r/nottheonion • u/Mesk_Arak • 10d ago
Millionaire Mike Black made himself homeless & broke on purpose to prove he could make $1M in 12 months for YT clicks now QUITS over health concerns
https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/millionaire-mike-black-made-himself-homeless-broke-on-purpose-to-prove-he-could-make-1m-in-12-months-for-yt-clicks-now-quits-over-health-concerns.5590597/[removed] — view removed post
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u/Vendetta1947 9d ago
it's not a social experiment, it's a comedy. A comedy where you pretend to be something you are not.
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u/-Koyaanisqatsi 10d ago
So what he proved is that even with the best of all best opportunities (white male, education, background, loving family, friends, connections, network, credit score, "mindset"/hard work, initial health, no trauma, preparation, etc etc etc) it's literally impossible and the only thing he achieved was less than a 10th of his goal after 80% of the time. Fucking pathetic loser.
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u/xYEET_LORDx 10d ago
Reading the comments I can understand why you guys are shitting on him but not only did he have health concerns I’m pretty sure I read his father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of some sort
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u/JoeDiBango 10d ago
Hey Follow Poors, can we just get rid of capitalism yet?
Or do we have to all keep playing this fucking stupid ass lotto system to get us outside of its moral vacuum?
Asking for 6.8 billion people.
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u/JoeDiBango 10d ago
Hey, I don’t like capitalism when it comes at me either, can I go back to being a millionaire or do I just get to keep doing this over and over again to make folks like him rich?
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u/milesdraws 10d ago
"Quit"? so he didn't make himself broke and homeless, he had a safety net to get back to his old life. Got it.
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u/Curtisimo5 10d ago
There was a show about a similar concept- I want to say it was Undercover Billionaire? Where some business owner got dropped into a town with $100 and a phone with the goal of making a million dollar business in a few months.
It certainly helped that he also had a camera crew following him around to get people to agree to things- but it was a pretty good show.
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u/BawdyAudrey 10d ago
I read up on this guy. It says he started by finding furniture listed for free on FB Marketplace and then sold it. And then "within two weeks secured an office." Seems like maybe still having his millionaire credit score might have figured into that. It's an insult to people struggling with homelessness that this guy thinks he was doing the same thing.
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u/YakuzaMan_ 10d ago
Only on reddit can a guy get actual cancer but because he doesn’t think exactly like these redditors (supposedly good, empathetic, intelligent people btw) he gets lambasted to hell and back
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u/LilAzn405 10d ago
Bro claimed to start from homelessness but was officially homeless for 1 day until someone gave him an RV to stay in, somehow landed a job working social media at a tech company, had healthcare and access to the doctor, and still failed.
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u/guccilemonadestand 10d ago
Health scares stop a lot of people from making money. Can’t afford the bills, get sick, can’t work. Welcome to how hard real life is. The more rich people I’m around, the more I realize they came from money or they really got lucky with something. Getting rich has a TON to do with luck.
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u/Iampepeu 10d ago
He said he's been visiting the doctors office several times as well. He must have spent quire a lot on that as well, I assume. Autoimmune issues and tumors aren't cheap in the land of the free.
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u/uses_irony_correctly 10d ago
Started with nothing except a good education, years of work experience and a ton of social connections he could leverage for help. You know, like every poor person.
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u/Wolf_Noble 10d ago
I think health is the number one concern for people worrying about making money
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u/Cut_Mountain 10d ago
I think the guy is a jackass who did his experiment for the wrong reasons.
That being said, I think he does prove that under the best possible circumstances, with a lot of hard work and luck, a 'homeless' person can make up to an average salary.
So we can expect the average homeless person in the average circumstances to do much worst than that.
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u/QueenOfQuok 10d ago
Warlords the world over know that the only way to surmount that wealth gap when you start with nothing is to kill, steal, and enslave. Capital comes from somewhere, and mostly it's from lots of people who put in the effort so you could swipe it all.
