On December 22, 2014, well-known YouTube prankster Josh Paler Lin uploaded a video entitled “How Does a Homeless Man Spend $100?” The premise was simple, and followed a long line of social experiment style content that had been one of the main genres of the YouTube platform since its founding in 2005. Lin begins by going up to a homeless man, later introduced as Thomas Kenneth Nickel, or “Kenni,” standing on an L.A. road median and offering him $100 cash. Nickel takes the money gratefully and Lin appears to leave. Instead, Lin goes back to his car and follows Nickel with his camera. Nickel enters a liquor store and emerges again with a bag full of what is presumably purchased alcohol. Lin continues to follow until Nickel reaches a park full of other homeless people, where Nickel reveals that in the bag he has food and necessities, which he shares generously with those around him.
The video touched hearts, gathering over 52 million views since its publication. Donations poured in to further help Nickel escape his situation, all towards a fund that Lin’s channel set up after the video gained viral popularity. The money was supposedly wired to Nickel, jumpstarting a new life for a man down on his luck. It all seemed like a rare bout of good news that the public was more than happy to indulge in, until it soured all at once with the revelation that Nickel had died from “chronic alcoholism,” according to a 2015 NBCLA newscast.
After the death of his son, Nickel’s father, William, revealed in an interview with NBC that Lin had included a clause in the wire-transfer contract awarding himself almost $20,000 from Nickel’s fortune to cover “expenses incurred in feeding, lodging, clothing, legal fees and other related costs” upon signature. The clause had apparently sparked a feud between Lin and Nickel, who refused to sign due to Lin “stealing” from him. William Nickel believed that his son never actually signed due to the disagreement, and as a result believed that Lin still silently held on to all the money, even after his son’s death.
“I don’t feel like Josh Lin has been honest at all,” William said when asked if he had anything to say to Lin. “I’m going to sue the tail off of him.”
The resulting scandal zapped nearly all of Lin’s reputation as a content creator on YouTube, even after he attempted to clear his name in an interview with Fox News. Fox’s investigation also revealed that Nickel had a history of alcohol abuse, with nearly 20 misdemeanors relating to alcohol on his record. Even so, the damage was done, and Lin’s rise to YouTube fame came to a halt.
The story of Josh Paler Lin is not unique. Charity content on YouTube and most recently TikTok has always been a formulaic and nearly surefire way to gain likes and views. Videos such as those from VitalyzdTv and FouseyTube and, perhaps the most recognizable, MrBeast, have all uploaded thousands of hours of generous but equally ludicrous content that shows the creator helping the less fortunate, usually around the metropolitan L.A. area. While these videos are praised for their clear attempts at making the world a better place, none are without disapproval. Critics have called this “philanthro-tainment” uncomfortable, ungenuine and even sinister.
Like all social media content, a large amount of views usually generates ad or sponsorship revenue, and in the case of charity content creators, a portion of this money is funneled back into making more charity content, and the cycle continues. However, with the case of content that is meant to help the unhoused or low-income population, it is easy to see how this process can easily turn into a cash cow scheme without the right caveats in place.
FouseyTube, also known as Yousef Erakat, uploaded a video in 2013 entitled “HOMELESS MAN GETS FRESH START!” (because it wouldn’t be real 2010s YouTube content unless the thumbnail was in all capitals). The video depicts FouseyTube walking up to a man named Matthew on the street and offering him a haircut, new clothes, a hotel and a hot meal. Erakat inserts himself into the video multiple times, attempting to illustrate that he is “homies” with Matthew through an awkward secret handshake and a “swag walk” session. Erakat often is seen asking an uncomfortable Matthew invasive questions as he attempts to enjoy the mild luxuries he has been given, prompting Matthew to look at the camera and tell viewers how long it has been since he last slept in a bed before he can enjoy the one Erakat has given him.
Erakat’s delve into the charity trend back when it was first gaining steam on the YouTube platform is fairly innocent overall, if at times naive or ill-advised. However, when compared with his other similar content with unhoused people, it is easy to see a bewildering and sometimes disturbing trend. He does everything from pose as a caricatured version of a homeless man on the street, giving money to the people who attempt to give it to him; to filming a child actor posing as homeless to attempt to “put a mirage in front of society’s eyes and see how they handle it.”
