Source: John Sommer / Getty
Viral TikToker Scarlet May has been spilling the tea on how deaf people like her check into and out of the drama when they argue.
On July 5, the young and personality-filled social media star explained how she and her brother pettily handled arguments as deaf siblings. She said that to this day, her brother would voice his heated opinion and then shut his eyes when it was her turn to sign her truth.
Scarlet highlighted that there was no way her sibling could see her point of view via her sign language with his eyes shut.
“Anytime that happens I’ll sit there with my arms crossed and I wait for him to open his eyes,” she stated. “And as soon as he opens his eyes again, and he sees me ready to go, boom! Shut again.”
“Not only does he shut his eyes — but he proceeds to walk out the room and touch things as he goes [to] exit.”
The TikToker said her brother’s clever but rude argument style would irk her so bad that she often wanted to fight despite their size difference. Simply put, she said whoever started an argument was usually the person who ended it because the other person rarely got to sign their side of the beef.
“We’re probably going to be in our 80s still doing that,” Scarlet concluded exasperatedly.
The lighthearted clip was a video reply to one of the hard-of-hearing beauty’s 6.7 million TikTok followers: 2.1 million of the platform’s users have viewed it, and over 338, 100 people gave it a like.
In a video uploaded July 6, the social media star explained why some of her best friends are better than her.
The deaf beauty bluntly shared that she’d take her hearing aid out with a quickness if a man ever raised their voice at her the way some of her female friend’s partners have at them.
“One thing about me is I’m not listening to any of that. Cause as soon as you raise your voice a little bit at me, I’m going to take this off — click!”
“And [then] it’s silent on my end — you’re going to be talking to yourself.”
A storytime posted July 4 recalled a kids’ sleepover she attended where all the other girls were also hard of hearing. Amid a fight between the girls about a boy, their child hostess turned off the lights so no one could see to argue or sign.
The viral TikTok user described her childhood friend’s dramatic move as what to do if you ever want to “shut a deaf person up.”
Deaf and hard of hearing are not synonymous terms.
The variations between the two depend on one’s “level of hearing, age of onset, educational background, communication methods and cultural identity,” according to the National Association of the Deaf. Other contributing factors regarding how someone identifies are their comfortability and acceptance regarding their hearing or lack thereof.
There’s sparse scientific data on how deaf people internalize the six basic facial expressions — anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. Still, a 2021 study published via the National Library of Medicine found that deaf individuals have similar understanding levels of facial expressions of emotion to their hearing counterparts.
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