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u/OstrichTechnique 10d ago
A millionaire trying to make out they're better than the homeless would be a terrible thing and there are too many out there who think that all they need to do is 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps'. These people don't know what they're talking about and they don't know the challenges faced by the homeless.
That being said, this person (Mike Black) isn't that. He's not trying to show the homeless up.
I remember watching his first video during the pandemic and thought he wouldn't succeed without his contacts. Anyway, here he is trying to explain how this furore came about: https://twitter.com/theMikeBlack1/status/1782163057407390190
This is probably the reason why OP's link no longer goes anywhere.
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u/ottawawebguy 10d ago
Love this story as it shows the obstacles a regular person has to actually get anywhere.
Guess what, we also have unexpected deaths/health issues and the rich go “get back to the office and pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
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u/seanpclayton 10d ago
When life imitates (sorta) art.... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102303/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_40_act
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u/DefintelyNotMe 10d ago
This is misinformation, he quit cause his dad was severely sick
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u/Free_Moghedien 10d ago
Dude has said himself it was because of his two autoimmune diseases that caused chronic fatigue and joint pain that he quit.
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u/DefintelyNotMe 10d ago
He said he had medical issues, but the main reason he quit was to spend time with his dad. It was in his last youtube video in this series. Can you link me where he says that he quit because of his illness?
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u/Free_Moghedien 10d ago
His update 43 video. The one where he said he was quitting? Dude literally mentions his dad once, and the rest of the time he's talking about his health.
Don't know where you're getting the main reason he quit was his dad, but the article definitely wasn't misinformation, because while his dad's cancer diagnosis was one of the reasons he quit, he states pretty clearly that his health is a big reason, and his dad's illness is mentioned as a "from that to finding out my dad had 12 months to live, to spending 300k of my own money on this project" kind of way.
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u/Temporal_Universe 10d ago
That's what happens when you try to be homeless while on an anti-aging protocol 😆....glad he's not "suffering" anymore
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 10d ago
“Hi, I’m a broke homeless man who’d like to start a business. My background is I’m actually a rich guy doing a publicity stunt. Here’s my resume.”
Why don’t all homeless people do this?
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u/AllKnighter5 10d ago
Now let’s get him on record saying we need to tax billionaires more to assist with people who would CLEARLY be dead without help….right? He learned a lesson from this??
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u/MystenTheRed 10d ago
At least he didn't cheat like so many of them
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u/Free_Moghedien 10d ago
Except he did. He had a cell phone from day one he used previous money to pay for. He used his previous life's health insurance, he paid the film crew out of his previous life's money. He used previous experience and skills, and unless you think he was driving to get the free furniture he used to get started, and taking it to the people he then sold it to, he was relying on labor he wasn't paying for to get the free shit from point a to b to sell it. Oh, and he was also still seeing doctors about his autoimmune disorders the entire time behind the scenes.
Dude cheated the whole time, and still failed.
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u/MystenTheRed 10d ago
Ah.. I didn't see what he did at all, just assumed he didn't cheat as he failed miserably. Make it even worse. The hardest thing about poverty is the Never ending effect of stress on the body. I know that myself very well
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u/RamblnGamblinMan 10d ago
ahh the privilege, so tone deaf they don't even realize how stupid they made themselves look
The rest of us can't just bail and go back to being wealthy. Fucking asshat.
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u/Grizzledboy 10d ago
There was a thread about him on twitter that was posted on reddit. It praised him for his hard work and attitude to is mission, even in the face of "extreme" hardships. It was a joke the whole thread!
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u/No_Attention_2227 10d ago
Fupdor dostoevsky used to gamble away all his money so he would be forced to write.
It's one of the 33 strategies of war. https://www.unstoppablerise.com/death-ground-strategy/
Death ground strategy. Sometimes people kick into another gear when their back is against the wall.
I guess Mike black didn't use it successfully
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u/HumptyDrumpy 10d ago
Yes health and gratitude...but also good people in one's life is most important
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u/LairdPeon 10d ago
Wish I could quit being poor every time I have a major health concern. I coulda been rich at 3 months old.
