband also garnered cancer, with Lila and Lala having to take care of him on the weekends until his death.

The rest of the Bayles family was also shaken from learning about Quaden's Achondroplasia, and Yarranka was so incredulous about it that she constantly took photographic "evidence" of the kid to think he was normal size. Although coming to terms that the diagnosis was legitimate a year later, she continued to tried to ignore it; this was impossible, however, as her relatives and acquittances constantly asked questions about it.

In early 2015, she started positing video clips of Quaden's life on social media.

Video
In the six-minute video, a crying nine-year-old Quaden, burying in face into a chair, states, "Give me a knife. I want to kill myself. I just want to die right now." His mother narrates, "I've just picked my son up from school, witnessed a bullying episode, rang the principal, and I want people to know - parents, educators, teachers - this is the effect that bullying has. Every single... day, something happens. Another episode, another bullying, another taunt, another name-calling. Can you please educate your children, your families, your friends?" It went from 14 million to 24 million views on 21 February 2020.

Reaction
On 19 February 2020, Brad Williams, a comedian who also has achondroplasia, started a GoFundMe page, with a goal of US$10,000, for the boy to go to Disneyland; raising $500 within ten minutes, the campaign quickly far surpassed that goal, reaching $366,000 from 16,500 within a day. The extra money went to anti-bullying charities. On the day the campaign started, Williams revealed so many individuals and businesses were willing to help he couldn't get to all of them, such as wrestling stars wanting to take the kid to WrestleMania and Fiji Airways offering him plane tickets; he further stated, "I’ve heard from men, women, all heights, all races, all parts of the LGBTQ+ community, all political affiliations. Everyone is helping. What a truly wonderful thing." Williams stated on the funding page, "This isn't just for Quaden, this is for anyone who has been bullied in their lives and told they weren't good enough. Let's show Quaden and others, that there is good in the world and they are worthy of it."

Hashtags such as #WeStandWithQuaden and #StopBullying were trending on Twitter, and celebrities came out in support of Bayles. Hugh Jackman said in a video message, "Quaden, you are stronger than you know, and no matter what, you got a friend in me." Eric Trump called the video "absolutely heartbreaking," and Enes Kanter tweeted "the world is behind you" and invited the family to an NBA game. Jeffrey Dean Morgan also responded to Bayles with a video clip on Twitter: "What I want you to know is that you have friends, me included. You have a bunch of friends out here, out in the world that you haven’t met yet who are here and we got your back. You need to know that it’ll get better." Warwick Davis, an actor with dwarfism, publicized his thoughts of the video via a BBC interview, describing it as "deeply upsetting to watch."

The National Rugby League expressed support and a invitation to introduce a rugby match.

Conspiracy theories
Upon the video's popularity, conspiracy theories emerged on social media platforms that suspected Bayles was 18 years old, not nine. On 21 February 2021, one tweet stated, "yall know that bullied 9 year old people raised over 200,000 dollars for and several celebs gave him attention???. his names quaden bayles, hes 18 years old and actually rich and an instagram celeb...yall got scammed by an adult m-dget im screaming." The post was retweeted 300 times, and screenshots of it spread around Facebook all within an afternoon. In the United States, #QuadenBayles was the fourth-highest trend on trend, and "He's 9" was number 12. A Facebook post by Jasmein Dowe supported the theory and claimed Bayles deleted Instagram photos of his 18th birthday: "Just so you know.. he scammed everybody.. he's 18 has plenty of money and yeah everyone fell for it. Now if I'm wrong please source your link and explain why to me. He's an Instagram celeb @quadosss and deleted captions pertaining to his 18th birthday post."

Business Insider traced the potential origin of these theories to two images on Bayles' Instagram account. One photo has five people, Bayles included, surrounding an orange, lit-up "18" sign, another just consisting of the sign. Insider debunked the theory; it revealed the group photo had the caption "Happy 18th ma mah", indicating another person's 18th birthday was being celebrated, and the other photo did not have a caption. Other evidence included Yarraka posting photo albums of Quaden's birthday parties on her Facebook since he was one, and Australian television appearances in 2014 and 2015, one of them on Studio 10 in 2015 where the host stated he was four.