The kindness influencers

“I feel like a horrible mom.” A young woman with a stroller wrapped in blankets is crying in the video. They are standing in front of a store on a street in Minnesota, US. It is winter. There is a one-year-old child in the stroller, and neither of them has a home.

A young man chats with the woman and gives her some food. The man asks her how she is and how she ended up on the street. Another man arrives on the scene. The first man asks, “What is your biggest prayer right now?”

“Find somewhere for him safe to stay. Get a job so I can be able to take care of him,” the woman says, wiping tears from her eyes.

In the end, the two men give the woman in the video a bundle of cash. The woman is touched, hugs them and perks up. She enthuses that she can go to a hotel for a while to sleep and to take a shower. Maybe even get a job interview once she has cleaned herself up.

“We’re going to help you a lot further. We don’t want to post a video of you and just leave you,” says the other man.

“And all the money will go to you. So that you can change your life because you deserve it.”

The men are the social media influencers Joshua Liljenquist and Samuel Weidenhofer. They posted a video of the encounter on their social media accounts, set up a crowdfunding campaign, and then the money flooded in.

In the weeks after, they raised over half a million dollars for the woman, Sheena, and her child. In the next video, they take Sheena to the house that they bought for her in Minnesota with the money and tell her that there are still hundreds of thousands of dollars for her. In this video, there’s a closeup of Sheena in tears.

Liljenquist and Weidenhofer are so-called kindness influencers. They post videos of themselves doing good deeds and helping others, mainly people experiencing homelessness and poverty. They are hugely popular.

In December, Liljenqvist (social media profile: joshlilj) had 6 million followers on Instagram and 10 million on TikTok, while Weidenhofer (itssozer) had 2.6 and 7.8 million followers on the same channels. They had even more followers on YouTube.

At the moment, social media is bursting with this kind of “kindness content” – that is, videos about acts of kindness produced for social media by different influencers.

Most of the videos are from the US. Liljenqvist and Weidenhofer, as well as Jimmy Kellogg (Jimmy Darts) and Zachery Dereniowski (mdmotivator), who also have amassed millions of followers, film a large part of their videos in America, although they are not all from there.

Sometimes the acts of kindness in the videos are just small acts: a hug for someone who needs one, or a few kind words. The videos often introduce people living on the street, who are given shoes, tents, clothes, or whatever they might need at that moment. In one video, a young man is delighted to receive a heat pump on a freezing night. Someone in a neighbouring tent just froze to death, he says.

Sometimes the acts are more generous, like an entire crowdfunding campaign to get a car, an apartment, or other essentials.

Some kindness influencers have large accounts, others are modest, but in general, the videos are engaging. The number of likes, shares and comments is huge in places. Sometimes, the amounts of money raised are also huge.

In the autumn, Weidenhofer’s video about 88-year-old Ed Bambas raised $1.6 million for the man. All it took was a video of Weidenhofer getting to know Bambas at his workplace, casually approaching him as if in passing. After the old man tells his moving life story, the social media influencer gives him $400 and tells Bambas that he will set up a crowdfunding campaign so that the man can finally afford to retire. At the end of the video, the old man who has lost his wife cries, again in close-up.

(In December, Zachery Dereniowski also made headlines in the Finnish media when a crowdfunding campaign for Ahmed Al-Ahmed, the man who stopped the shooters in the Bondi Beach attack in Australia, raised hundreds of thousands of euros.)

“You are angels.”

“There are still great people in this world!”

“You are doing an excellent job!”

Kindness content is popular. The comments posted on the content creators’ social media channels are, almost without exception, hearts or praise and thanks, like in the examples above. Many media outlets also praise the creators for making kindness popular again and helping people.

However, this does not convince everyone. The US media outlet AP News calls kindness content “controversial”, and in one of its stories, British public broadcaster the BBC discusses why kindness influencers are often criticised.

“Many influencers have a genuine desire to do good, to help people, and to use their influence in some positive way,” notes Hanna Reinikainen, a researcher of social media influencers at the University of Helsinki. But she still takes a critical view of this kind of content.