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u/Muscle_National 10d ago
If he was actually poor he would have had to disregard his heath the pay his bills.
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u/scottjason13 10d ago
This guy is a dick for even doing this social experiment. I’m sure nowhere in the back of his mind did he ever think that he is truly going to be hungry, homeless, or sick. The knowledge that he has plenty of money in the bank and could quit playing this game at anytime probably was very comforting to him.
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u/piclemaniscool 10d ago
A lot of people in the comments are missing the point. For many years, millionaires believed themselves to be "built different," saying that millionaires had some aspect of self that made them able to climb up the ladder the way they did. It's the modern equivalent of a monarch rationalizing the right to rule. And as we see here, it's total bullshit.
That's right millionaires and billionaires, you really are all just nepo babies who won the lottery at birth.
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u/IlConiglioUbriaco 10d ago
Damn. The guy went down to the bottom and still managed to come out. And his dad was dying of colon cancer and he has a message about how you should always help those in need, and everyone is shitting on him. I really don’t like people’s attitude on the internet. Perhaps you don’t want to believe that a person can help themselves because you don’t want to help yourselves ?
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u/CotyledonTomen 10d ago
He didnt go down to the bottom and manage to come out. Hes a millionaire that tried to prove he earned his money, only to realize he didnt, and failed to admit that it actually is hard to become rich and people really do struggle when they are poor. Theres nothing sympathetic about choosing to continue being a pompus idiot in the face of your own evidence. He might as well be a flat earther saying his experiment was flawed, but earth is still flat.
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u/Timely_Outside_51 10d ago
Or it could be that this is not at all a realistic representation of dealing with homelessness. It’s a just dick weed with too good a life and too much time on his hands trying to invalidate the struggles of millions of people. Fuck him.
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u/IlConiglioUbriaco 10d ago
How is he trying to invalidate anything? If anything it gives people hope
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u/arnulfg 10d ago
If I was reading this right, he could live in a RV for several weeks at the start given to him for free?
Did he go back to the original lenders and compensated them after he quit?
Also selling furniture "online", means he knows where to get the furniture and knows to whom to sell it?
Did he maybe use knowledge and old connections from before that t experiment started?
What de he prove exactly? That all the amenities society grants you enables you to be productive? But you need a head start to do this stuff, right? Only for some the head start is so incredibly vast that everything they do looks like a success? While others get literally nothing.
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u/BrownEggs93 10d ago
Stunts like this are like the normal person "roughing it" on a grueling hike in the mountains for a week or more. We know there is light at the end of the tunnel. A warm bed and a shower await us. When it's over. Because it's temporary.
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u/ManiacalMartini 10d ago
And he didn't learn a single lesson.
He was supposed to blow his entire life savings (in this case 10 months) on healthcare like the rest of us.
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u/rmp266 10d ago
I didn't tell you guys this till now but I've been in and out of the doctors with this health condition all along
I've been paying an expensive doctor to look after me whilst I roleplay as homeless
Lol reminder that nothing on YouTube is real and only a fool takes any of this shit as truth
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 10d ago
Expecting the idiot to be on Fox news any day talking about how all the poor are not even trying as he made $64K in 10 months easily.
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u/Gojisoji 10d ago
So according to the article he walked away from all of his things...but did he keep any of them because he knew this would not work... Probably yes.
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u/Otm_Shank1 10d ago
So I should have just told my empty bank account I quit being poor and I become wealthy?
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u/froggison 10d ago
Now I want to see the opposite of this experiment: take a homeless guy with zero experience and make him CEO of a company for a year, just to prove how fucking easy their job actually is.
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u/nameExpire14_04_2021 10d ago
Quits? You can quit being homeless?
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u/Free_Moghedien 10d ago
You can when you're already a millionaire before you start your bs "experiment" lol
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u/Fizzay 10d ago
Funny thing about this is he just happened to find a couch he could crash on, the work he was doing can be heavily influenced by existing connections, and the fact he was able to see a doctor, many of which are options people who aren't just roleplaying as a homeless person doesn't have.