While the videos mentioned are not recent content, they show that this content, while sometimes not as innocent as it seems, is fueled by sociological trends that can be identified in the same content today. Social Exchange Theory, or the theory that relationships between people are created through the lens of cost-benefit analysis, can be smeared all over many charity videos found nowadays across social platforms.
Humans consider beneficial relationships, according to the theory, to be the ones that cost them the least. This cost is easy to measure with charity content, as it usually is flashed obsequiously before the camera in the form of cold hard cash before being given away. The benefits for these creators, however, are hypothetically infinite. The revenue gained from this process can be easily tracked on a YouTube or TikTok creators account details page, and the process subsequently becomes less about the people and more about the numbers.
These creators will always receive more than they give. It is their job to keep numbers up. Therefore, it makes sense why people like MrBeast are fairly unapologetic about the process. “Homeless people don’t care if I use them for views,” MrBeast, whose real name is James Stephen Donaldson, said in a video addressing his controversial internet presence. Perhaps not, considering the line of willing participants he has for nearly all his content. However, he does not just use the homeless and less fortunate for views, he uses them to create branded clothing, an energy bar brand and burger franchises, profiting in infinite, hard-to-trace ways from one source: the poor. While MrBeast helped these people in a major way, they are hardly sharing equally in the profits.
“I don’t give a fuck, I’m rich,” said MrBeast, donning a full Gucci brand tracksuit to guest on the YouTube podcast TMG.
“Are you evil, MrBeast?” Noel Miller, co-host of TMG and fellow Youtuber, flippantly asked the YouTube sensation.
“Oh yeah,” he replied, chuckling and joking with the two hosts. “Fuck poor people.”
MrBeast, while only being facetious on the TMG podcast, topped the 2021 Forbes YouTuber list with a whopping $54 million in reported revenue. It is not a crime to end up on this list, but when much of your content is specifically geared towards helping the needy, it is questionable why $54 million is sitting in your bank account, waiting to be spent on perhaps another “Squid Game” reenactment video.
“Squid Game” is a Netflix show meant to show the consequences of a society that does not care about its poor. Creating a way for poorer people to make money by making them reenact this dystopia for a cash prize is bad enough. However, it takes place as an example of a strict formula. MrBeast uses the money gained from these charitable videos to create more outlandish videos with bedazzled titles with buzzword amounts of money involved, like a $1 million prize. People participate for the chance to win the money, but as a result must do everything for the viewer’s entertainment. MrBeast sacrifices some money to the winner, but gains infinitely more by profiting off the desire of all the other losing contestants, who, while sometimes given participation rewards, often end up with nearly nothing.
The important thing is that these videos are not philanthropy. Therefore the name “philanthro-tainment” is misleading. Still, these videos are usually not clickbait and they usually do deliver on what they say they will deliver on, with the exception of Lin’s case. As a result, they are enigmatic and uncomfortably ambiguous displays of human nature that greet you every time you open your phone. Good is being done, which warms our hearts, but any dip of the toe into what lies beneath the surface of what these videos attempt to depict, and you are greeted with more complicated matters. Money, politics, ego and raw ambition towards growth drive what you are seeing, and you feel like you are not allowed to be offended that it is so, precisely because it does indeed do good.
It does so much good, in fact, that some attribute the “-tainment” part of “philanthro-tainment” as a novelty act. Eddy Hogg, a senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Kent in the U.K. told CBC News that the phenomenon “is part of a long tradition of the charity telethon, the idea that celebrities encourage people to give to causes often in quite spectacular ways, whether that’s sitting in a bathtub full of baked beans or jumping out of an airplane.”
It is true that modern charity content harks upon the cable-televised charity stunts of old. However, unlike MrBeast and other philanthro-tainers, these stuntmen and women never profited off their endeavors. These stunts were instead often sponsored by large, trustworthy charities who would responsibly manage donated funds, without the need for a camera to validate their actions. Given the colorful history of content creators attempting to manage donating large amounts of money themselves, a similar solution could be considered today. Creators working in conjunction with real, experienced charities, could be what the philanthro-taiment needs: More emphasis on the actual philanthropy.
This philanthro-tainment is just an internet phenomenon, and there are many more subgenres of YouTube that warrant further questioning. None of these, however, are as popular and as influential as charity content. Without checks and balances, creators will always go for the bigger and more generous video, using more money and more life-changing charity on film. But we have seen where this leads, back to where the whole trend started nearly 10 years ago, with a young Josh Paler Lin walking up to a homeless man on the street, about to make the worst mistake of his life.