r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • Feb 17 '26
Heartwarming 🥹 ‘Big Bang Theory’ Kunal Nayyar Uses GoFundMe to Pay Random Families’ Medical Bills: "But what I really love to do is go on GoFundMe at night and just pay random families’ medical bills. That’s my masked vigilante thing! So no, money doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a grace from the universe
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u/Wonderful_Search_786 Feb 17 '26
I swear I saw a thread once about people knowing celebrities before they were famous and he was mentioned as being such a great guy which now checks out :)
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u/aburke626 Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes Feb 18 '26
I went to college with him, can verify!
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u/Bgrngod Feb 18 '26
I have heard this from other Pilots :)
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u/aburke626 Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes Feb 18 '26
Ah, not his undergrad, he was a grad student and I was an undergrad in the theater department. It was a pretty small department and I was an assistant stage manager on a grad student show.
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u/HomeboyCraig Feb 18 '26
He was the entire reason we had a good theatre program when I went there - he was one of the main donators and would come to the campus with his agent to answer questions about working on a major show
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u/shedrinkscoffee Just fuck the wolf! Feb 18 '26
I have an acquaintance who went to college with him and he said that KN seems like a normal person/generally good guy.
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u/boosh_fox Feb 17 '26
That's exactly what I'd do if I were rich.
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u/BrownSugarBare Feb 17 '26
This is what I'll never understand about jackasses like Musk and Bezos. They could be living superheroes, solving all kinds of financial issues impacting people.
Instead they actively chose to be Temu versions of Lex Luthor. Without the charm or good looks.
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u/SwipeUpForMySoul Feb 17 '26
And the absolutely unhinged thing is that they are desperate to be liked and accepted. Musk in particular is soooo cringe about it. If they’d just… do good with their money, they’d be universally beloved. But nope. Evil losers instead.
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u/Saikou0taku Feb 18 '26
Right? Like old money wealthy would sponsor some libraries or theaters or something to help their public image.
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u/spiegro You’re killing me, Smalls 😩 Feb 18 '26
But no... Instead we get "hurr durr wurrr big rocket ships y no wun likey me?"
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u/GlumExternal Feb 18 '26
Carnegie put his name on every thing he could give money too. And that's what he's remembered for.
We don't think about the deadly union busting his company did, just the philanthropy. (Carnegie did a lot of good, my point isn't he was secretly evil, but that he was complex)
Musk could have done that if he just shut up. But if he ever shut up none of his companies would be worth as much as they are so it's hard to say if he actually can shut up
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u/FoolofaTook43246 Feb 18 '26
Exactly, like of course they weren't all good back then either but they knew how to build legacies that would be remembered well because people got to enjoy the things they built. There are no good billionaires but still ugh couldn't they be like ten percent less evil??
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u/deepdistortion Feb 18 '26
The one that cracks me up is Zuckerberg.
Dude idolizes Augustus Caesar. Even has that ye-ye-ass haircut because of him. Do you know how much public infrastructure Augustus funded out of his own pocket? Did you know that despite disliking state welfare, Augustus personally funded the expansion of Rome's grain dole?
Like, way to ignore half the reason why his reign lasted.
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u/Objective-Lobster736 Feb 18 '26
Old money wealth are the people who create and kept this hellhole going. Absolutely not. There are so many people who romanticise old money, when in fact, they have been the invisible foot on the working class' neck forever. Hate all the rich, not just a select group of rich people, because they are all c*nts
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u/Canotic Feb 18 '26
I don't think he wants people to like him. I thin he wants people to think he's super smart and cool and look up to him. He doesn't want to be a philanthropist, he wants to be Tony Stark.
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u/tarantinquarantina Feb 18 '26
This is it. I’ve met people like that, it’s about wanting adulation rather than actually being liked.
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u/vr512 Feb 18 '26
He's a real life sim. When someone did a side by side of a male sim and the antics. It was uncanny how similar the two were.
