Three days ago video blogger Josh Paler Lin posted a video on YouTube of a social experiment he did that went viral and touched the world in an unexpected way. Josh, who has a prank channel on YouTube, approached a homeless man holding a sign asking for money so he could eat. Lin gave the man $100 and followed him with a camera guy to see how he would spend it.
Inspired by this man’s story and actions, Lin set up an Indiegogo campaign to help him get back on his feet. He says his goals for the money are to get the homeless man a cell phone so they can stay in touch, a place for him to call home, and help finding work again. The campaign’s initial goal was $10,000 but it has soared to over $100,000 in the past four days since launching. The campaign still has 27 days left to go.
After receiving the money they saw the man, whose name is Thomas, go into a liquor store – but instead of buying alcohol, he bought food, went to a nearby park, and handed it out to poor families that he didn’t know. This act surprised Josh so much that he apologized to Thomas for following him around and gave him another $100.
When Lin confessed that he thought Thomas was going to the liquor store so he could get drunk he replied, “There’s things money can’t buy, I get a happiness out of what I’m doing.” The blogger admits that the result was nothing like he expected.
Thomas did not want to accept the money at first and was moved to tears by Josh’s generosity. He explained that he quit his job to take care of his sick parents because their insurance wouldn’t cover the whole cost of their care. When they died just weeks apart (his step-dad from cancer and mother from liver failure), he had to sell their condo to cover the difference of the insurance and found himself homeless. He has been homeless for four months.
What Josh expected to be an exposé of the homeless lifestyle got flipped around in a way he couldn’t have imagined. Instead it turned into something much larger; the video on YouTube currently has over 21 million views and become about awareness and compassion. Thomas reminds us that not all homeless people are bad, just people who have had bad things happen to them:
“There’s a lot of people that are just victims of circumstance and they didn’t go homeless because they’re lazy … it could be a divorce, one thing leads to another and the man sells his boat, his home, everything, and all of a sudden he finds out he’s got no money. There’s a lot of good people that are homeless.”
Josh is encouraging people to share this story on social media using the hashtag #letshelpthomas. The blogger, who calls himself the “craziest Asian prankster alive,” usually posts funny videos like his Speaking Chinese With Random Girls Prank.