If he wasn't a millionaire, there's a good chance he would've just died.
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u/CurbYourMonkey 10d ago
Someone with two autoimmune diseases is not a good candidate to try to come back from homelessness.
I see most commentors think he was trying to show them up and dismiss their troubles in life, and thus really hate him. Whatever gets you through the night.
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u/theodosianawr 10d ago
Is his youtube title clickbaity also like: ''Cosplaying as a poor GONE WRONG.'' ??
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u/Artistic_Purpose1225 10d ago
He was never actually broke, and he used connections he had from being a millionaire to “get back on his feet”.
A more accurate headline would be: Man with insultingly low understanding of poverty starts vanity cosplay project, quits the second things aren’t working as planned.
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u/Raudskeggr 10d ago
How convenient for him, that he has the option to just...stop being poor. Must be nice!
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u/LeafsHater67 10d ago
Mike is a loser. 64k in 10 months proves our point. Bootstraps pal, pull yourself up by them
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u/dergster 10d ago
“I will use my existing foundation and safety net to prove that I am able to leverage it into an average job” great work buddy
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u/Athlete_Cautious 10d ago
Having a way to "quit the experiment" without offing yourself must be nice.
Kind of corrupts the experiment tho
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u/Ashe_Faelsdon 10d ago
Mass suicide for the poor. Exiting, during a playboy excuse for understanding what poor is, while still retaining top province as a millionaire because you can get care after the brutalisation you experienced as poor????? Top tier entitlement. PERIOD. FULL STOP
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u/Medical_Ganache_367 10d ago
Coos in baby voice Awww. Was that hard? Did the little baby find it hard to cosplay as the rest of us? Awww.
Unfuckingbelievable
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u/Capable_Pudding8061 10d ago
Also, it wouldn't be the same if some random homeless person tried it and someone who was a millionaire beforehand because those two people have a vastly different skill level and experience. It would really be an unfair comparison. Something that would take the former millionaire to do in 1 day, the homeless person would need to do it in 3-4 days let's say. It's not at all equal.
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u/GrayDottedPony 10d ago
Also they have no skin in the game. What does it matter if they fail? What do they have to lose?
They have those millions in their other bank accounts and their connections to catch them if they fail. They will not starve to death on the streets or become permanently homeless if they fail. They can take risks another person couldn't afford because if they fail, they'll sit there with tons of depth and they'll have a slim chance to ever pay back.
If a real homeless person gets sick to the point they can't work any longer. They'll be all on their own with only charity to hope for.
He just proved he could act without any risk of getting truly hurt. Even if he did manage to make a million, this would have proven nothing. He was able to go all out for it, without any worries to hold him back or any danger to think about.
There was always the option to just quit and go back to being a millionaire.
He was like a hobbyist comparing their 'hustle' to a professional having to care for their very real business.
Or a cat mama comparing their care for a pet to raising a baby.
It's just not the same.
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u/theoldchunk 10d ago
Daily Mail article style: Give you the same block of information 30 times in different formats.
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u/redishherring 10d ago
Glad this walking douche failed miserably while losing so much money and pride.
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u/KonradWayne 10d ago
Did he make himself broke, or just not access his bank accounts while pulling a stunt to try and get people to care about his youtube channel?
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u/brezhnervous 10d ago
Despite falling short of his financial goal, Black said his journey showcased the power of determination and the importance of health and family
The importance of having a wealthy family to come to your rescue lol
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u/Wheybrotons 10d ago
"Him and the guy who became a crackhead need to donate their brains to science when they die"
💀
Part of him even putting himself in this position deserves a bit of admiration even if his motivations for doing so were delusional.
And making 64 grand under these conditions isn't abysmal. That's more than the average salary per year
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u/fanfarius 10d ago
Four months into the challenge, on day 138, Black learned that his father was officially diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and had just started chemo (..)
