Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Kindness Influencers and Poverty Porn + Is Huberman Cancelled?

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Taylor Lorenz breaks down the latest tech news including Truth Social going public, New York Magazine's much-discussed Andrew Huberman expose, Spotify’s latest podcast metrics, and the poverty porn drama on YouTube. Later, Taylor’s joined by Brad Podray, a.k.a. Scumbag Dad, to unpack the problem with “Kindness Influencers” — those creators who give money to strangers who are seemingly down on their luck. You can find Brad Podray on Tiktok @thescumbagdad Full video of this episode will be available on Taylor's YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You've probably seen those videos on TikTok where somebody gives money to a needy stranger, and it all seems all warm and fuzzy. But is that person actually being helped? Did they even consent to being filmed? This week, we're discussing whether kindness influencers are actually good for society. But before all that, I'm getting into the latest truth social news that Andrew Huberman expose and more. That's all coming up next on Power User. Hi, welcome to Power User.

I'm here with my show Runner Zach Mack, and we're going to run through some of the news of the week. Hey. All right, and let's do it. Go for it. Okay, Zach, we have to talk about New York Magazine's cover story this week because it's going super viral and it's all about one of the most famous wellness influencers and podcasters, Andrew Huberman. Andrew Huberman runs this podcast, Huberman Lab that's really skyrocketed in the past few years to become one of the most popular like lifestyle science-based kind of podcast. He gives advice about, you know, optimizing pretty much every area of your life, getting lots of sleep. It's a lot of sort of basic advice, but he gives sort of science-based answers. And this article was fundamentally a piece about his relationships

with women, taking a bigger look at his life since becoming really famous. It also scrutinizes some of the supplements that he sells on his show. But it's really fundamentally a critique of his relationships with women. It was revealed he was dating multiple women at once. He was cheating on people. He was lying to these people and kind of manipulating these women in really horrible. ways according to their account. The reaction to this has been kind of all over the place. A lot of people are like, look, this is his personal life. You know, we shouldn't scrutinize it. I think a lot of other people make the very fair point that this man is an influencer. And not only is he an influencer, he is a wellness and lifestyle influencer who has built his entire platform on optimizing

every part of your life and essentially controlling every aspect of your life. So in that sense, if he's conducting all of these affairs and being quite dubious in his personal life, that seems relevant. So I do think his behavior matters, and I think that this story was worth reporting. But it is being framed as a hit piece by his followers. You had other big people like Lex Friedman come out in support of him saying it's so sad, you know, what they're doing to Andrew Huberman. They're trying to cancel him, da-da-da-da. I don't think that's quite fair. I think this is an enormously wealthy, powerful wellness influencer. And the behavior that's described in the story is pretty disturbing.

You and I talked about this on the phone yesterday long before we decided we were going to cover it. I don't know that we completely agree on this story. I'm not a fan of this show, but I have heard the Huberman Lab probably a dozen times, right? And so I'm familiar with his schick. It's basically him talking about the best ways to optimize your brain and body, right? And your life. Yeah, sure.

So I feel like this story felt a little bit out of bounds because he's not necessarily preaching morals or ethics on his show. He's really just talking about the best way to optimize your body. I feel like his personal life has kind of nothing to do with his work. But his personal life is sort of directly related to his work, especially when he's talked about things like how to control addiction, how to control your impulses, you know, how to leave this hyper-optimized life. he seems like a very broken man. He's sort of juggling all of these women at once and lying to them and having these really deep kind of emotional affairs. And that to me just, it did call into question, in my opinion, his judgment. And I do question, you know, whether he's practicing what he preaches. If you read this story, the takeaway is he's clearly a shitty dude, right? He's clearly like a liar and a cheater and not a great guy to women, right? Like that part is just pretty indisputable. I guess, I guess I don't see the connection with what his podcast is and sort of what he's pushing. Because in the dozen times I've listened to it, it just really is not about ethics or morality. When you are a lifestyle influencer and you are meeting these women, by the way, directly through

his job, through his fame, meeting them on Instagram, it's relevant. You're a lifestyle influencer. So your lifestyle is relevant, right? I think what's described in the article is really scary and toxic and abusive. I mean, he allegedly affected at least one woman with an STD. He didn't give these women informed consent when he was sleeping with them. Like, that's very toxic behavior. Look, I don't think this negates his great episode on sleep or some of this other stuff.