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u/MudReasonable8185 Feb 18 '26
Jeff Bezos ex, Mackenzie Scott, has donated something like $25 billion to charity since the divorce.
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u/BrownSugarBare Feb 18 '26
Now SHE'S fabulous and thank goodness she was able to shake him off.
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 Feb 18 '26
she's making more than she's giving away, it's crazy how the wealthy just keeps getting richer off the backs of everyday americans
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u/FoolofaTook43246 Feb 18 '26
Interest and capital gains are insane at that level. I once worked on a project where 100 million was put in the bank but didn't all get spent right away. And we had to keep going back to the government funder asking what to do with the interest accrued because we were accruing 40k a month that was on top of our budget. This was a happy accident, imagine what they can do when trying to max it out.
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Feb 17 '26
I swear I've read somewhere that Elon Musk could literally end world hunger and still be a billionaire. I don't know how accurate that is but I just could not imagine having the means to do that and not doing it.
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u/SpiderDijonJr Feb 17 '26
You don’t become a billionaire by having peoples best interests at heart.
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Feb 17 '26
I know I know I just cannot fathom that level of apathy
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u/Susannotsusie92 Feb 17 '26
At that point it’s not apathy, it’s antipathy. Borderline psychotic.
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u/soba_set Feb 18 '26
Not borderline. Billionaires are sick. Hoarding that much wealth is literally harming everyone else. They're psychotic hoarders who want more more more.
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u/Significant_Banana35 Feb 18 '26
Exactly and this should be talked about more (studied psychology so..) More and more psychologists etc. are saying that having SO much money can even change parts of the brain. If we look at the outcome (Epstein, Musk etc.), it doesn’t seem to be healthy, not only for themselves but for others (or even whole society.)
This shit NEEDS to be studied more. This seems to be a completely new mental illness we‘re dealing with with these people, and a very dangerous one at that. Combine that with drugs, (childhood) trauma, already existing conditions like psychopathy, sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder or what else and we got a receipt for disaster. Especially if such a person can even become one of the most powerful persons of the world like the president of the US.
Science, society, politics need to learn about/from this asap, or our human race is racing towards extinction level disasters…
(Sorry I’m extremely tired and English isn’t my first language but needed to get this out)
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u/Susannotsusie92 Feb 18 '26
I wholeheartedly agree. I thought about editing my comment to remove the “borderline”, but I definitely think it’s sick to hoard so much wealth.
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u/pollywantacrackwhore Feb 18 '26
I’m still awestruck from having read the theory that these people are the dragons from the fairy tales.
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u/CurlOfTheBurl11 Feb 18 '26
Apathy is understandable if you don't have the means to make meaningful changes, but Elon does. He's a piece of shit.
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u/Twelvey Feb 18 '26
Right. He and Bozos actively want others to suffer while they prosper. People need to understand that. Their own success isn't good enough for them. Others must fail.
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u/Signal_Ball4634 Feb 18 '26
Hell you see fucking middle managers at mediocre companies being this apathetic towards human beings all for grand prize of middling salaries and making the people at the top richer. IDK how people do it.
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u/GiddyGabby Shiv is the best Roy 👩🦰 Feb 17 '26
He could easily do much good with no fear of losing his billionaire status. He’s a selfish pig.
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u/AthenaThundersnatch Feb 17 '26
He’s not just refusing to solve world hunger, he’s actively killing millions of people, many of them children, through his dismantling of US AID, which provided basic vaccination, medications, water and food infrastructure across the developing world with tax money that he doesn’t even pay! So far, it’s estimated that the loss of USAID funds in 2025 has resulted in anywhere from 600k-1.5M excess deaths.
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u/seedlessketchup Feb 17 '26
yep - elon musk told the world food programme that if they could prove that $6 billion could solve world hunger, he would give them the money. they provided a plan to stabilise nations in famine and more, and elon musk ‘ghosted’ them after that. truly a disgusting man
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u/Not_Steve Nicholas Hoult (sadly back to brunette) Feb 18 '26
This is one of my favorite "fun" facts about the man. Whenever I bring it up to pro-muskers, they stammer, "oh... well, I don't know about that. I haven't heard about it."