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u/TheAstroBastrd 10d ago
How many times do I have to hear about this loser on Reddit this week? I think this is post #6
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u/laneylaneygod 10d ago
I already saw this trending on TikTok. It’s becoming the new Reddit. Now that Reddit has gone to shit since IPO
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u/PragmaticPrimate 10d ago
Wait, you can just quit poverty, when health issues - obviously unrelated to it - start to pop up?
The problem with poor people is, that they just don't know when to quit....
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u/Skyswimsky 10d ago
Isn't that misleading? I don't have time to read the article, but I remember watching a thing months ago. He was doing pretty well (though he said he kept his identity a secret he built connections relatively well so idk), but had to quit because his father or someone was fighting really hard against cancer or similar and he wanted to be there for them.
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u/Ratstail91 10d ago
Honestly, I'm amazed he managed 64k.
Thing is, dude is (was) healthy and capable of doing pretty much anything - he wasn't starting at zero, thanks to his prior education, and the emergency exit hatch.
I can't stand for like 10 minutes without bits and pieces of my body lodging formal complaints. That's largely due to my lifetime of unhealthy eating. That's largely due to my lifetime of not really being able to afford good food...
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u/yaboy_jesse 10d ago
I feel like a lot of people here are given their terrible opinions on a story they haven't heard anything about. In these 10 months, his father got cancer, and he got an auto immune disease that severely deteriorated his health.
Was he going to get to a million in a year? No, but he went from living as a bum to having a small place to live while setting up his business.
He was an inspiration to countless who were down on their luck and he deserves some credit for that.
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u/PippaTulip 10d ago
Yeah, to bad we can't see how that would have faired with him being sick and having the mental toll of a sick father. Would he have made his small business florish? Would he have stayed a float? Or would he soon have succumbed to medical bills, a body with limitations and emotional stress? Would he have gotten into debt or would he have continued to make his way out of poverty, now that he for the first time is being confronted with sad, but very common and normal life events we more than likely all will go through one day. Poor or not.
You know, like people who live real lives have to deal with swimming or sinking. He started to sink a little and immediately climbed on his parents yacht. Anyone who is young, healthy and has an education and solid background like he has, can get out of homelessness. The point is: life gives you lemons. Sometimes a lot of lemons. Sometimes too much to deal with.
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u/SnooHesitations2883 10d ago
64k still seems impressive
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u/PippaTulip 10d ago
If you were young, healthy, educated and with the solid background and experiences he had, you would have made that too.
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u/aboutthednm 10d ago
I bet the guy never ate a bread sandwich or similar poverty food contraptions, nor ever really worried about where his next meal or two will be coming from. Bet he never weighed the benefits of getting an extra loaf of bread and peanut butter instead of the dollar deli cuts from walmart. Bet the guy never stressed about the next inevitable financial setback that would take months or years to recover from.
If he was authentic, he would have gotten on a fixed income, hit the streets with no ID, and tried to make it work. His first big surprise would have come when he finds out he needs a valid ID to pick up his fixed income cheque, but he conveniently removed himself from these considerations, thereby missing out on the fun of applying for a new ID without any supporting documents. You know, the normal every day struggle any homeless person usually goes through. It would have also been entertaining to have to get into a line to cash his cheque along with everyone else, only to find out the place doing the cashing charges a 20% processing and handling fee.
The homeless experience is one of incredible breadth and width, this guy didn't even scratch a corner of it.
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u/PippaTulip 10d ago
And don't forget: let him start out with cheap, basic clothes and not allowed to contact rich friends from his previous life for businessconnections. Oh and throw in some trauma and forget all about the top notch education and work experiences.
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u/Dekar173 10d ago
The more you post this moron the more viral he becomes, and so he can scam morons and sell his snake oil further.
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u/VJEmmieOnMicrophone 10d ago
Being homeless is so easy!