But I do think it's like it's worth sort of like taking this behavior into account. And especially I think we as a society don't take abusive behavior towards women seriously. And we should. I mean, if he was exhibiting abusive behavior in the workplace, it would be a problem. If he was exhibiting his personal life, it should, you know, it reflects on his character. I think it's not okay. But that being said, I think if this exact same article came out and you just swapped his name out for like Drake or Leonardo DiCaprio or any NBA player, I just don't think any of us would bat an eye or care, right? Yeah, nobody would care.

And I think that's because they don't expect that. And maybe this article doesn't like make it clear enough. but he's really become this larger-than-life figure that young people, especially young men, like really aspire to, really look up to him. And that is sort of the curse of being a lifestyle influencer, right? You're right in the sense that he doesn't bring his personal life really as much into the podcast. It's not the core focus of the podcast by any means. But this is a guy who talks all the time about optimizing your life, like scrambling to juggle like four different women on the same day. It's just like a lot of people were saying, you know,

it is a testament to his productivity, the amount of affairs that he was able to maintain. Incredible scheduling on his part. This, I would almost put more in the like Tiger Woods camp, where it's like Tiger Woods, incredible golfer, got caught cheating and just had a really messy personal life. The messy personal life doesn't exactly intersect with the golf, right? It doesn't make him a worse golfer that he's like not a great dude. And that's sort of how I think of this Andrew Huberman story. It's like, just because he's a good neuroscientist doesn't mean he's a good dude. And like I see those things as like fairly separate. Yeah. And I think that goes back to like, how do you view him? Do you view him like an athlete where it's like, look, I can appreciate this guy. I can enjoy his podcast and take away what I can. Whereas, you know, and maybe not and sort of like not really listen to him when he starts talking about, you know, maybe personal stuff or things like addiction. Because clearly I think he has some sort of love addiction or sex addiction or something. Or have. you idolized him? And does this shatter your perception of him? And does that question, you know, does his fandom begin to question him? These are the tricky dynamics that content creators is,

but specifically lifestyle influencers and health and wellness influencers have to navigate. I think it's to be really, really interesting to see how he responds to this. Because I think he can go two ways. He can double down and do the like right wing. I've being canceled by the woke media. and there's a lot of men's rights guys that are like rooting for him that are like he did nothing wrong. These women are liars, there are sluts, you know, da-da-da-da.

Or I think he could take the accountability route and to say like, look, fall on his sword. Of course, apologize. The internet's not going to ever accept an apology, but you just have to, you know, try to make amends and you try to improve yourself. And I just, one is a much more lucrative route,

which is playing the canceled influencer card. Or option three, not say in. anything and just keep it moving. That's another response, which is sort of just doubling down. I agree. I feel like he's going to be asked to address this at some point. It's interesting the role that social media played and that like these women, I mean,

so many times in the story, they talk about finding other women because the woman was viewing their Instagram stories or liking all of their posts. And I think we're all living in a more connected world than ever. So much of it reminded me of that big Facebook group in New York, are we dating the same guy? I think there's local versions of it in every city where people post about guys. that they're dating saying, hey, is anyone else dating this guy? Do you know anything about him? Have you been on a date with him? We're all sort of crowdsourcing our reputations more and more now. And so, yeah, it's harder and harder to get away with this sort of manipulation and cheating that he was doing.

Totally. From what I saw on Twitter, this story almost feels, it feels very split along gender lines, unfortunately. Again, I'm very interested to see how he handles it. But I agree. agree with you, there's been a really heavy split online. And I think it's interesting, too, the immediate backlash to the media. Like, how many people just didn't read the story and saw Lex Friedman's tweet? If you look at the replies to Lex Friedman, they all say, first of all, a lot of them are yelling at the New Yorker because they can't tell the difference between New York Magazine and the New Yorker, which does not say bode well for media literacy. Yeah. But they're not reading the article. They're consuming the story through the lens of another influencer's point of view about it.

And I think that is the fundamental problem with the media right now. It's a that nobody's even really reading and engaging with the story. Instead, they're sort of like, oh, let's see what the, oh, let me read a few tweets about the story. Let me see what my favorite guy has to say about the story. Oh, he says it's bullshit. It's a hit piece. Yeah. I mean, what do you say to that?

