• MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    He did prove one thing, and that is that rich people legitimately think anyone who has less money than they do is just lazy. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and his own failure the article seems to imply that he still thinks that is the case lol guess he didn’t learn anything at all…

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The only way you can hoard money like that is to convince yourself that poverty is a moral failing. Otherwise, your conscience can’t handle it.

      Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy.

    • applepie@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      They know but their passive income depends on them not “knowing” and you knowing and acting up on it.

      • livus@mander.xyz
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        6 months ago

        It’s also pretty obvious he cheated, though.

        He clearly had a good phone, phone plan, and secure comprehensive healthcare.

        • Delphia@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Absolutely, A regular person would need no small amount of luck to get back to just employed and housed. Not saying it would be easy at all.

        • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          You know, this would be good evidence to present that giving everyone access to the things Black got (an RV to stay in temporarily for free, a decent phone and plan and the rich person side of American health care), would allow people better mobility out of their situations.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Look what happened 10 months in though. Say hypothetically a poor person did all the same things Black did and kind of made it for themselves. They go in to see the doctor, they find out their dad has cancer and they have autoimmune issues. If they were to actually address their health situation at that point with only the funds they had amassed, they’d get fucked by the American Healthcare Debt Extraction system.

        Not to mention all the other ways things go wrong, such as getting laid off. Without a million dollars to fallback on, many either can’t take the same risks, and many others do but that causes them to fall back to square one.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Despite falling short of his financial goal, Black said his journey showcased the power of determination and the importance of health and family

    So he learned absolutely nothing about the plight of countless millions of people. Got it.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Worse, he thinks he was just unlucky that he happened to get sick, and thinks his “success” proves he was right all along. Meanwhile, his “success” was entirely built on leeching off other people and abusing charity.

      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The sad part is that he couldn’t put two and two together. Health problem interrupting your job? It’s not like poor people ever have to deal with health problems, they’re just lazy, right? /s

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I mean, he’s lucky he could bail on poverty. His dad got sick, and he didn’t have to stop working to care for his dad. He was seeing a doctor regularly to monitor his health, and could call it when his health started to really suffer, after just 10 months.

            • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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              6 months ago

              Obviously he wasn’t going to stop paying for health insurance, only a fool would do that

        • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          “As a very rich person I was just unlucky to hit some health problems in this experiment. But all those yucky poor people? Nah, that’s morning to do with bad luck. That’s just bootstraps and laziness.” -Douchebag clueless millionaire experimenter

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Black said his journey showcased the power of determination and the importance of health and family

      So…he’s going to give away all his money now right?

      Because he proved he can do it again.

      Right?

    • ivanafterall@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      Moreover, despite faking the whole thing, he was still somehow too soft to hack it. He literally couldn’t handle pretend homelessness.

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      But still you’ll never get it right
      'Cause when you’re laid in bed at night
      Watching roaches climb the wall
      If you called your dad he could stop it all

      Pulp had it right in 1995

    • TheFriendlyDickhead@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I wouldn’t see it that hard. He had some weird views of the world, but through this he saw that it’s not as easy as he thought and I am sure he won’t say the same shit as he did before.

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    Fuck poverty porn and fuck people like this guy who think they can “try out” poverty like it’s a fucking suit before opting out at the point where most of us poors start out (with stress related health conditions, except ours are not only from birth, but generational, with all the implications of that, and we can’t just walk away and directly in to the office of the best doctors around like this fucker surely did).
    What’s even worse is I guarantee he’s come out the other side thinking he actually learned something, convinced he has all the answers, and that his experience is important and “educational” enough to put in a “self help” book he’s going to write get someone to ghost write for poor people to learn from his experience… 🤬

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Been thinking about it again too, would Black be able to make his first $300 even if he had the mental and physical fatigue he had at 10 months of the experiment? Also even if he did, without his lucky break where he even generously got access to an RV to sleep in and a computer to work on (rather than having to constantly worry about shelter space as he has been), would he even be able to achieve anything close to what he did?

      • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        If he was disabled or not in peak shape and mental state when he started it would have been a even worse outcome.

