If you’ve spent any time perusing YouTube shorts, you’ve probably come across those clips where someone walks around looking for a sad looking homeless person, or someone apparently in difficult circumstances and asks them for a small amount of change. If they say yes the YouTuber then takes a wad of cash from his pocket and offers it to them instead, they say no, then eventually accept it, maybe cry, they hug and said YouTuber says ‘I love you’, as his friend films from the other side of the road. Cue 20m views.
The scene is bizzare for so many reasons. For one thing you know as a viewer the only reason these people are making these videos is ‘clout’. Someone somewhere had the idea first, for whatever reason, but everyone else is doing because it’s an easy way to try and go viral, the ‘kindness’ of the set up is a farce. The generosity is self-seeking and the entire scene is an act.
Yet the whole thing is a perfect metaphor for the projection of a real world on an internet addicted society. You could point out that it doesn’t matter that the motives are broken and the person is probably fake — a kind thing is still being done. It’s better than plenty of other things you could chose to do for views, and I expect the person struggling to pay their bills who gets a wad of money couldn’t care less about motives.
