Giving Away Money for Views on the Internet
Do it for the vine
I approached the man hunkered over a tin of beans next to his nearly-abandoned blue tarp of a tent. I said to the man “hey, you look like you’re down on your luck.” And with that, I gave a Jim Halpert-esque wink to my cameraman who was standing fifteen feet away operating a boom mic. “You look like you could use this” is what I said as I handed him $500.
“You wanna do it here or do you have like a car or something?” he strangely asked me. “What?” I befuddledly asked. “I assume you want me to blow you or to fuck my ass. That’s why you gave me money.” He was the third person on camera that day who assumed I was a prostitute. Every time it seems like! I’m just trying to be nice, not to fuck gross homeless people. “Alright, give me the money back.” I’m not sure who was more dejected me going back to my climate-controlled Tesla or him in his box.
Hi, my name is Franklin Barnmucker or, as you may better know me on the internets: Frankie Bens. I like to perform “challenges” on the internet where I seek out poor people and make fools out of each of us. Condescension is my middle name, targeting those underprivileged is my game.
It started off with just $40. Originally, my tactic was going to be to go to a nearby university’s library and find studying students to ask “for $20, will you scream as loud as you can?” Then, my producing cameraman and best friend who we call ‘Pig Slop’ came up with the idea to do this: I would ask someone if they dropped their $20. If they said yes, well, I’d have to give them the twenty. But, if they said “no, that’s not mine,” I would double it and give them $40 for their honesty.
Pretty cool game, don’t you think? The only problem is that everyone (and I mean everyone) that I asked said they had dropped the $20. I didn’t find one honest person in ten tries, so I was out $200 in trying to make a video that would, if gone viral like that one baby girl who smells like beef, would help me make back the deficits ten fold.
A third friend of ours thought he had an even better idea: Larry Parmesan is his name and he volunteered, after hearing about my and Pig Slop’s idea, to dress up as a vagrant and even stage himself either under a bench or next to a homeless encampment so that I could get my first video up and running without losing any money. Eventually, his idea was going to be to continue to hire actors and actresses who are able to cry on command so that we could recycle our money while retaining every profit that the “hopeless” and the Creator Fund could provide us.
The genius in this is that we also don’t have to talk to any actually dirty people. You think I want to touch a hand that doubles as toilet paper? Who do I look like? Mother Teresa? The janitor from Ned’s Declassified? A bitch?
But, this felt disingenuous. I wanted to at least try and make someone’s day better. I mean, sure, my only goal is to make a profit, but there could be some benefit to being a good person. Maybe Mother Teresa would see and put in a good word with the big man who I may or may not believe in.
As Frankie Bens, I was able to use Parmesan’s disguise to make $300 across Twitter and TikTok and Instagram. That $300, which was really $340 because Larry gave me my money back (and I split with him and Pig Slop, so they each got $100 and I got $140), was then used to finance the next video. I was going to lay on the ground on Wall Street wearing an unbuttoned shirt, a blazer, and an untied tie. I would ask people if they would tie my tie and, if they acquiesced, I would give them $100. If this hit even just one time, we’d probably make $500 across my social medias.
I’m all about spreading kindness and making enough money to buy myself the newest iPhones and Teslas and whatever else mass media says I’m supposed to like. I’m not a hater, I’m a liker. Tell me to like something and, easy as pie, I’m a fan.
Suffice to say, the people selling their own souls on Wall Street weren’t too interested in the man laying next to a Dunkin’ Donuts cup filled with $0.75 as a prop (which would later be punted to the side by some tourist from Sandusky, OH). Prepped with my $100, I laid on the street, going hungry myself, for four hours and nothing. All that happened was I saw one guy who, coming off a one hundred-hour work week, threatened to jump from the highest window in the stock exchange. Eventually, a firefighter with a comically large cane swooped his midsection from behind him and pulled him back in. It felt nice to know someone else on the street was doing worse than me.
Desperation sunk in. We needed a smash hit of a video so that we could afford actors and continue this, I’ll say, delinquent cycle over and over again. I was going to have to do something drastic.
Posing as an entrepreneur about to open a business meant to help the poor, I acquired a loan of $15,000 from the bank - in cash, with a 6.9% interest rate. Not bad for a young filmmaker, right? Maybe everything was starting to come up Barnmucker. But, as Frankie Bens, I needed to solidify my strategy to ensure that I spend as little of that money as possible before being given so much from snot-noses under parental guidance replaying my videos over and over. I could even hire a social media farm from India to watch my videos and just my videos for twelve hours and pump the views into the millions.
What could be an idea that would not only propel me into being a middle school-hold name, but would also require the least amount of interaction with *actual* homeless people? My idea was just going to be to hand them money. That’s all I was doing anyway. ‘Help me tie a tie,’ ‘scream in this library,’ ‘watch my Tesla,’ or ‘want to come with me and spend a day at the amusement park?’ were all fine theories but, in the end, it ended up just being me getting way too close to, who I call, “undesirables” and wasting my money anyhow.
With $15,000 I had three shots. I was going to go up to the three women with the loudest kids in Walmart. This was a better setting than Target. Each woman, with the God-fearing hope of them needing to pay off college loans or for braces, would be approached by me and my cameraman and offered $5,000. Should they accept, the waterworks and congratulatory hug should be enough to secure, hell, maybe even $1,000 in views. That would pay for the Indian farm which could garner Hell knows how much money which would then pay for actors and for this scheme to carry me to an early retirement.
The first woman who I found in the dairy section as her children pelted each other with slices of cheese told me to stick my Monopoly money up my keister and to go bother someone else because she was “clearly” busy. So, I took that money to find mom #2.
Mom #2 was pulling a carriage while her son hit her in the back of the leg repeatedly with a wiffleball bat. When I walked up to ask her if she wanted $5,000, she yelled “get back, fucker! I have mace!” That was not enough to break my spirits. I could still find more women,
The third mother who I found trying to pull Tide Pods out of her daughter’s mouth swiped the money out of my hand before I could even ask the question. The whole video is of me approaching her, counting the cash, and her nabbing it from my hands as I look up in shock and disbelief before turning to the camera like Jim Halpert being cutoff by Roy as he flirts with Pam.
That video ended up getting over 30,000 views and I was called the f-slur or “bitch” almost 40,000 times in the comments.
A group of ne’er-do-wells had been watching me offer thousands of dollars to random strangers and jumped me before I could get back to the parking lot as I and Pig Slop headed back to our dejected homes and interest rate. They were wearing ski masks and speaking with fake British accents, pretending to be who I’ve heard referred to as ‘roadmen.’
I managed to hang on to one single $100 bill. Frankie Bens was still technically in business. I was so out of the loop that, on the way in, I hadn’t even noticed the panhandler by the entrance, stepping in front of the automatic doors for people as they approached the store.
I didn’t even want to film it. I just wanted to be done with the whole industry. I was going to fake my death and sail to Madagascar to live with lemurs and out run the bank forever. I just gave him the money. He later used that $100 to buy his life’s remaining worth of heroin as he would overdose that night in the video game section of that Walmart. An eleven-year old looking for the new MLB the Show game found him blue and stiff.
King Julian is going to turn my ass inside-out. Follow me at @FrankieBens on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Substack, and Patreon. I should have gone to college.
After writing all of this, it feels weird to drop a coffee link.
If you’re a fan of Mr. Beast, how did you get your mom’s laptop and why are you being allowed to read my writing?
Hahahahaha