Mom is promoting her nonspeaking autistic son’s novel. The talk show made the error of an up-close shot of the letter board as Woody “spelled” – gibberish.
At the time of this posting, Mary has promoted son Woody’s novel in three outlets that I know of plus “The Today Show.”
What “The Today Show” didn’t count on was that a highly detail-oriented, justice-seeking autistic writer (myself) would post that, indeed, the young man’s finger – in three separate clips in the video – tapped out random letters.
W-D-R-Y-H-A-A-A-V-Z-R-Z-H-I-V-M-B is what he was shown “spelling” — as it appears when I scrutinize it (I’m sure I didn’t catch every letter exactly) — but nevertheless there’s nothing coherent — and also, this jumble is not evident if you only casually watch his finger move about in normal film speed.
But a nonsensical stream of letters is what he actually pointed to. I was able to collect this data two ways:
- Viewing one to three taps at a time before pausing the video to write them down
- Quickly pausing after each single tap to ensure getting all of them down with my pen and paper
This required numerous rewinds, but the evidence was as clear as crystal: In all three segments, the man taps at random letters, albeit with a noticeable cadence.
This is not shorthand. The S2C letter board is not a court reporter stenographer machine. It’s a simple alphabet board that you can order off of Amazon.
Two Additional Striking Red Flags for Fraud to Promote a Book
Imagine that the hunger for getting a novel published is so intense in a woman who studied English in college (the man’s mother), that she’d be willing to pen a novel but promote it as being authored by her autistic son who has very limited speech. Anything is possible!
Now call me a Debbie Downer if you will, but how do we explain the random letter pointing?
And there’s even more evidence that this whole thing is made up to promote someone else’s book.
First, as the segment in the “Today” video shows the up-close of Woody Brown’s index finger hitting various letters, Mary is heard “reading” off what he’s spelling.
As she speaks, her words are captioned in a blurb beside the footage of his finger tapping. But there’s a marked incongruity between her speech and his letter pointing.
In the first close-up he taps out M-J-B-D-R-G-N-V-X-A. In the time that he begins and ends this nonsensical sequence, his mother has “read” the following:
“…to finally be in the room where the learning was happening.”
Now there’s a big problem here. How do only 10 letters translate to a 48-letter phrase?
Mary’s recitation of this exact phrase pretty much begins as Woody taps “T” and ends as he taps “A.” Now you might think that perhaps this is just a filming gimmick — which of course, makes zero sense anyways.
But it happens three times total. The longer stream of random letters (near the start of this post) was also accompanied by the mother’s spoken translation, which again, was synched to start when he tapped the first letter in that sequence (“W”) and ended right as he tapped the last (“B”).
This segment begins at 3:19. Mom’s recitation contains way more letters than the 17-letter string of random letters. View it for yourself and prove me wrong.
At 3:55 it happens again with what appears to be H-O-O-C-A-W-C-F-D-Z-A. Except this time, the cameraman afterward then shows Woody zoomed out slightly, where the viewer can very clearly see that he is jabbing at the letter board. But there’s something else that screams deception:
As the young man is jabbing away, his eyes are a little off to the side and upward – all through at least five taps – and then he shifts his gaze to a mix of frontward and upward, all while continuing to tap. This alone is proof he is not spelling.
- Go ahead, try it: Get a flat letter board and see what you can spell WHILE your eyes are maintaining a gaze above or even the slightest to the side of the board.
- Prove to me you can spell out something as simple as two of your favorite foods. I’ll patiently wait.
I’m typing this post touch-style on a laptop keyboard, and for the life of me, I can’t visually, without touch, locate the letters if my gaze is even a miniscule away from the keys.
Yes, I can find them via standard touch typing, but not via vision using an index finger.
If I mimic the man’s two eye positions during that footage, I can’t identify a single letter. It’s 100% guesswork. For the heck of it I tried to spell “dog” while keeping my eyes a little off the keyboard. I got F-N-J.
Side View of Woody Doing S2C (“spell to communicate”)
There are two brief side scenes of him tapping. Of course, you can’t make out the letters.
But what you can make out is that, beginning at 2:24, the jabbing is clearly random, starting with him tapping the same spot four times in a row. No, not the same general area, but literally the same little square that has a letter in it.
What word has the same letters four in a row? Oh, I can think of a few: “grrrr” and “ahhhh.”
After that same spot 4x in a row, he veers away for several different taps, then comes back to that same spot for three times in a row. How could the “Today” show director think nobody would notice this?
My Motive
Why am I exposing this? Why not just let the mom bask in the glory of getting her novel promoted through made-up claims about her autistic son?
Because I hate deception. I hate dishonesty. I hate lying. I hate how this presents as a mother using her autistic son – who may have no idea what’s going on and is simply rote-trained to rhythmically tap randomly at the letters – as a prop to promote her own novel.
It’s BLOODY WRONG. Here is my first post about Woody Brown’s story which breaks things down even more.
Update: “Today Show” Segment Is on YouTube
The proof that Woody Brown’s book authorship is a hoax can now easily be observed by viewing him tapping the board at 0.25 playback speed.
His finger not only points to random letters, but at times (three clips of this total), his finger makes contact with the space between letters!
At one-quarter speed, the truth is strikingly visible. The “setting” control for playback is in the lower right of the YouTube screen.
It’s appalling that Mary would go on a mission pulling this over on major news outlets and even getting a Wikipedia on it.
So who really wrote the novel “Upward Bound”?
I’ll bet the farm it was Mary herself, making ludicrous claims that her severely verbally-limited son poked it out on a laminated letter board over a two and a half year period — and that he watches videos while pointing at letters outside his visual field in order to focus. Right up there with the tabloid story about the psychic dog.
Update: This story has now been picked up by The New York Times and People Magazine. Just because major news outlets have published a story doesn’t mean that story is true. Integrity, fact checking and objective validation measures in journalism went out with the bathwater years ago.
People who propagate shams need to be busted and exposed for what they really are. Here is the YouTube video.
S2C Mom’s Clever Excuse for Son’s Wandering Eyes when Tapping
