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| The corona pandemic is worsening many people's financial situation. |
400 US-Dollar is not that much money in the USA where the living is not easy but expensive - especially in the cities, and now many people lose their income due to the layoffs and lockdowns in the face of Coronavirus and the precautions that had to be taken against its exponential spreading. So the poverty rate is increasing. On Twitter you can read the sad stories of those who lost their jobs or their business and cannot pay the rent or even food, and also of those who have to work but are scared because their own health is at risk due to a lack of equipment for protection since President Donald Trump and his men played the risk down till it was not credible anymore even to the most uninformed people, and thus the USA started stocking up what is needed very late.
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Seing many people in the USA suffering so much, many of the luckier, wealthy or at least financially stable people donate money to relief organizations, for example, the Fortnite gamer Tyler Blevins aka Ninja and his wife and manager Jessica Blevins donated 150.000 US-Dollar, and the actor and company owner Ryan Reynold and his family, the musicians and brand owners Jay-Z and Rihanna and the Rihanna foundation donated even millions - just to mention a few.
Another donator, not only these days, is Jeffree Star, the former MySpace star, singer-songwriter, now beauty-guru, and the founder, owner and CEO of his own successful makeup brand - whose employees btw are on leave fully paid (many other companies in the USA fired their workers without compensation). Two days ago Jeffree Star gave money to more than 20 people on Twitter to help them with their rent, baby food, vet bills for their pets and whatever was needed, yesterday he started a giveaway of 30.000 US-Dollar to one random person to change this person's life. These are only two examples, he does a lot more all year round and especially these days.
I’m going to give away $30,000 to 1 random person who retweets this tweet AND follows Twitter Philanthropist @Pulte and Me!! (If you don’t follow us, we can’t DM you the money) Will show proof! Much love— Jeffree Star (@JeffreeStar) March 22, 2020
All the donations, those to the help organizations and those directly, are very needed and helpful, in my opinion, but cannot substitute a functioning transparend and fair health and welfare system that shows solidarity as human beings since how it is now - from what I am seeing - people in desperate situations are forced to beg for money, often in public on the Internet to be able to feed their families and pets. You better not be shy or without Internet if you are poor and starving in the USA.
Now there are people who try to use Jeffree Star's donations on Twitter against him, others who use his giveaway hashtag for clout chasing, and some haters do all of this: want to win, want to gain clout and nevertheless spread hate about him. Dustin Dailey describes what happened on Twitter in a YouTube Video (that also is about Jeffree Star tweeting something friendly about James Charles after they have not publicly talked to each other since Dramageddon 2.0)
I personally think it is wonderful, generous and kind that Jeffree Star is trying to help people - not only in this crisis, he is generous all the time, gives to organizations and to people directly - only a few months ago he supported teachers in need because in the USA many school districts struggle to provide teachers with basic equipment for their classrooms (!!!) and most of those teachers don't earn enough to buy everything with their own money, and after last Christmas he paid for the funeral of one of his fans, a young man who had been murdered on Christmas Eve - people had brought to his attention that the parents had opened a gofundme because obviously they could not afford their son's funeral.
When I first saw Jeffree Star on Twitter (and a few days later on Instagram) giving money away to people in need he found in comments to his tweets/posts, in the very first moment I thought: Why is he doing this publicly, people will use him and take advantage of him even more. But I came to the conclusion that he wants others to follow his example and give to people in need if they can. He talks about giving back very often on his Snapchat snaps and in his Instagram stories.
But on Social Media there are always these people who try to spread hate no matter what or try to take advantage of someone kind. I am all for self-reflection and to better oneself where it is needed (and of course Jeffree Star needs to do this as all of us do since we all have our flaws), but I really hope he does not take the words coming from this kind of people to heart but focusses on the happiness of the people he helped and the love people supporting and being proud of him are sending him day by day.
Actually, I wonder whether when Jeffree, out of a sudden, made this friendly remark about James Charles' makeup skills (that Dustin talks about in the first part of his video above), had in mind to team up with James Charles again for the benefit of charity during these dark times since he and James donated a huge amount of money at the start of 2019 and mentioned this in their last video together (the last as far as I know) before all the drama happended with Tati Westbrook, James Charles and Jeffree Star, referred to as Dramageddon 2.0.
I know there are different opinions and customs regarding talking about money in general - depending on the country where you are from, age and other aspects. Usually I tend to be the typical German, meaning I am reserved (only on the outside), especially in regards to talking about money, but for Jeffree Star, Ninja and other people who are adored by so many I find it a good thing because they are role models for millions of people. Jeffree Star and Ninja both stand for working hard and for being successful with doing what they love and they should also be role models in regards to caring about others' wellbeing too - and that they are actually doing just that we can only know when they do their donating publicly. And that applies to the other famous people mentioned above too.
What do you think about donations "in public"? Leave a comment below!
References and more to read
- Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018 (Federal Reserve USA)
- Jeffree Star, Shane Dawson and Dramageddon 2.0 - a review after the launch of the Conspiracy Collection, with followups Cancelgeddon, Karmageddon ...
- Why Jeffree Star should not be cancelled
- #selfisolation in der Corona-Zeit: Was tun gegen den Quarantäne-Blues - vor allem, wenn man alleine lebt?
- Wo man Produkte von Jeffree Star Cosmetics kaufen kann, wenn man in Deutschland wohnt. (Blog Verbrauchermeinung)
** Disclaimer: This content reflects my personal opinion and assumptions.
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