The video of an American YouTuber offering food to a man on the street, and then eating it in front of him, sparked a violent reaction on social media.
The video was posted by the young Trevon Sellers, who owns a small YouTube channel called “whatsuptre”, which has 8,800 subscribers, before he later deleted it, according to a report by “Insider”.
People are PISSED at this small YouTuber for pranking the homeless. #DramaAlert
— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) April 23, 2023
His name is ‘whatsuptre’ and the original video has been removed. pic.twitter.com/Jp8JtE4102
Talk about homelessness
In the young man’s latest video, which has been re-uploaded to Twitter by various users and has garnered millions of views, the YouTuber can be seen standing outside a Wendy’s fast food restaurant, discussing homelessness in Los Angeles, California.
“My task today is to make sure we reduce the number of hungry people on the streets,” he said.
In the video, there is a man sitting on the sidewalk. The young man asks him if he can purchase a meal that consists of a burger, fries, and a drink.
After a while, the YouTuber came back to the man with both a drink and a bag of food. He said, “I want you to enjoy this,” and started taking out the food from the bag.
Bring food and eat it in front of him
Then he opened the burger, took a bite of it, and started eating the fries. “Okay, take care of yourself,” he said, picking up the drink and turning away from the man. “Have a nice day.”
When several well-known Twitter accounts shared the clip, stating that it was a “joke”, viewers were outraged and said that what the YouTuber had done was cruel and insulting to the homeless.
Youtuber buys a homeless person food, then eats it at the last second right in front of him… pic.twitter.com/gL6Sh3klVA
— Human Nature (@Human101Nature) April 21, 2023
Traveler did not explicitly refer to the man in the video as homeless, and a number of Twitter users suggested that the clip could have been filmed, and that the man on the street in the video could be a paid actor.
Despite being aired, several users considered the message conveyed in the video to be ethically incorrect. They accused the YouTuber of intentionally sharing the contentious video with the aim of generating a response and making it virally popular.
