This is Mariah Pringle.
Mariah is a 2-year-old girl from Somerville, S.C., who has a rare disease called Two Chromosome Duplication Syndrome that impairs her mental and motor skill development. But although Mariah’s short life has been marred by numerous hospitalizations due to her condition, her mom, Kyra, says she’s a fun, happy baby.
Rather than look at Mariah and see her as a beautiful little girl, however, the great and terrible cesspool that is the Internet decided to turn her into a meme.
After Kyra posted a photo of her little tyke on Facebook, she was met with a deluge of negative comments from trolls mocking Mariah’s appearance, comparing her to a monster, a demon, and a leprechaun. One of the kinder memes targeting Mariah, for instance, shows a photo of her with the caption, “Someone show you their baby and she look [sic] like this.”
Understandably, Kyra Pringle is furious, and she’s taken to the media to fight back at the trolls targeting her and her baby.
“She’s not a monster,” Pringle told News 2 on Saturday. “She’s not fake. She’s real. She is here.”
Pringle added that a few trolls have apologized to her after learning that Mariah suffered from a genetic condition and that the photo was not digitally manipulated.
“One guy was like, ‘I was one of them to share this and laugh because I thought she wasn’t real,’” Pringle said. “’He said ‘I do apologize – if I were you, I wouldn’t accept my apology.’”
No kidding.
Fortunately, people have been coming out in droves to support the beautiful little girl and her mom on Facebook, sending them well wishes and donating to Mariah’s GoFundMe page, where the Pringle family has raised almost $4,500 for her medical expenses.
Okay, so maybe the Internet isn’t as much of a cesspool as we thought.
H/T News 2 | Photo via Kyra Pringle/Facebook