10 months later:
I have to stop being homeless or otherwise I will literally die! I'll just go back to my previous healthcare :). Anyway, I think this challenge still proves that being homeless is easy
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u/MyMotivatedAccount 10d ago
Soo are we all going to ignore the "he was going in and out at the doctors" part? Wonder which money paid for that...?
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u/ThePoetAC 10d ago
If quitting being a “poor” for health concerns were just so easily accessible to the rest of the “poors”…
Quit being poor harder.
/s
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u/SomethingIWontRegret 10d ago
Hey guys, he found the solution to homelessness! Just quit being homeless!
It's all bullshit unless he completely cut his safety net and couldn't quit.
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u/uniquelyavailable 10d ago
rich people are so out of touch they can't even figure out how to be fake poor
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u/AtreidesBagpiper 10d ago
Oh how convenient that he can just call it quits and get back to his comfortable ivory tower home.
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u/Mr_Lapis 10d ago
i remember that time morgan spurlock tried living on minimum wage for 30 days and showed just have difficult it is to live when youre poor
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u/supercali45 10d ago
This why kids from rich families have such an ego that they are smarter and better than others
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u/GammaPhonic 10d ago
The experiment means nothing. Successful or not. Because it doesn’t take into account how people become homeless in the first place.
Guess what, a well adjusted, healthy, educated person with wealthy friends is going to find it easier to get back on their feet than a person with little to no education, a crippling drug addiction and significant mental health issues. What a revelation!!!
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u/kejovo 10d ago
Disagree completely! The fact that it failed with all the advantages he has speaks volumes.
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u/GammaPhonic 10d ago
He had a rented apartment to live in three months into the challenge. He ended the challenge with two months to go operating two businesses and with $65k to his name. He might not have hit his seven figure target, but he hadn’t “failed” in the boarder sense at all.
But like I said, I doesn’t mean anything because he had a number of big advantages the vast majority of homeless people don’t have.
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u/Kilmerval 10d ago
Ah, yes. Just like how all poor people can just quit being poor as soon as they run into adversity.
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u/sSaraksh 10d ago
Seeing how this is so talked about, he actually accomplished his goal. The goal was more clicks. I’ve never known about this man before this.
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u/ES_Legman 10d ago
This experiments made by the rich is like when Flat Earthers try to prove the Earth is flat only to disprove it every single time and go like "Welp, the experiment must be wrong".
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u/1111111111111111l 10d ago
Notably, he didn’t give up his health insurance and he used some of his connections that he made as a millionaire to help get him what he made in 10 months
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u/secondhand_bra 10d ago
I want to shove this article up the ass of those trust fund baby millionaires/billionaires advising people on how to become rich
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u/freddit32 10d ago
What a bunch of phony BS. "Throughout the entire project, we haven't shared it with you, but I've been in and out of the doctor's office." Right, I always forget how the homeless have such easy and regular access to medical care.
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u/arrownyc 10d ago
Why is this story being blasted over and over and over?? It almost seems like he paid for PR on this after no one gave a fuck.
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u/wojaksmojak 10d ago
”For YT clicks”
Does boomers still not realize you earn money through youtube?
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u/OTee_D 10d ago edited 10d ago
How convenient when you can just decide "Ah nah, I'm not homeless anymore." and going back to his regular life and a doctor under his health care program.
This guy wasn't homeless or broke, he cosplayed as if. He didn't give anything away, juts put his wealth aside for a while.
And then as a well kept, nurtured guy with a good education and the confidence of security of still being rich, started his 'act'. And instantly managed to get a real shelter in an RV because he could approach people without looking messy, having missing teeth, etc.
And he still failed although his "head start" and "determination".
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u/Throwawayac1234567 10d ago
Also being rich and white already gets your foot in the door in alot of places, especially like MBA, marketing, managerial type jobs. A homeless person isnt even going to have an RV to live in,.
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u/Vendetta1947 9d ago
Imagine the tears that would roll down his face if he didn't have education, connections. Imagine if he was straddled with debt that his grandparents couldn't repay. imagine if he belonged to a discriminated minority.
bro couldn't win in easy mode.