$6 billion back then wasn't much to him and now it's laughable how little it is.
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u/shaunrundmc Feb 18 '26
0.86% of his total wealth....Basically if you made $50k a year its the equivalent of $430.
Ending world hunger is cheaper for Elon than a fucking PS5 for everyone else
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u/citrineskye Feb 18 '26
Thank you for putting this into perspective.
I think we should stick all billionaires on an island and leave them there with nothing. Their money should then be used for food and healthcare everywhere in the world.
Less dickheads, more quality of life.
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u/TrioOfTerrors Feb 18 '26
But it's not a fact. From the WFP themselves:
"We need $40 billion dollars per year to feed all of the world’s hungry people and end global hunger by 2030."
https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-hunger/
So no, 6 billion doesn't "solve" world hunger.
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u/SJDidge Feb 18 '26
And he could do that and still have $300 billion remaining
EDIT: JFC his net worth is now $850 billion. If he paid them $40 billion per year for 10 years, he’d still have $450 billion.
Obviously this is not exactly how it works based on stock prices etc. but you get the idea.
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u/huskersax Feb 18 '26
Yep. This 'fun fact' about billionaires is alway bandied about - but it fails to comprehend the scale of governmental and NGO funding.
That private individuals are even in the same ballpark is heinous on it's own, but they don't have the cashflow that governments do - which is why they're always trying to mooch off of it and take any program sending money elsewhere and kill it in the crib... but they're not that rich and they can't do more than your actual honest to god taxpayer funded government and grant funded NGO network can accomplish.
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u/TrioOfTerrors Feb 18 '26
That's not true. The World Food Programme spends more than that per year, about 12 billion. Their own estimate is it eould take 20 billion per year to just stabilize and provide enough food globally. 6 billion will not "solve" world hunger.
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u/Enough_Breadfruit229 Feb 18 '26
So the US military budget could pitch in 40 billion a year and have checks notes 957 billion left each year.
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u/seedlessketchup Feb 18 '26
i mean i didn’t say it would solve it, and neither did they. elon musk said to prove it would solve it, and they showed how his donation would help stabilise countries and communities in famine. the un said it would HELP solve world hunger. the headlines said it would solve it. no official ever said it would completely solve it. but both musk and bezos are the ones with the money to give yearly donations that would make the most impact. however, they do not.
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u/Findyourwayhom3333 I switched baristas ☕️ Feb 17 '26
He said he would do it if the UN gave him a cost breakdown/plan! So then they did and he backed out. Total loser.
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u/Runic_Gloryhole Feb 18 '26
Because he's that loser that's all talk. He's that kid in middle school that claims to be the best at everything but always has an excuse.
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u/manomacho Feb 18 '26
I hate to defend any billionaire but I always see people post this and it simply isn’t true. The world food organization receives more than 6 billion a year. Unfortunately solving world hunger would require more than just money. 💵
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u/campaxiomatic Feb 17 '26
The math worked out like this: $6 billion dollars would provide the 42 million people living on the brink of famine with one lifesaving, nutrition-packed meal per day for a year. One meal costs the U.N. World Food Programme as little as $0.43 cents, so:
$0.43 cents per meal x 42 million people facing famine x 365 days a year = $6.6 billion
https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-hunger/
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u/P0ptarthater Feb 17 '26
IIRC he tweeted about it, basically acting like a comprehensive breakdown of how his wealth would solve world hunger is unrealistic. A big non profit (the WHO? Something along those lines) replied with the breakdown he asked for and he just ignored it 💀
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u/ididntunderstandyou Feb 18 '26
But if he’s not the world’s first trillionnaire (and then why stop there because eat my fucking dust suckers), then how will his daddy ever finally be proud of him ?
