It's been a heck of a year.
Great celebrities dying en masse (rest in peace, one and all), Brexit over in the UK, the election right here in America, and surely countless other things I've forgotten purely because, quite frankly, remembering all of them at once might make my head explode. To say the year's been interesting would be a criminal understatement. To put it as plainly as possible, 2016 kinda sucks. I'm sure we could all do with some good news. Luckily, I happen to have some right here, supplied by a social media website I'm sure you're a familiar with, Reddit.
This morning, a user by the name of patronuschild posted a link to a Youtube video on the UpliftingNews subreddit. This video was by an older man running a Youtube channel under the name NearlySeniorCitizen Yetagamer. He said that the man had been posting reaction videos on Youtube for awhile, but lives in a single room and cannot even afford a bed to sleep on. A closer look at the Youtube channel reveals that NearlySeniorCitizen is a disabled USAF veteran and a widower. The video consisted of the NearlySeniorCitizen grieving the death of one of his two pet hamsters. Try to watch it without tearing up, I dare you. Looking back at previous videos, he seems like a generally cheery, happy guy, and it's honestly kind of hard seeing him tear up like that.
One of the moderators of UpliftingNews, a user called OBLIVIATER, posted a comment linking to NearlySeniorCitizen's GoFundMe, where he had been asking for donations in order to help his survival. Now, if you ask me, the reaction to the post on Reddit was pretty uplifting itself; one user who lives close to NearlySeniorCitizen even decided to contact him to play a tabletop role-playing game, having heard he was a fan. On top of this, sharing his GoFundMe, and exposing it to the internet, has given him an absolutely massive boost to donations. His original goal, reaching $17,500, has been crushed. The influx of donations from the generosity of the internet has given him, at the time of writing, $46,562, and it's still going strong. I don't know about you, but to me, that is incredibly heartening. Reaching the end of the crazy year that 2016 has been, it's a really good reminder that people aren't all bad. And this isn't a one-time thing. Reddit is crazy powerful -- stuff like this actually happens pretty often! Reddit is and has been an amazing place for this reason. Every so often, someone's story will rise to the top of Reddit, and they'll receive what's become known as a 'Reddit Hug.' Massive traffic from these Hugs has been known to not-irregularly crash websites, and the generosity of the people involved is often the stuff of legend. In this case, a USAF veteran had his day, and his future changed considerably for the better.
If you want to be a part of the Reddit Hug, or maybe just stretch it out to an Internet Hug, you can visit NearlySeniorCitizen's channel at the link above, or donate to his GoFundMe here. If you can't donate, check out one of his videos, and leave a nice comment. Things like that can really make peoples' day.
