I know this is going to sound like some clickbait bullshit title, but I’m genuinely curious, asking in good faith. My two oldest sons are enamored with him, and he seems like a genuine guy, so I’m asking - is he a nice guy? If you google the question, you get a bunch of reddit hate, which I don’t always trust, because…it’s reddit. I have not watched much content (not my thing, I’m old) but I’m just curious what the fediverse has to say.
I wish there were some way to know the net impact of this. Once helping the poor becomes entertainment, do people actually get up and go do it themselves anymore? Very often these days people don’t actually do things but rather watch others do them online. You can say sure that one person did get money and help, but what is the larger impact of this phenomenon? Are more people inspired to go give? Or do more people “get that itch scratched” and walk away from the video feeling all warm inside just from watching it? And what is the impact to the poor person of their publicity? This stuff is hard to know but I point it out to say there is more to it than “well one person did get help so it must be good.”
One thing it reminds me of is prosthetics viral videos. People love videos where a kid with one arm sees their new robotic prosthetic for the first time. We get all misty watching their excitement. But many people actually go on to have a crappy experience with their prosthetic. There’s one woman I heard on the radio who said she tried many of them and they were heavy, painful, and hard to make work right. She just prefers to use her stump now. And she wishes people would watch a video celebrating that, instead of everyone telling her she should get a cool robot arm. People are icked out by her stump and they all ask her why she doesn’t get a cool robot arm like in the video they saw.
Feelgood porn is problematic.