Like, that this piece is a hit job. Well, first of all, critical reporting, the notion, like, I hate, as a journalist, I hate the concept of, like, hit pieces or whatever. I will say, as somebody that's been on the other side of critical media coverage, that is wild inaccurate. You know, it is frustrating. I am probably way more sympathetic than I was even a few years ago to people that get negative for us, because I can empathize. I can empathize with seeing this version of you that's filtered through the lens of a journalist that is, you're like, that's not me, or like, I didn't say that, or that's not an accurate portrayal, right? This is very much the

women's side of the story. Huberman doesn't respond. This is the women's side. And I think it's, look, it's interesting to hear these women's stories and hear their side. And I choose to believe that they're probably telling the truth because women generally do not all coordinate to lie about these things. That said, I do think that there's something about it being a New York Magazine cover story that almost negates its impact because I think had this been a Twitter thread or had these women come out on Instagram, for instance, I think it would have gotten a much different reception. I think people actually would have been much more likely to believe them. I think now because it's coming from the quote, mainstream media, it can be framed as this

hit piece and like, look at this powerful media people that don't like the new media guy. And so they're trying to take them down, you know, like there's that narrative in content creator world. New York Magazine is on a role, by the way, because this is like the 10th story they've published in the past month that people can't stop talking about. Yeah, colleagues. Okay. Well, speaking of bulky bros who have podcasts, Spotify released some new metrics recently, and it revealed just how popular Joe Rogan's podcast is on the platform. Rogan has over 14 million

followers on Spotify alone. We should say followers doesn't mean listeners. It just means people that click to follow his page and get updates every time he posts. The next most followed show below him is TED Talks at 5 million. So it just shows the disparity between him and his closest competitors. It's worth noting to that Rogan was exclusive on Spotify for the past few years. So not only is he a huge podcaster generally, but Spotify actually was incentivized to push him and get him more subscribers to make it seem like he is huge on the platform. Most people don't listen to podcasts on Spotify. It's kind of a mix of all these other apps. Spotify has just north of 30% of total podcast listeners. Apple is just under 30%. I personally listen to most podcasts on YouTube, but I think the

fact that he has 14 million and is so large and has so many subscribers on the platform shows that this deal that he did with Spotify was hugely worth it, not just from a monetary standpoint, but because it's amassed him this new subscriber base that he now has direct access to. Imagine if the metrics were hours viewed for Rogan because they're not even counting for the fact that his podcast, like an episode of the Daily is like 25 minutes, right? An episode of Joe Rogan is three hours. So you talk about like time spent and Rogan, like it's not even close. No, it's not even close. And this is also probably a good time to remind people to follow us on Spotify.

Yes, yes. Help us out. We're trying to catch Joe Rogan. We're trying. Trump's social media company, Truth Social, went public and almost immediately the stock surge, making it a $9.8 billion company, despite the fact that the company only earned about $3 million in revenue last year. My colleague Drew Harwell has been doing some of the best reporting on all of this. On paper, it seems like Trump is a lot wealthier right now, but he can't actually

sell his shares immediately because of a lockup agreement, and it's not clear how much hype this stock will have long term. A lot of people online right now are calling it a meme stock, they're buying it for fun, or to curry influence with somebody who might be a future president. And Trump has a long record of soliciting foreign investment to his businesses. In January, the House Oversight Committee found that Trump had accepted millions of dollars in funding from foreign governments and officials during his presidency. On one Reddit investing forum, one poster wrote that, quote, anyone betting against Trump's companies doesn't understand how many actors in the U.S. and around the world have an interest in giving money to Donald Trump.

I think what's interesting is that there's so much concern right now about foreign influence over apps like TikTok, and yet there's not as much scrutiny around truth social. And I think that a lot of foreign investment in this company from the wrong actors could really come back to bite Trump. Yeah, but I guess the thing is truth social isn't very influential, right? Like, I would worry about TikTok because people actually use it and it makes money. And I just don't think truth social swaying anyone? I don't think that the app itself is that influential, but I think the point is here is how much influence are these investors having over Trump. And we know that Trump has taken investment and changed his position on certain policies. So I think it begs the question.

