When a viral fairy tale slams against reality
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2024
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” a viral fundraiser for an unhoused man triggers backlash online. And, how platforms like GoFundMe are increasingly replacing America’s social safety net.
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Earlier this year, 21-year-old Sanai Graden – a college student from California – was on her way to a grocery store in D.C. when an unhoused man named Alonzo called out to her asking for tea.
“I’m walking to Trader Joe’s,” she said to him. “You want to walk with me? We can stop at Starbucks.”
It was the beginning of a daylong journey for the two of them, which Graden recorded and posted to TikTok, imploring her followers to donate to Alonzo. Within days her video had racked up millions of views and the GoFundMe she set up for him had raised more than $400,000.
And then, the fairy tale slammed into reality.
Today on “Post Reports,” reporter Kyle Swenson talks about Graden’s saga – how even the best intentions can have unexpected complications online, and the perils of fundraising on platforms like TikTok and GoFundMe.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was mixed and edited by Ted Muldoon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I mean if you really want to understand Need in America right now go on go fund me |
| 0:06.8 | because what you'll find is you will deep dive into a place where people can't |
| 0:11.4 | afford to bury their parents they can't afford to bury their parents. |
| 0:13.0 | They can't afford to recover from a fire at their house. |
| 0:17.0 | They can't pay for cancer treatments. |
| 0:19.0 | They can't pay for their dog to be fed that month. |
| 0:22.8 | You can buy dog food. |
| 0:23.8 | Like, it is just a free for all of need. |
| 0:26.7 | That's Kyle Swenson. |
| 0:31.4 | He covers social issues for the post, and he has been working on a story about a young woman here in DC. She used |
| 0:38.8 | Tik-Tok and Go Fund Me to raise an incredible amount of money for an unhoused man. |
| 0:46.3 | But what the story really gets at is the kind of holes in our social safety net right now. |
| 0:52.0 | And I think it shows a lot about the problems that arise when we |
| 0:56.1 | turn to crowd funding and social media to solve social problems that previously, you know, the government would handle. |
| 1:04.6 | And as you're about to hear, these problems can have serious consequences, despite the best |
| 1:10.8 | intentions. From the Newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm |
| 1:16.4 | Martine Powers. It's Saturday, March 23rd. And today, we are bringing you a bonus episode to share this fascinating story of |
| 1:25.4 | Senai Grayden, Alonzo Hebron, and the perils of social media-driven philanthropy. |
| 1:33.7 | The story starts out on Tik-Tok and maybe you are one of the millions of people who saw it as it unfolded. |
| 1:41.7 | I am not on Tik-Tok, so when I sat down with Kyle a couple of weeks ago, I knew nothing about this. So Kyle Swanson, just lay the land for me, like what have you been working on? |
| 2:00.4 | So my colleague Amber Ferguson and I have been working on a story about this viral video situation that has really blown up on Tik-Tock, but it's really exposed a lot of interesting things here in DC and nationally about |
| 2:15.0 | charity, homelessness, who deserves the help that we give in the system, |
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