Filed under: American, economics | Tags: cash, Disneyland, generosity, kindness, money, safety net, TikTok, unhoused, veteran
The video made me cry. It was clearly meant to – and it succeeded. It’s the one where the young man asks the stranger – an old man with his walker – if he’ll go to Disneyland with him and they go to Disneyland and have a fantastic time and at the end, the old man (100 years old, a veteran, we’re told) tries to express what the day has meant to him and cries. He says he thought his life was over. It is moving and very sweet. And very popular. I saw the TikTok video on Twitter where it had millions of view and then looked for it on TikTok where it also had millions of views and it’s also on Instagram, where I assume it also has millions of views. If I were Disney, I’d be setting up a Bring an Elder to Disney Program right now, because I predict this is going to be a trend. And it would be a lovely trend. Young folks searching out older folks to take them out for a fun day? Awesome.
But of course I had to look more deeply at all this because as sweet as it is, there’s something dark underneath. The reason this 100 year old man thought his life was over was, I assume, because we have TERRIBLE support for our elders in this country. There’s very little in the way of services and many elders just fall through the safety net. Because there is no safety net.
And I looked up the young man who took this 100 year old veteran to Disneyland and I watched many of his other TikToks and he’s very well intentioned. Kindness is his brand. His videos are full of him handing very poor people a wad of cash or taking them shopping. And I cried through a lot of them, I’m not going to lie. The unhoused guy who just wanted some art supplies when asked what someone could get for him? Heartbreaker. The guy living in a broken down car who will soon have a van of his own because this guy’s raising funds for him? Very moving. To see a person’s life changed with a handful of cash is really hard not to get caught up in. I cannot fault this guy for going out there and handing people life changing amounts of money.
But I can’t stop thinking about how dark it is that this sort of TikTok Fairy Godfather is the only hope a lot of folks have. It’s very cool that a lot of his viewers band together to support getting a homeless person a place to live but they wouldn’t have to if we, as a society, just managed to take care of our vulnerable citizens. It’s very nice for all of us to cry over the man going shopping for art supplies and helping to fund getting him a prosthetic leg but why couldn’t we just allocate some of our taxes to ensure that folks like him never have to end up on the street in the first place? We shouldn’t need a tearjerking kindness video to make sure that everyone has a home and the services they need to live. Because this fairy godfather of TikTok can’t help everyone.
I can’t help thinking of all the people who aren’t video friendly – that don’t cry when they secure his largesse or the people he never meets at all.
It feels like the mark of a very decadent society that we have those sorts of entertainments. In the disability community, it’s called Inspiration Porn – where abled folks use the images and stories of disabled folks to motivate themselves. It’s the “This guy climbed a mountain with one leg and one eye. What are you doing with your life?” sort of thing. And I think these TikTok videos, where we watch poor people’s lives get changed with cash, are mostly poverty porn. Look how easy it can be to change a poor person’s life by just handing them a bunch of money. But actually that’s right. Pretty much all the evidence points to giving poor folks money as the answer to poverty. But doing it on an individual basis instead of at a societal level just seems cruel.
I like these videos while I watch them but the more I think about them, the sadder I get. It reminds me of that Selfless Teacher story I wrote about a while back – where the teacher won an award for making sure her students were fed and had clean clothes. It’s the same situation of lionizing and supporting one nice example, one lucky good egg while we let the rest languish. As a society, we could solve homelessness, for example, by just giving folks homes. Evidence suggests that this is much cheaper than all the ways we currently deal with homelessness. But it wouldn’t make good video, I guess? Kindness coming from individuals just plays better on screens? Anyway, this sweet old guy got to go to Disneyland with a generous stranger. It’s a nice video. Just don’t think about it all too deeply.
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