A man stands in a supermarket aisle, scanning prices like they might bite back. A stranger walks up, hands him a crisp bill or asks him a simple question. A moment later, everything changes — he’s receiving thousands of dollars, or a new car, or an apartment. The man cries. The comments flood in. The video racks up millions of views.
This is what generosity looks like now. Online, public, algorithmically optimized.
MrBeast, the 26-year-old YouTube behemoth also known as Jimmy Donaldson, has made an empire out of extravagant charity stunts — building homes, giving away islands, funding surgeries and schools. On the other end of the spectacle spectrum is Jimmy Darts, a soft-spoken TikTok creator who disarms strangers with small talk and then surprises them with transformative acts of kindness. The formats vary, but the blueprint is largely the same: find a person in need, help them in dramatic fashion, and let the internet watch.
There’s no denying the emotional pull. The videos are raw, the need is real, and the help — often life-changing — feels urgent. For viewers disillusioned by systemic breakdowns, these creators are stepping in where institutions have failed. And they’re doing it in a language young audiences understand: authenticity, immediacy and virality.
But that’s also where things get messy. Because these acts of kindness don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in the content economy.
MrBeast reportedly earns tens of millions in ad revenue. His philanthropy brand — literally called Beast Philanthropy — operates with its own YouTube channel, team and mission. The more outlandish the generosity, the more views it earns. The more views it earns, the more money comes in to fund the next giveaway. It’s charity as content loop. Giving that scales.
On paper, it’s a win-win. A viewer gets inspired. A recipient gets help. A creator gets paid. But somewhere in that triangle sits a hard question: When good deeds become a growth strategy, what happens to the soul of generosity?
The Christian tradition doesn’t shy away from generosity, but it does carry a built-in warning label. In Matthew 6, Jesus cautions against performative righteousness: “When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets … but do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” The point isn’t secrecy for its own sake — it’s about posture. Who is the act for? What story does it tell?
In the age of TikTok kindness, the story is often twofold: Someone gets helped, and someone else becomes the hero. MrBeast walks into a room with a giant check. Jimmy Darts gives a security guard the money to visit his daughter. But the camera never looks away. It captures the moment not just for documentation, but for distribution. It transforms pain into a packageable narrative. One that’s easy to consume, easy to celebrate — and easy to move on from.
The impulse to help isn’t the problem. In fact, it’s the most compelling part. These creators have done tangible good for thousands of people. That’s not in question. What’s worth examining is what their content leaves out: the why behind the need. Viewers are rarely invited to consider the structural reasons that person was homeless, jobless or desperate. Instead, the problem is framed as a gap that an individual can fill — one gift, one video at a time.
It’s an appealing fantasy, especially in a world that feels increasingly beyond repair. You don’t have to reform a broken system or organize a protest. You can just Venmo your way into justice.
And yet, there’s an undeniable appeal to that simplicity. For a generation skeptical of large institutions, these creators offer something rare: directness. There’s no bureaucratic lag, no executive salary to question. A creator films themselves giving $10,000 to a single mom in real time. It feels honest. It feels effective. It feels like proof that kindness still has power.
But it also becomes a form of spectacle. The more viewers watch, the more the genre has to escalate. A heartfelt giveaway in 2021 has to be outdone in 2022. A TikTok about buying someone groceries turns into buying them a car. Then a house. Then an entire block. It’s not that the generosity isn’t real. It’s that it now has a budget and a brand strategy.
Kindness has entered a feedback loop, one that risks dulling the very impact it seeks to have. Viewers cry, click, comment — and scroll. The emotional rush becomes a kind of hit. And with each new post, we edge closer to compassion fatigue disguised as feel-good content.
It’s tempting to critique the entire ecosystem as shallow, but that’s not entirely fair or helpful. These creators have found ways to mobilize millions of dollars and eyeballs toward meeting real needs. They’re not just influencing. They’re intervening. In an increasingly fractured world, that matters.
But for people of faith, it also calls for discernment. Not because public giving is inherently suspect, but because our tradition demands more than just good optics. It asks whether our generosity flows from love or from ego. Whether we are building people up or building a platform on their backs.
As theologian Jonathan Walton has noted, the issue isn’t visibility — it’s motive. “God doesn’t need us to be anonymous,” he said. “He needs us to be obedient.” If the end result is hope, dignity and transformation, then maybe the camera isn’t the problem. But if the moment exists only to drive clicks, then we’ve traded compassion for clout.
Somewhere between the livestream and the Sermon on the Mount is a new kind of moral terrain. One where goodness is no longer private. One where ethics are edited for time. And one where the poor are not just among us — they’re on our screens.
The challenge now isn’t to opt out. It’s to reimagine what generosity looks like in public. To give in ways that point past the giver. To use platforms not just to perform kindness, but to provoke action. Because real generosity doesn’t stop at the post. It asks what happens next.
We can celebrate the impact. We can be grateful the help exists. But we also have to ask harder questions: Who gets to tell these stories? Who benefits from them? And what would our compassion look like if no one were watching?
Because if kindness is only valuable when it’s visible, we may have already missed the point.