If somebody comes in, swoops in, buys up majority shares of truth social, makes Trump billions of dollars. Do they have outsized influence on him? 100%. The journalist A. W. O'Hizer wrote a story for Vox about these two feuding YouTubers. One is named Mark Leda. He has a channel called Soft White Underbelly. It focuses on these sort of artistically styled interviews with addicts and unhoused people. And he is engaged in conflict with Tyler Oliveria, who is this sort of Mr. Beast extended universe character. He has this really over the top channel where he films poor and vulnerable people and turns that footage into social media content. Basically, both of them are feuding over kind of who helped this poor family in West Virginia more. Tyler accuses Mark of taking money from a go-fund. me, Mark responds very quickly that actually he didn't take any money and he shows the receipts. I think what's interesting is a lot of YouTubers are also competing with each other to mine these stories of trauma or families in need for content on the internet. Just the fact that we have two totally separate YouTubers now feuding and making content about the same exploited family

that the tabloids themselves have already covered for months, I think says a lot about the state of media. Yeah, and they're all just like claiming to help. You know what I'm saying? On that note, after the break, we're going to talk to Brad Podry. He's a content creator himself and an expert in this whole kindness genre of content that's taken over the internet. You might have seen these videos on social media. A person is down on their luck and approached by a stranger. A content creator who surprises them with a random act of kindness. Maybe it's a hug, a warm meal.

Sometimes it's even a huge wad of cash. We want to give you 500 bucks. What? Are you serious? Because you're having a bad day, man? Guess what? There's $1,000 in there for you. I'm serious, man.

God knew you were going to be here today and let me right to you, brother. For you? You sure. A thousand cash. Come over here, man. I love you, bro. Man, I need the cash. You want to tell you why?

Sure. We see the subject's emotional reaction and our faith in humanity is restored. Or is it? That vulnerable stranger probably didn't wake up that morning thinking that their tears would be plastered all over the internet. And obviously, behind the camera is a content creator. thirsty for views and likely making a whole lot more money off that video than what they just gave away. These creators are sometimes called kindness influencers, and my guest, Scumbag Dad, also known as Brad Podry, is an expert on them. He's a musician and he creates TikTok videos, expertly parroting the whole genre.

Hi, Brad, welcome to Power User. Hi, Taylor. Thanks so much for having me on. I do make fun of kindness creators a lot on TikTok. It's basically one of my standard staples. You know what? I've got something for you because you were kind. I'm blessing people. Here's it that way.

Where you going? We're going to go viral for sure. This is amazing. Kindness footage. Wait, did you film me and my daughter? So first of all, for people that don't know and I don't know have been blessed to never see these videos, what is a kindness influencer. Talk about what these look like. I would say that a kindness influencer is someone whose content is almost entirely dependent on perceived acts of kindness towards strangers, whether it be,

giving a stranger flowers or giving a stranger money for whatever reason. That's how I define a kindness influencer. They generally have one of three different sad songs playing and then someone either pretending to approach a stranger or actually approaching a stranger with some spontaneous act of kindness, such as giving them a flower, asking if they've had a bad day, and if they've had a bad day, rewarding them with a wad of cash or asking them if they've celebrated their birthday recently and if they haven't they all of a sudden throw a little party this kind of content also comes in another form where the influencer will pretend to have a disability or pretend to have some sort of problem and some kind stranger will help them out do you have like two dollars to get this bread

it's for my son i left my wallet at home oh i'm sorry there's four thank you sir And since you guys were kind to me and I have something for you, Donna, you got to open this up. Oh, my God. $500 bucks. Oh, my God. Yeah. I guess let's name some names. What content creators are most emblematic of this genre of content?

I would say MD Motivator on TikTok is probably the most egregious. Jimmy Darts is another one. There's a guy named Bond Gives, who's another one. On sort of the pretend scenario bit, there's a gentleman named Saul Preeto. who has done a lot of like viral videos where he pretends to have a disability. And I find those really stupid. So those are off the top of my head. Those are some of the folks that I've made fun of, you know, kind of over and over and over again

to try and sort of show the audience that like their content may not be as authentic or as kind as the audience may think. Yeah. What unleashed all of this on the internet? Where did this begin? I think some people blame Mr. Beast, but to me it also feels like a very TikTok phenomenon. Like, where would you sort of pinpoint the beginning of all of this? I would say that the beginning of all this was the seminal Mr. Beast giving out $10,000 video.

