Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Like many others, Shane and Hannah Burcaw, aka “Squirmy and Grubs” on YouTube, jumped on the recent social media trend to share that they didn’t make the Olympic team accompanied with a video of them being decidedly unathletic. The couple posted a reel of Hannah Burcaw dipping her husband into a pool with the text: “Sorry to announce I did not qualify for the 2024 Olympic diving team.” “This kind of self-deprecating humor is right up our alley, so we joined the trend and posted a quick video of me ‘diving’ into a pool, except my dive is obviously just Hannah gently lowering me into the water,’” Shane Burcaw wrote on August 8 on the couple’s social media accounts. “(It’s) mildly silly at best, kind of dumb at worst, but it fits the trend perfect.” Shane Burcaw has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic condition that leads to muscle weakness and wasting thanks to diminished motor neurons, which help control muscles, according to past TODAY.com reporting. For most of his life, since he was 2 years old, Shane Burcaw has used a wheelchair. When Shane Burcaw wrote his post updating his followers about the viral Olympic video, it had almost 20 million views — what sounds like “a major success.” Yet, when he read the comments on the post, he felt discouraged and saddened. “Let me share some of the brutally ignorant and aggressively hateful things people felt compelled to say on this lighthearted and fun video I created,” he wrote. “The very top comment says, ‘It’s always important to wash your vegetables,’ referring to me as a vegetable. It has 97,000+ likes. That means almost one hundred thousand real humans on this earth agree with this humiliating insult!” The negative comments continued, and he shared more. “The next one, with 79,000 likes: ‘I still struggle to see that they are in a relationship.’” Other comments on the Olympic video included: “Dating him is like doing charity work,” and “One day she’s not going to pull him back up.” In the past, the couple has addressed the negative comments they receive as a couple where Shane Burcaw has a disability and Hannah Burcaw does not. Soon after the two shared images and videos from their wedding in 2020, people posted insensitive comments about their relationship and Hannah Burcaw shared her dismay, TODAY.com previously reported. “For a while, I held onto the idea that once Shane and I were married all the people doubting our relationship would realize it was real,” she said in a 2020 article. “Now, of course, I’m not that naïve.” The couple said in the past they candidly share their lives on social media to educate others about disability and relationships. “Shane and I continue to make content and share our story with the hopes of showing as many people as we can that disabled people are worthy partners,” Hannah Burcaw said in 2020. Regarding their recent post, Shane Burcaw shared his frustration that the work of educating others about disability seems never-ending.“I’m tired, guys. Tired of spending my entire life trying to get the world to accept me. Tired of dedicating my career to educating people about my true disabled experience, only to be reminded —DAILY, by hundred of thousands of people — that I’m still widely regarded as a ‘vegetable’ that would be better off dead,” he wrote. “Tired of being denigrated and dismissed.” Despite the fatigue Shane and Hannah Burcaw feel, they are committed to continuing to educate others.“I won’t give up, though. It’s too important to me and the stakes are too high,” he wrote. “Until disabled people are embraced by our world as equals, I’ll be here, sharing my disabled life that I so deeply enjoy and cherish, and hoping (maybe against reason) that it’s making a difference.”