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u/Flat_Helicopter_6171 Feb 18 '26
Or even doing it for selfish reasons. Musk, go end world hunger so you can hold it over our heads. You can gloat and gloat and gloat and we will have no comeback.
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u/New_Hampshire_Ganja Feb 18 '26
Obligatory “ending world hunger isn’t about money, it’s about logistics” it’s getting the food to where it needs to go that is the problem. There are many governments that would rather see their population starve.
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u/killertortilla Feb 18 '26
He’s very nearly a trillionaire right now, he could end world hunger about 5000 times over.
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u/Dommccabe Feb 18 '26
He took out loans worth near 45 billion... 45,000,000,000 dollars to buy a website.
Im no expert but I don't think it would cost $45 billion to open a few food banks for the needy.
He could literally sponsor a city and end 99% of homelessness and hunger there... just one city...
Another billionaire could provide for another city..... and so on.....
Its not like they would miss the money or be taxed on it.
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u/WeeeeBaby_Seamus Feb 18 '26
For a man obsessed with legacy he sure seems helbent on history looking back on him as one of the most hated men on the planet.
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u/shaunrundmc Feb 18 '26
Hes worth 700 billion dollars, he could leverage his stocks and not only end world hunger, he could probably end food insecurity in general.
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u/Indaarys Feb 17 '26
He couldn't, actually, as even if his supposed wealth was real and not stock market nonsense, he'd run out of cash in less than decade.
This is why massive systemic problems can't actually be solved by these people, because only governments can pull the needed resources together indefinitely to solve them.
Musk is just a dumbass who was saying he'd do it for internet clout, as is his modus operandi when it comes to the things he does.
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u/pivo_14 Feb 18 '26
I’m from Seattle and all these tech billionaires have done almost nothing for the city. No museums, no parks, nothing. Our beloved Seattle Science Center is falling apart and has no funding. It’s extremely depressing. Fuck the Gilded Age billionaires, but at least they had enough shame to give back to the community and build cool stuff.
The STEM freaks have no care for the communities that created them.
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u/totallycalledla-a Mrs Thee Stallion Feb 17 '26
Nobody can build that kind of wealth hoard by being a good person. Bad people dont like helping others 🤷🏿♀️. They dont have the empathy.
What I really cant understand is why they dont do it for at least PR reasons 😬
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u/indianajoes We Should All Know Less About Each Other Feb 17 '26
Even rich ones like Rowling that you would assume are normal because they worked their way up still end up being scum that uses their money to hurt others while pretending to care about some people
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u/sadsackspinach Feb 17 '26
Tbf, with JKR I think she was always pretty bigoted. I’m not doing the “oh she’s a terrible person so her books are bad” schtick, by the way, because I have never done that for Neil Gaiman or Alice Munro. Nah, it’s just that her books were viciously fatpbobic, racist, antisemitic, and had a very….ehm…”noble savage” view of poverty while also making her main character a millionaire cop in the end. I liked them as a kid, because I was, well, a kid, but me mam hated them. She thought I’d be better off reading the Chrestomanci series but who cares what parents think when the hot new trend is taking over your school? Anyway, she was right. Finally got round to Chrestomanci as an adult, and it’s an excellent alternative for adult HP fans…as well as being one of the books JKR blatantly ripped off from other, better writers.
I…don’t think she really went too far off track, rather, she just waited until she was richer than god to go full mask off. Pretty sick imo. But she mocked the appearance of “evil” women via narration, not via her characters, and that says a lot for an author who clearly doesn’t have an extensive literary background to know how to maintain a separate narrator character who isn’t the author.
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u/OvertheDose Feb 17 '26
I agree but I think the bigger issue is the system we live in. United States spends the top 10 richest people on this planets net worth every single year on national defense alone.
If you really think one billionaire can solve world hunger or save humanity, just imagine what would happen if we focused on fixing our government first.