Well, I'm a YouTuber. I mean, you can see the camera. And so I'm just, it's a series where I just, you know, be nice and just give people some help. So if you want to take it, it's about $10,000. I'm not joking. And that video is unique because his intentions were completely honest. They were completely up front. He tells the man there's a camera. Like, there are sort of moral problems with using a random homeless person, right? But in the defense of that Minister of Beast video, there was no deceit.

There was no lying to the subject. There was no deception of the audience. So seeing how many hits he could get from that, even though his intentions were pure, we have people with far less talent and far less creativity. sort of bastardizing that idea. And I think with TikTok came the concept of approaching homeless people with hidden cameras. I think that's when it started to go from true stories of kindness

and true stories of potential charity to now tricks. If you approach someone in a Walmart with a camera, straight up front, they do not want anything to do with you. I would challenge so many people to try this. Walk up to someone, say, hey, would you like to be in a TikTok video? No, no, no. Disabled, old, homeless, poor people. You ask them straight up front, you want to be in my TikTok? They're going to say no, right? So that's very important to understand. When you introduce the idea of a hidden cell phone or body camera, when you introduce the idea of deceiving them right up front, you now get something really unique. You can get performances that are not actually performances. You can get their true reaction to the money. So TikTok, what TikTok did is it allowed people with limited creativity and limited means to enter the field of kindness content with essentially no investment and utilize poor people as actors who didn't necessarily want to be. I think that's just such a key part because I think part of it is just the lower barrier to entry and people looking for the cheap.

TikTok engagement. Yes. And like just like you said, it's so much easier to like create this content for TikTok. And it's very difficult to understand this unless you've actually tried it, to understand how much people hate being on camera. And I've said this on other podcasts. Like I've been filming with groups, you know, in a public place or a park in a mall. And someone not even close to us will be like, hey, you're not getting me, are you?

I'm not on camera. I'm like, no, miss. We're actually shooting the other direction. Like people don't want it. And you remove their agency. by introducing the camera. By introducing the hidden camera, you remove that element of choice.

And if that video gets posted and goes viral, and a homeless person speaks out against it, says they were exploited, says they don't like how they were portrayed, well, they either get shouted down or completely ignored because they don't have a platform. Yes. You know, and I've seen it happen

where they're like, well, screw you, you got $1,000. I would have to have $1,000 for being in a video. Those folks aren't understanding that that video was work that they didn't agree to do. You know, I've made fun of this concept 100,000 times, and some of the videos have gone viral, but still for the fans of this type of content,

it's very difficult for us to get it through their head. Anytime there's a sort of critique of this genre, you get these people online saying, you know, well, what is the harm? If a person is desperate and living on the street, and, you know, someone, sure, they are filming without their consent, but they get $500, or $1,000, isn't that a win for them?

You know, these are desperate, sad people. Can you kind of dismantle that sort of attack on? Of course, of course. When somebody says this must be a win for them, they're not understanding how this can dramatically affect an individual's life. They think it's a win-win. But that's because they never see the other side. They never see the person who goes against the influencer,

who's embarrassed by it, who never wanted to be a part of that, who experiences a lot of stress and pain. Just because you, sitting in your college dorm think you'd love to get the $500, it's important to know that they're not targeting you. They're specifically going after a compromised person. Soup kitchens and, you know, shelters do not allow filming on premises because they want to protect the dignity of the people there. A great example is very recently, I called out an influencer for doing a

a very stupid giveaway. He surprised a woman on the street and she had a, you know, physical deformity. And he just gave her money. Nothing about the woman, not even her name, not about her condition. It was just, look at me. I'm giving money. And I made a call out video. And this person got in touch, right? Which is very rare. It's very rare to find these folks because usually they don't want any. Actually, yeah, I can't. It's so hard to get in touch to these people. It's so hard to get in touch with. because the kindness influences, they seek out people with, like, limited social media knowledge. That's why they go after compromised populations. Veterans, old people, the homeless, even if they feel bad about what's happened, what are

they going to do? They don't have a TikTok account. They don't have any way to reach out or sort of hit them back. So anyways, I made this video, and the subject's friend got in touch, and she's like, I know that person. She's a very sweet lady. You want to talk with her? I'm like, I would love to talk with her.