The videos produced by kindness influencers combine many things that work on social media, prank culture, and content that tugs on the heart strings. This is exactly the kind of “sticky” content that works well on social media and keeps people glued to social media videos, Reinikainen says.

Regardless of the motivations of the creators, the business logic of the commercial social media platforms is always present in the work. Reinikainen reminds us that influencer marketing is fundamentally commercial and a means of getting visibility and attention. And all content is used to grow a personal brand and the influencer’s own commercial potential.

Reinikainen estimates that creators with millions of followers earn big money through sponsorship agreements, visibility and advertising partnerships. Some social media platforms also pay their content creators based on the number of views and followers.

What if the content and views are obtained by often filming unsuspecting people in their most difficult moments? Unexpectedly talking about life’s biggest traumas with a complete stranger? Getting someone up from their mattress and taking them to the store by the seat of their pants? Filming them crying?

“Some pretty bizarre contradictions pop up quite quickly,” says Reinikainen.

Although the videos highlight important experiences and the reality of homelessness, the discussion is quite superficial and focuses on the individual, she adds. Structural reasons are not discussed. For example, why is a one-year-old on the street, or how can an 88-year-old who has worked his entire life not afford to retire?

“The videos show what life can be like for people experiencing homelessness or those who have limited means. But they don’t tell us about the structural reasons, or all the reasons people end up like this,” Reinikainen summarises.

They tend to go no further than “individual sob stories,” as she puts it, and the idea that everything can be fixed by handing out large sums of money out of the blue.

Erja Morottaja, communications manager at Vailla vakinaista asuntoa ry, agrees that the mindset in the videos is fairly simplistic. “Money brings the solution. Quick videos, quick solutions, and onto the next one,” she summarises.

For example, simply having an apartment or a large amount of money is not always enough to end homelessness. Morottaja reminds us that many people need support with daily life or treatment for the underlying problems that cause homelessness.

The videos often involve “pranks”, which are popular on social media. Someone secretly pays for another person’s purchases or surprises them with something fun while filming them. Or someone may ask a person who looks poor for help, like a couple of euros for a bus ticket or some other support.

If the person helps and gives of the little they have, the content creator reveals that they are actually planning to give them money or something bigger. This is also related to the idea that help must be earned.

Morottaja sees it as a positive that people are reminded of the importance of kindness. Something good can come from friendliness and helping others. “It is needed at this time. We have forgotten how to show compassion toward other human beings,” she says.

At the same time, she thinks that the content is problematic, not only in terms of its solution models, but also from the viewpoint of intentions and power structures.

Morottaja reminds us that a person who is indebted to an influencer may agree to the publication of a video, especially when something unexpected happens, but not everyone necessarily understands what they are agreeing to.

Most major content creators don’t say at the start that they are filming the encounter but claim that they will ask permission to publish it afterwards. Even if that is the case, how many people would dare to refuse after receiving help? Or understand how much publicity a shopping spree at Target will get?

Morottaja notes that privacy protection and dignity are often forgotten in these videos. For example, organisations usually have strict rules about how their visitors are presented on social or other media, especially where faces and names are concerned; they seldom publish anything that a severely intoxicated person says because the organisation may regret it later. Journalists also carefully consider what to publish about people in vulnerable situations, especially anything that can identify the person.

There are no such limits on social media. The videos on many accounts introduce us to very intoxicated substance users, young people who grew up in orphanages, half-dressed people experiencing homelessness, or people who have just been woken up on the street…

From time to time, there is even worse content on social media. Morottaja recalls the so-called “bumfights” that were trending in the early 2000s where people experiencing homelessness were encouraged to fight and the camera was rolling. Something like that would probably be censored to some degree by the major social media channels these days. But emotional clips about kindness are the perfect material for difficult times.

When people who have suffered trauma are interviewed without preparation and in surprising situations, they easily say all sorts of things on camera. This provides the kind of social media material that will make anyone cry. And brings more views.

But the videos leave you with a tacky feeling. And maybe a few hundred thousand euros to one lucky person, while others are left on the streets.