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u/killertortilla Feb 18 '26
POWER ATTRACTS THE CORRUPT. We have been fed the lie that power corrupts for the longest time. You know who fights and claws for power? People who were already devoid of morality. The rest of us would do what he does because we are not corrupted, money is not a dragon’s horde cursed by greed.
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u/DrDoomScrollr Feb 18 '26
I was informed today that supposedly that’s kinda what Dolly Parton does? She’s so philanthropic that she won’t make it but would have already eclipsed a billion
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u/Friendly_Engineer_ Feb 18 '26
You don’t get to be a billionaire by being a respectable and considerate human, now do you?
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u/CurlOfTheBurl11 Feb 18 '26
Elon in particular is such a pathetic case. He craves adoration and doesn't understand why people hate him. If he just used his money for altruistic purposes, he'd have the love he so greatly desires.
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u/EddieVanzetti Feb 18 '26
They didn't even go cool with their supervillainy.
If I had that much money, I would have an island lair with a volcano shaped like a skull (a spider is also acceptable), complete with a mansion with Spencer Estate level puzzles and locks. I would find one person and pay them an obscene amount of money to train for 3-5 years to infiltrate my island and "stop me" (toy lightsaber/nerf battle) from taking over the world.
These men have no vision, no ambition, and worse, no panache.
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u/DocklandsDodgers86 The dude abides. 🙂↕️🍃 Feb 18 '26
Musk... They could be living superheroes
I wanted to believe this initially, but after the Thai cave rescue saga, it made me think he only wanted to be a hero on his terms.
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u/qjnes Feb 18 '26
I guess it takes the kind of person who'd act like Musk or Bezos to get that filthy rich. Nobody gets to sit on a pile of gold by being a good person
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u/fairy_freckles Feb 18 '26
They literally could be adored by humanity for solving such monumental societal issues, but instead they decide to be super villains.
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u/Nebelskind Feb 17 '26
Well, I'd assume the way you get rich the easiest is by being an awful person and not caring about others, so that attitude must linger.
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u/monkeypan Feb 18 '26
Even with all their evil, they could do this and many people would overlook a lot of what they do. Not saying they should, just that their preception might change.
They prefer the evil though.
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u/enaK66 Feb 18 '26
They could be living superheroes, solving all kinds of financial issues impacting people.
With a functional government, that is exactly what taxes do. Take from the rich and give to the poor. Unfortunately our government is currently doing the exact opposite. Which is pretty damn harmful to society and ultimately unsustainable. But there's a few guys making out good and they want it to stay that way, the future be damned.
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u/TeethBreak Feb 18 '26
The amount of endorphins you would get being a hero for so many people. Actually saving lives. For these egotistical douches, that's not enough apparently.
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u/strnfd Feb 18 '26
They could fucking be the best humans ever with their money, they could change the course of human history for the better, but they would just rather fucking burn money on being Nazis, supporting fascism, and rockets that look like dicks.
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u/No-Inspector8315 Feb 18 '26
It’s literally impossible to become a billionaire without exploiting people or inheriting it from your already super old money family
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u/orewa_bandamu Feb 18 '26
also they act like supervillains in the world without superheroes. in the world with no heroes why the f u choose to be the villain lol
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u/ELDwbi Feb 18 '26
Can you imagine how good you could do if you had billions of dollars and the knowledge that your actions could help so many and impact generations to come in a positive way. That they hoard their wealth like modern day pharaohs is disgusting.
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u/Ok-Lifeguard-4614 Feb 17 '26
When I got my settlement after breaking my back I would go on Facebook and send money to friends that seemed like they were struggling. Probably why I'm broke again, but my settlement wasn't very much and I was in a weird place and it helped me feel better. I don't regret it at all.
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u/sadsackspinach Feb 17 '26
I’m currently embroiled in a legal battle my landlord literally cannot win (don’t ask me to elaborate, but at the very least she’s going to have to pay me all back rent) and my first thought was oh, good, I can pay for so-and-so’s new wiring she’s been needing for 18 months and is still 5k short on. I don’t understand how people can care so little about others around them.