And I did talk to this person. And at first, she was a little bit defensive. She was like, what are you trying to get out of this? And I was like, look, I'm trying to gain understanding. If you walked away from the situation happy, and I'm wrong, then it's going to affect the way I make fun of kindness people. Like, I'm, you know, sort of very emotionally invested in this. And what I learned from this person was that everything I thought was right. She did not know she was going to be posted. They did not do any follow-up. And she was embarrassed by the situation. But the unfortunate part is that when I asked her, look, can I do a follow-up video, sort of proving me. this. I know you don't want any more attention online. Like, I get it. You know, she already was upset that two people have made videos without her consent. One, the first guy, you put her there. And then me, the second guy, who was like, this is wrong. But she didn't want any more smoke. So I said, could I make another video showing how upset you were? And she said no. And I, that was it. I dropped it. And that's happened multiple times. Because I'm sort of in this, because I'm in this unique position

of being like one of the bigger creators who actively goes against these guys constantly, on the few times that I've actually been in touch with disappointed subjects, they say, you know what, I appreciate you're reaching out, I hated it, whatever, I got money, it wasn't worth it, I wish I walked away, but I don't want any more. Like, I don't want any more attention. And the subtext also of all of these videos is very much like, you should be grateful, right? These people should be so grateful that this TikTokers showed up and helped them. Exactly. I feel like so many fans of these kindness influencers have this parisocial bond with the content creator, and they almost feel like they're they're themselves doing kindness by participating in this video.

You see a lot of these kindness people say like, you know, like, you know, like and subscribe or follow this video or share this, you know, so that I can do more, so that I can spread more good in the world. Can you talk about sort of the way that people kind of view this almost as its own form of activism? So a lot of folks don't want to get involved with their communities. They're too busy or, you know, whatever reason. But by liking, commenting, and subscribing to these guys, they can say, like, okay, well, my contribution helps them because I follow them, because I promote this content. I can encourage more of this thing into the world. That is what they think they're doing. But then when I point out people who use it badly, they're like, well, this is an isolated incident.

They're not isolated incidents. This is happening all the time. It's just not getting any publicity. A good example is when an influencer named Keenham Bank lied about how many tacos he was giving. Mm-hmm. Could I get a thousand tacos? A thousand tacos? Can I get a thousand egg McMuffins?

A thousand egg McMuffins? How much for a thousand buddy burgers? And then people started to notice that there's no way he was buying that many. And, you know, a couple people called him out. He had to make an apology. Hey, guys, so I just want to say that I did not buy a thousand burgers. So I essentially was just trying to add clickbait to those videos. Honestly, I made a mistake and I shouldn't have done it.

But the crazy part is that the fans are like, well, at least he's doing something. Another big issue with what these people do is that they don't, and I know Mr. Beast has been called out for this as well, but these people don't advocate for systemic change. It's so individualistic, I guess, and it feels very limiting in that way, too. I mean, like, Mr. Beast finally after, I think, curing a thousand people's blindness or whatever he did was like, yeah, well, you know, like the government or someone should pay for health care, right? And it's like, exactly. Well, in the defense of Mr. Beast, I will say that Mr. Beast never says he's a charity, or at least if he's true. He does have his charity, but you're right. But his main channel in Mr. Beast's defense is, yes. Mr. Beast's videos are almost always about the ostentatiousness of the giveaway, the amount of money. Yes, yes. Don't take your hand. hand off this car and you get it. It's almost, and I could be wrong, I haven't seen all of his content, but even in the

thousand people blindness video, he didn't centrally focus on like one person getting their situation cured. It was about him and the ostentatiousness of the giveaway rather than turning it into a pity party for any one specific person. I feel like... Yeah, I kind of agree, but he does explore. I mean, people came out. afterwards and said, you know, this is kind of frustrating. And I think, look, I agree with you.