        Imagine if he was sick 50% of the time, and he could only work half that. He would be in poverty like almost every other disabled person.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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    6 months ago

    I wonder how he made the photos and accessed Craigslist.

    People refused to give him water and he was unable to find a place to stay the night.

    Eventually, a man with an RV allowed him to stay for several nights in his van.

    Black started off small and managed to make his first $300 by selling furniture online.

    By the fifth day of the challenge he had made enough money to buy himself a computer.

    Almost two weeks in, he was able to secure his own office space and after just over one month, Black finally had his own place to rent.

    Three months into the challenge, Black’s entrepreneurial spirit appeared to shine through having set himself up as a social media manager, managing to land clients - while even coming up with his own brand of coffee.

    While it’s not hard labor by any means, it is interesting.

    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 which led Black to question the entire project - but he continued.

    Black ended the challenge having completed 10 months, with just 60 days left to run. He had managed to make a grand total of $64,000.

    My personal health has declined to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’

    Black explained how he also suffered from two autoimmune diseases which caused ‘chronic fatigue’ and another that attacked his joints.

    That’s the millionaire-funded healthcare system for ya.

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      He’s lying. 100%.
      There is no way he did any of that without help from his existing network and connections, if he did it at all (again, I personally do not believe a single word of it).

      • porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        of course he is lying. how do you sell furniture if you are homeless? what furniture do you have to sell? where is it stored? how do you transport it?

        lots of questions that make this account dubious at best.

        • nodiet@feddit.de
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          6 months ago

          If you read the article you find that he didn’t actually sell furniture, he got people on Facebook marketplace to pay him money for the privilege of collecting free furniture from Craigslist. It’s a really shitty scheme

      • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        He did use existing network but the furniture was from the Craigslist free section and re-sold on fb marketplace. He arranged transport etc (unsure how, don’t remember)

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    He failed, and he’s a young white guy with the experience of a millionaire trying to be “homeless” in a place that never experienced -20c temperatures.

    Literally as easy as it could get for him. And he failed.

    Go ahead and try it while being a young black man. Or a woman. Or disabled. Or with a mental illness. Or an addiction. Or a child.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      He failed, and he’s a young white guy with the experience of a millionaire trying to be “homeless” in a place that never experienced -20c temperatures.

      While being followed by a film crew, given a place to stay for free by a fan, a positive background check for his office space, and investors who knew who he was.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Why can’t the millions of homeless people just QUIT being homeless like this guy did and live a normal life?

    • BeardedSingleMalt@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      Why can’t the millions of homeless people just take a break from being homeless and pop in and out of the doctor’s office anytime they start feeling fatigued.

  • blattrules@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It’s disheartening that he didn’t learn that when you’re poor, even when you start to make progress, everything needs to continue to go your way because if you hit one bump in the road you need to start all over again. It’s too bad his “start all over again” was just “go back to being rich” and he really failed his social experiment.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Wild that he was unable to prove that homeless people can just decide to earn $83,000/month.

  • tillary@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    My personal health has declined to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’

    Black explained how he also suffered from two autoimmune diseases which caused ‘chronic fatigue’ and another that attacked his joints.

    Yeah, I once had a job working 60-70 hours a week. I ate terrible fast carbs for energy and slept 3-5 hours a night. Eventually I developed an autoimmune/CFS-like illness because I was ignoring my body’s needs.

    I think about the less fortunate who have to live this way under stress, all the time. The people who don’t have the option to just “opt out of the experiment”.

  • BeardedSingleMalt@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    This reminds me of that personal trainer fitbro a few years back who thought fat people were just lazy…so he stopped being a fitbro for 30 days to put on weight and spent the next several weeks going back to being a fitbro to show fat people that it’s not that hard to lose weight and get into shape.

    • Azzu@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      To be fair getting thin is incredibly simple. You just start eating less. No luck or resources needed. It’s extremely hard psychologically of course.

      But making a million dollars in 1 year is not as simple. You can’t just take a single action repeatedly and it’ll happen.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Any person can become fit. There’s a way to do it and it works if you just stick to it. This does not apply to becoming rich.

    • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 months ago

      I saw it there already but wanted others that might not have seen it there to see it.