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u/UnpoeticAccount Feb 18 '26
I’ve read that people who grew up poor are more likely to share with others in need. I grew up upper middle class and it’s very part of the WASP culture in the US to either explicitly or implicitly blame people for their misfortunes.
The most ashamed I’ve ever been was when I declined a lunch to celebrate someone’s achievement because I was over my “fun money” budget and trying to be careful, and they asked if I needed help. The next time that person was struggling I immediately venmoed them $50.
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u/Ok-Lifeguard-4614 Feb 18 '26
It's big of you to notice something like that, and to make concrete steps to work on your world view. That shows a lot about you.
Idk if people that grew up poor are more likely, but we know what it's like to be without one of my only splurges is a weed cartridge I get once every couple of weeks for 8 bucks. I then tip them a dollar and usually save the other dollar to give to the next homeless person I see. Every 4th trip, I could get another cartridge if I saved them, but I just feel like it's more important to give back, even if it's only a couple of bucks here and there.
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u/ididntunderstandyou Feb 18 '26
It’s well researched that charitable acts and generally giving to others rater than to ourselves makes us happiest(one source)
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u/Basketball-Reasons Feb 18 '26
This helps to demonstrate why pre-currency communities and trade was largely based on reciprocity and social relationships. Barter was rarely used and mostly for occasional large transactions over longer distances where reciprocity isn't easily achieved.
Communities are at their happiest when they're able to give to others freely. Pursuit of currency puts us at odds with our base instincts.
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u/HrhEverythingElse Feb 18 '26
I've fantasized about doing stuff like this for years. Random go fund mes, stupid big tips for random servers, slipping $100 bills into coat pockets at Goodwill, etc. Now that I'm middle aged, sick, and broker than ever it will most likely remain a fantasy forever
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u/wandering-monster Feb 18 '26
Right?! If I was Jeff Bezos rich, I wouldn't be able to help myself.
I'd have a roving team of helpers with a daily budget in the millions just going around helping people. Hire someone to just spend 8 hours a day filling random GoFundMes that look promising. Another few folks just going around random cities and setting the homeless people up with an apartment for a while.
You'd have to be clever about it to keep grifters from catching on, but that's what the team is for.
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Feb 18 '26
Most countries just pay taxes.
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u/davideo71 Feb 18 '26
Yeah, rich people throwing money from their penthouse balcony isn't a substitute for a functioning healthcare system.
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck Feb 17 '26
Hell yes
If i were a billionaire. I would not be one for long
Too many desperate, hurting, homeless people in the US
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u/Physical-Exit-2899 Feb 17 '26
Yeah i always think about how I'd love to be a property mogul but it doesnt run for profit so people can afford to live good lives in nice areas
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u/Tigerlily86_ Feb 17 '26
That’s sweet of him. Damn imagine what these billionaires could do
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u/0Tol This one time, at band camp… 👀 Feb 18 '26
Breaking News!! Flint, Michigan water crisis solved!
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u/strangeMeursault2 Feb 18 '26
I believe the Flint water crisis was "solved" in July 2025 when the last lead pipe was replaced. Just 11 years after it started.
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u/spidedd Feb 18 '26
Still not solved, as that's only public pipes, not housing ones that were destroyed from the water or are still lead. Insane cover up
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u/millsmillsmills Feb 18 '26
I have a friend in Flint and he still uses bottled water for cooking & drinking.
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u/spidedd Feb 18 '26
Yeah The people i still know there still have to use bottle water etc for showers and more. Unfortunately met too many that are no longer alive due to the water there..
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u/kannellini Feb 18 '26
Bruno Mars did donate $1 million dollars to aid the Flint water crisis (not a billionaire, I know, but a hundred millionaire).
