‘Heartless’ YouTuber slammed for pulling stunt mocking homelessness
‘Heartless’ YouTuber is criticized for poking homelessness with a cruel stunt where he offers a friend posing as a bum a free meal before eating it in front of him
- A YouTuber has been criticized for pulling a stunt that mocked homelessness
- Trevon Sellars posted a clip of him appearing to give a man a hamburger, but eat it
A YouTuber has been criticized for pulling a stunt in which he taunted an apparently homeless man in LA by eating a burger in front of him.
In the video, small-time content creator Trevon Sellars asked a man in a parking lot if he wanted a meal before buying one at Wendy’s, pretended to offer it to him, and then ate it in front of him.
The video, first posted last month, has now gone viral, with viewers criticizing Sellars for being “heartless,” “cruel,” and “sick.”
In a Monday post responding to the outcry, Sellers claimed that the man who appeared in the video was a “friend” and that the entire video was scripted.
But viewers weren’t satisfied with that explanation, with one person asking, “What was the purpose of this video, even though it was “staged”?”
“No matter how you justify this, unless that guy says otherwise, you look guilty,” another wrote.
YouTuber Trevon Sellars has been criticized on social media after a video went viral in which he appeared to offer a homeless person a meal before proudly eating it in front of him.
The video opens with Sellars telling viewers about the magnitude of homelessness in LA in an apparently sympathetic tone
Sellars has built up a small following of about 30,000 people over the past year who posted videos of him harassing the homeless and members of the public.
In the updated caption to the original video, Sellars wrote Monday, “I asked him in advance if we could make this video and he agreed to star in it. I gave him some money and food before we started recording.’
The video opens with Sellars telling viewers about the magnitude of homelessness in LA in an apparently sympathetic tone.
“Los Angeles, California, has the third largest homeless population in the United States and today it’s my job to make sure there’s one less hungry person on the street,” Sellars said.
He then approached a man sitting in a parking lot and asked his name and if he was hungry.
When the man told him his name and confirmed he was hungry, Sellars suggested he buy him a meal at a nearby Wendy’s.
When he came back with the food, he started unpacking it and said, ‘I was homeless myself and want to make sure you get on the right track. You can always get back on your feet, I want you to enjoy this.’
Sellars pretended to give the man the meal, but at the last minute ate it proudly in front of him
In other videos and photos on his Instagram, Sellars dresses up as a homeless person and performs stunts in public
Sellars then proudly ate the food and left, telling the man, “This is really good.” Okay, be careful, have a nice day.’
In the latter part of the original video, which didn’t go viral, Sellars returned to the same place with another meal, but by then the man had left.
Instead, he took the meal to another group of men next to tents on the side of the road and offered them the meal. The first person said ‘no we don’t want any of that’ but another man accepted the food.
DailyMail.com wrote to Sellars for more information about the video’s context, but received no response.
On Twitter, one user pointed out that it is common among certain types of online personalities to use the homeless for filming prank videos and other similar content.
“Aren’t you tired of using homeless people for jokes/content?” They wrote.
In another post addressing the controversy surrounding the video, Sellars said, “I made the whole world mad at me because of an edited video,” and posted the definition of the term anger bait.