One of the hardest things I have ever learned is that people doesn't always have the same heart. I am someone who thrives on kindness, whether I'm receiving it or showing it toward others. It is the least expensive yet most valuable gift you can ever give to someone. I am lucky enough to say that I am constantly surrounded by the kindest of people, although, I do have my occasional run-ins with the not-so-kind person. Sometimes I'm the one people are being rude to and other times I witness them being rude to others. Whatever the case, it gets me so frustrated to see people who don't seem to value the concept of kindness. I understand that we all have bad days and sometimes say or do things we don't mean, but there are some words and actions that cross the line.
Last week a video went around that caught my attention; young men had filmed themselves interacting with Andrew, a homeless man. When I saw the still image before I hit the play button, it seemed like another nice video of a group people trying to help someone out. I was wrong.
The video opens with the group of men surrounding Andrew, who is sitting on the sidewalk. At first they are simply talking with him but what seems like conversation turns into them tauntingly asking Andrew what he has in a box. He opens the box revealing the cake that he offers to the men, despite their rudeness. Over the chatter, you can hear one man say, "Wow that looks good, but I am not touching that," in what can be described as a condescending tone.
That man may be disgusted by the cake, but I'm disgusted by his response.
The video continues when you hear someone ask Andrew to lay the box down, to which he kindly obliges. The second he puts the box on the ground one of the surrounding men jumps on the cake.
The camera then goes up to the faces of the men and you can see and hear them laughing briefly before the camera pans back down to Andrew repeatedly saying, "That's not nice" as he shakes his head in disbelief. He also adds in, "I earned that" a couple of times as if your heart wasn't already breaking for him. But at the end of the video they give him money so that makes everything okay though right?
After viewing this video, I learned of some background information. Despite the headlines depicting the year 2007, the video was actually shot back in 2006 by the Opie and Anthony Show from Sirius XM. It resurfaced in 2013 when Gregg "Opie" Hughes, the man who did the stomping, posted the video on his youtube channel.
The "Full Story" portion of the video description reads:
"Andrew was our homeless friend that we'd talk to regularly live on the radio as we walked from Krock to our XM studio. He became a pretty regular guest/friend of the show. He would set up every morning purposely on our route knowing we were coming with a whole bunch of listeners. He liked being on the radio with us and also liked that it was an opportunity to collect money from us and the fans that walked with us everyday.
On this day I noticed the stale cake that Starbucks had thrown out cause the expiration date expired. Andrew got the cake out of the garbage. I decided I was going to stomp on the cake mostly because I always liked to see Anthony and Jim Norton cringe and get uncomfortable. Of course I didn't feel too good about myself afterwards cause I realized Andrew was very upset by this. I misread the reaction he would have and now wish I didn't do this. For the record I gave Andrew $100 that day for the pleasure of stomping his cake and everyone else gave him at least another $100. Shortly after the incident he was completely fine with what went down and we would continue to see him on a regular basis after this. Talking to him and putting him on the radio and of course continuing to give him money. We ended the walkover between K-Rock and XM when K-Rock gave us the boot and that ended our relationship with Andrew. Now you know the story. Of course, I don't walk around stomping on cakes of random homeless people."
After reading this, maybe it changed some of your minds, but my thoughts remain the same. I know that Andrew forgave Opie, but this shouldn't have happened in the first place. I understand that no matter how much I complain about how I hate this video, Opie can't go back and change the past, but what do you think it would look like if people actually thought about how their actions affected others? If Opie really thought about how using Andrew to make his friends cringe was a terrible idea then we wouldn't still be talking about this video almost ten years past its filming.
After the video resurfaced in 2013, there was a follow-up radio segment with Andrew on the show. In this segment, Andrew is asked how he earned the cake from seven years prior, to which he replies he earned by "laying his self-esteem down."
If you would like to hear more of this story from the point-of-view of the radio hosts then this on-air discussion, a response to the negativity in 2013, is for you. (For the sake of clarity, the segment that featured Andrew occurred before this discussion.) In this segment of their radio show, the hosts reassure listeners that it was okay for them to do this because they were friends with Andrew, even after they go on to criticize the viewers who judged them based on a one minute video taken out of context.
Yes, the video was taken out of context. Yes, they were friends with Andrew. Yes, Andrew forgave them. Yes, they had a continued relationship with Andrew. Yes, Andrew received money after the fact. But in that moment of the video, Andrew didn't know they were kidding and at that moment they hurt a man who was just trying to be kind and share his cake. He even said himself that he sacrificed his self-esteem and dignity to get that cake (in the follow-up segment previously mentioned).
The fact that they were kidding doesn't make this justifiable to me. I could never imagine myself, or anyone I know doing something like this to another person, friend or not. All judgment aside, I simply and genuinely don't understand the pleasure in doing such a thing and I don't think I ever will.
I would love to hear what you think about this. Please leave your comments below. Thank You.