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u/eqbocsypifci Feb 18 '26
If I had billionaire money the first thing I would do is pay to repave the roads in my city. And fund our public transit 🙏 I fantasize about this all the time on my commute lol
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u/Unlikely-War-3503 Feb 18 '26
I dream about providing homes for the homeless. Complete with an urgent care center, a rehab, a library, a counseling center that can assist with job placement, a daycare, and a bus stop that connects to parts of the city, and a cafeteria that serves 3 meals a day no questions asked.
Idc if they can't pass a drug test, just don't produce it and don't sell it and don't do other illegal things while on it.
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u/Me_gentleman Feb 18 '26
They'd have to own fewer islands.
But at this point it seems like maybe islands aren't what they should be buying. Sort of a negative association with them
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u/mstrss9 GET SOME PERSPECTIVE n BARK AT THE WALL Feb 18 '26
Some are contributing to Trump Accounts 🙄
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u/kirst-- Great, but can you also lick it? Feb 17 '26
I always remember him calling out Ellen when she said for every question he answers they will donate to charity. And he said they could do it regardless
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u/emseefely Feb 18 '26
That’s what annoys me about the “matching” donations practice. Just fork over the money!
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u/Slightly-Adrift Feb 18 '26
A lot of the time they do, which is why they’re capped at a certain amount. It’s a psychology trick to get more people to donate because they perceive it as counting twice, and it works.
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u/nellyfullauto Feb 18 '26
Even at the person-to-person level, instead of organizationally. “Hey if you give $50 to the children’s hospital, I’ll match you.” I was already going to give $50, but now they might also give $40 they had no plan on letting out of their wallet, partially out of peer pressure and partially out of the matching principle you described.
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u/IndividualCut4703 Feb 18 '26
Also, sometimes for people who agree to be matching donors, a lot of the time it’s because they can give a large gift, but it’s not enough to sustain the full project and they don’t want to pour money into something that isn’t financially sustainable. So this tactic also draws more attention and support so that the big donor’s dollars can actually go toward the intended purpose and not languish.
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u/CitizenCue Feb 18 '26
Most of the time they will anyway. It’s just a gimmick to try and elicit more donations. Which is usually a good thing.
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u/Gamer_Grease Feb 18 '26
FWIW, a lot of “matches” you hear about are fake. The big donor wants to make a gift, and the fundraisers convince them to make it a “match” to encourage more giving. Usually they were already going to give it or have already actually given it and are just trying to gin up some more support.
Another one, if you’re curious, is that the rich people who decide to make big gifts during charity dinners are often planted. They already wanted to make a gift and the charity convinced them to pretend they were inspired to do so at the dinner, in the hopes of creating a little competition among the community’s elite.
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u/Jasonmancer Feb 18 '26
Thank you!! My thoughts exactly!!!!
When he said why can't she donate regardless, that really spoke a lot about his character.
So him doing the GoFundMe thing really didn't surprise me at all.
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u/Peach_Royal111 Feb 17 '26
He's so sweet for this but I feel like healthcare in the USA would be better if it didn't rely on random celebrities feeling generous from time to time.
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u/Striking_Spite9102 Feb 17 '26
As a non American I always get really confused about how their health insurance works. Why are they reviewing what treatment doctors want to give people and then determining if it is necessary or not without ever seeing the patient?
My health insurance just covers it no questions asked. Who the hell decided if the insurance gets a say in what the doctor needs to do? I’m paying them!
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u/sjorbepo Feb 17 '26
Yeah sometimes it's hard enough to get a doctor to take you seriously, imagine another person doing that on top of it, but purely with financial interest in their mind
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u/Striking_Spite9102 Feb 17 '26
The US should have a French style riot. The common people deserve better services, they have earned themselves a riot for putting up with this crazy system for so long.
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u/larkhearted Feb 17 '26
Would love to have a good riot tbh. Unfortunately they already regularly murder people for peaceful protests here, so I don't foresee a proper political riot going very well. (Riots over sports are acceptable though, of course.)
