Disney Parks News Site Harasses Young Teen

Online theme park media company Inside The Magic recently published a clickbait article about a special needs teen.

(PLGNN) - Thomas, known online as MagicWithThomas, is a 16 year old autistic boy who is known for his wholesome interactions with cast members and characters at the Disney Parks. His social media account, ran by his father, has almost 700 thousand followers on TikTok along with 66 million likes. Recently, a video went viral of Thomas meeting Moana while inside the Disneyland Park. The video, which shows Thomas greeting Moana, and reaching to touch her necklace. Due to the necklace's location at the top of Moana's chest, there were a small amount of online users saying that Thomas was acting "creepy".

This touching is common with neurodivergent people, especially  individuals with autism, and his touch was not meant to be sexual in any way.

However, the situation became controversial when news site Inside The Magic, also known as ITM, published an article about this interaction, titling it, "Thousands Defend Autistic Disneyland Guest After Attack". However, the name of the article was late changed to, "Disney Fans Call Autistic Teen a 'Creep' for Touching Princess".

After the article name change, Thomas's father put out a post on their account saying that the name change was clickbait and in poor taste. They asked for ITM to change the article back. Due to the large amount of backlash, ITM changed the headline of the article back to normal and said, "Thank you for calling us out. The second headline was out of line, and we have reverted the headline back to the original one. Thank you for the thoughtful feedback in your post. We really appreciate it and apologize."

However, the situation didn't end there because the person who wrote the article, Jess Colopy, turned out to have a history of writing untruthful articles that have harmed innocent individuals. Colopy is one of the main writers at Inside The Magic, and it was revealed in a a story by Instagram account @ktsbestlife that Colopy published false articles about her and her boyfriend claiming in one article that they had knowingly gone to Disneyland with Covid-19, and in another said her boyfriend started a fight at the park. @ktsbestlife has since taken these stories down.

Thomas's account said on Instagram stories that they have gotten many comments to sue Inside The Magic, however they are unsure if there are proper legal grounds.