Mr. Beast of all of these people is significantly more ethical. Also just to the point that every single person in his videos are signing a release form. They know what's going on. They're opting in. And, you know, no hate to that. I think it's the trickle-down effect like you're talking about where people are seeing this. And look, Mr. Bees does not speak out about these systemic. He's not getting involved in political issues, right? It's all about these stunts and things. But I do think people in these local communities, I mean, I'm thinking of some of these people that wait outside the, you know, the shelters or the grocery store, right? Like, they're not working with local organizations on the ground that are actually involved in helping these people on a day-to-day basis. Correct. And I think the Mr. Beast effect is very interesting to dissect because a lot of these guys will sort of when backed into a corner sort of argumentatively or when their fans are backed into a corner, they'll say, well, Mr. Beast does the same thing.

And I reply like, no, Mr. Beast is a game show. Yes. You could sort of wax poetic about all of Mr. Beasts' moral issues. But at the end of the day, the Mr. Beast channel is a game show. He does things that have nothing to do with homeless people on his main channel. You know, I'm going to put money in this box and fire tanks at it. That has nothing to do with giving. Whereas the guys I'm specifically targeting, they are dependent on it.

The point of the videos is to just use authentic, poor, and disadvantaged people in videos and then use the money giveaway as a shield. In one of your videos, I think you said that a lot of creators are scared to call this out because they might lose sponsorships or come under fire. Why don't you think more other content creators kind of speak out against this genre of content? I personally think most content creators don't speak out against it because they don't want the heat. They understand that this stuff is extremely sponsor-friendly, extremely viral. They don't want to seem like they dislike homeless people and their income is more dependent on their social media profiles than mine is. I have another career that is fine.

Like, if all this stuff fails, like, I'll still have, like, a pretty good lifestyle for my wife and kid and I. So I feel like they're in more sensitive positions. And also, I feel like their experience with this type of thing isn't as vast as mine is. So, so, like, you know, the random comic, the odds of him or her working with a compromised population at some point in their life are fairly low. Whereas through my dental career, I've gone through school and worked with, you know, low-income communities. Even now, I accept mostly Medicaid at my practice. I did volunteering with a low-income dental clinic, you know, throughout high school. And so I've had more experience with disadvantaged populations than I think the average TikToker. And at the same

time, I've actually one sort of key moment for me, and I've talked about this before, but I used an authentic homeless person for a piece of content two years ago. This was when I was starting to make fun of these guys, but I wasn't really aware of, like, all the ethical implications. And my joke was that I bought him sandwiches. I gave him like 80 bucks. And I met with him twice. And I said, hey, we're going to make fun of these guys. I'm going to hand you food and you're going to hand me a coupon that says, this is good for a million likes, which was like a fairly simple joke, not nearly as subversive as what I do now. But I made the video and I was a much smaller TikToker. The video got like 30,000 hits in the first hour. It was going great. And I showed it to him.

And to my absolute shock, he got super mad. He was like, this isn't funny. I don't like, I'll take it down. I'll take it down. And I realized something. I realized he didn't care about the money, even though I told him everything we were doing and showed him the results afterwards.

That didn't mean he has the obligation to be thankful for it. He loathed the fact that tens of thousands of people already saw him in a compromised state. And that broke me. That was probably the moment where I'm like, oh, man, how many of these other subjects are offended, taken advantage of? At the end of the day, it's about consent, right? Also, as you said, it's this, like, view of yourself. We all know that, like, what is on the internet lives forever.

And these are people in compromised situations often. I don't know that there's that much money in the world that really makes that worth it, because it really messes with your sense of self, right? Yeah. And when the veil is lifted, and so, Some of these guys have sort of let the veil crack a couple of times, but it's rare. Those are the dumber ones. Jimmy Darts, M.D. Motivator, sort of the bigger guys, they're smart enough to know not to engage with me on any sort of natural level.

They know they're winning this fight, right? Which is true, which is true. I'm essentially an old man ranting at the clouds. But a couple of them have gotten weird and, like, made Instagram stories. One of them even challenged me to a boxing match, which is very stupid. Why did everything always ends in boxing on the internet? I swear to got it. Because it's a legal way to punch someone you don't like.

And I find that to be very absurd. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you for your kindness in joining us. Yes. Don't forget to go to my GoFundMe link to help more influencers be kind. Well, thank you so much again, Brad. I really appreciate it. See you.

Have a great day, Taylor. All right. That's the show. You can watch full episodes on my. YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User was produced by Travis Larchuk and Jelani Carter. It's mixed and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Shot Kerwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like this show, give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your

podcasts. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.