as a pattern seeking species i think we tend to get attached to things we recognise or encounter frequently. any sort of recognition can work to get people emotionally invested in things. like other people online who we never have met or talked to, fictional characters, even toys or objects.
but while we recognise the parasocial nature of getting overly attached to strangers online , i'm not sure people realise this is what happens on a regular basis towards visibly disabled people in their real lives. being easier to spot in a crowd makes people notice you more often and remember you more strongly. people also mistake the information of "this person has a disability" as intimate shared information. perhaps they recognise it as the vulnerable information that it is. and so visibly disabled people are often treated by neighbours or distant acquaintances or strangers as someone they know. maybe even someone they're entitled to talk to familiarly or ask about.
in actuality they don't know anything private about this random disabled person. i bet most people, abled or disabled would be unable to tell the disabilities someone has just by looking at their visual symptoms. neither did they really notice the disabled person or learn anything about them that they would usually strive to learn about someone they're getting to know. you don't know what that visibly disabled person likes or dislikes, believes in, advocates for, spends their time doing.
visibly disabled people know it wasn't any aspect of their personhood that stuck in the mind of some stranger, but rather understand that they are being seen as a human shaped disability. and visibly disabled people haven't made any decision to confide in strangers, just like you don't "share" the information that you can walk on two legs, or have four limbs, or no scars, or the ability to speak and hear by existing in public, disabled people aren't "sharing" their scars or limb difference or anything else by existing in public.
and when people can't recognise their own assumptions about random visibly disabled strangers and then feel entitled to their time, energy, emotions, personal information, and such they get angry at the disabled person for having regular boundaries that most ableds take for granted. and considering that disability makes one vulnerable to assault or abuse, and that's the only information these self-entitled ableds actually have on hand, it easily becomes a dangerous situation for the disabled person in question
