People on TikTok BEGGING for Money is Unhinged (Sad Fishing for Money)
Frugal Friends Podcast
Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni | Backyard Ventures
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How far would you go to trust, believe, and help a stranger online? Today we’re breaking down how social media has turned struggle into a brand, how these trends exploit both empathy and algorithms, and how it may be affecting you without you ever giving a dime.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | People on TikTok begging for money is unhinged. |
| 0:08.6 | Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a richer life. |
| 0:18.3 | Here are your host, Jen and Jill. |
| 0:24.8 | Yeah. strangers to send them money, whether it's for rent or groceries or emotional support, |
| 0:38.3 | it's all starting to feel unhinged. Yeah. We're both huge advocates for generosity, |
| 0:45.0 | both at an organizational and one-on-one level. But this new wave of sad fishing for cash on social |
| 0:52.9 | media, is it just annoying? It's part of a bigger, more insidious |
| 0:58.3 | problem on social media. So today we're going to break down what's really going on, how social |
| 1:03.1 | media has turned struggle into a brand, how these trends exploit both empathy and algorithms, |
| 1:10.8 | and how it may be affecting you without |
| 1:13.0 | you even ever giving a dime. Welcome, frugal friends. I'm Jen. I'm Jill. And today we are looking |
| 1:21.0 | at the direct and indirect effects of beg talk and what it is having on your finances, whether you are falling for it, being generous, |
| 1:35.4 | giving money, or not. So, Jill, what do you know about beg talk? Um, literally nothing until yesterday when you said that this is what we're going |
| 1:46.3 | to do our episode out so now i know some things for sure but it's not as if i'm unfamiliar with |
| 1:55.2 | people asking for money right but i think i am realizing that it is ramping up. Yeah. So I learned about this where I learned |
| 2:04.2 | about all good things, YouTube, and I was watching videos. And then I realized we actually had a tenant |
| 2:11.6 | that didn't do this, but was part of where this all started. So a lot of this, |
| 2:20.6 | this whole phenomenon kind of started with TikTok lives. And when TikTok lives started, |
| 2:26.0 | it was this place where you could like, I guess, play games or talk to other people and |
| 2:30.6 | people vote on you and make money. And we had a tenant either last summer or whenever |
| 2:37.9 | this started, who literally, this was her full-time gig. I don't know if it still is, but she made |
| 2:45.7 | all of her money enough where she could kind of travel the country and live for a couple months wherever she |
... |
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