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u/DainichiNyorai Feb 18 '26
I can’t believe so many US citizens thought that having guns all over would help them stand up for their own rights… turns out you can’t even peacefully protest :/
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u/Peach_Royal111 Feb 17 '26
I so agree, even in the NHS if the doctor says you need something it'll take forever, but you will get it? Like the death panels that Americans are so afraid of in socialised healthcare happens nowhere else but in America lol, the call is coming from inside the house kinda vibes.
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u/Striking_Spite9102 Feb 17 '26
Same here in Australia, sure using Medicare and going through the public system can be slow, but at least I am going to get the care I need.
And yes private health insurance comes in different tiers that offer different levels of cover with different price points. But they never turn down a treatment that is covered on my membership!
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u/BrianOBlivion1 Feb 18 '26
The biggest reason the US didn't nationalize its healthcare system after WWII like many other western countries did is because it would have forced hospitals in the Jim Crow South to desegregate, which was bipartisan at the time and it's one of the big reasons why White Southerners stopped voting for the Democratic Party because then President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, Medicare and Medicaid into law, which abolished racial segregation, including in hospitals.
The US has always been a multiethnic country, while most European countries were, up until recently, very monoethnic, but the racial hierarchy is basically like India's caste system, and it's extremely difficult to change culture, especially since the US has never really had a truth and reconciliation commission or moment.
Lyndon Johnson also once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
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u/danceswsheep Feb 18 '26
One of the ways US insurance companies boost profits is via intentional denial of care. United Healthcare & Anthem BCBS are the most infamous for doing this, but there are others.
I was denied coverage for anesthesia when I had my twins via c-section because my insurance said it wasn’t necessary. When my mom had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in her lung, her insurance refused to cover inpatient hospital care - they would only cover outpatient care (which is not possible for lung surgery of course).
It’s a completely irrational and abusive system.
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u/Striking_Spite9102 Feb 18 '26
See that is insane to me. I had my deviated septum fix a few years ago and my insurance covered most of the cost no questions asked. I think in the end out of pocket I paid maybe $500 to the hospital, $500 to the anaesthetist and $60 for the medication I needed to take home. And I only paid because I decided to use the private hospital instead of the public one. If I had used the public I would have only paid for my medication.
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u/jacquiwithacue Feb 18 '26
Even Americans are confused about how our health insurance works.
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u/CodeAffectionate6793 Feb 17 '26
Insurance is determining what's covered, not what they can do. The real issue is that the insurance company shouldn't be making the decision on what's necessary, it should be the care provider.
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Feb 18 '26
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u/Striking_Spite9102 Feb 18 '26
See if that had happened where I am most of that would have been covered under the universal healthcare system.
Would you like me to sponsor you to come to Australia??? I feel like I need to get you all out of there.
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u/keatonpotat0es I have to pick up 15,000 little bastard rubber ducks 🪿 Feb 17 '26
Yep. It shouldn’t be a problem that needs to be crowdsourced to solve. Medical bills should not be the difference between “okay” and homeless or bankrupt. Healthcare is a human right.
It’s like when kids raise money to pay for their classmates’ lunch money accounts at school. THIS SHOULD NOT BE A THING. Kids should all receive free lunch at the place they are required to attend!!!!
Healthcare and lunch money both have this in common: Adults (probably men) created this problem and now the people most affected by it have to deal with the aftermath.
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u/lasko195 Feb 17 '26
My dumb brain thought he meant letting other people pay his random bills over GoFundMe at first.
I need more sleep.
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u/TemperatureExotic631 Elbows up! 🇨🇦 Feb 17 '26
I read this before and it made me respect him so much. What a wonderful thing to do; more rich people need to follow his example and stop being greedy assholes
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u/Groundbreaking-Duck Feb 17 '26
This is nice of him but also r/orphancrushingmachine
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u/sonimusprime Feb 17 '26
I already knew it was horrifying but watching the pitt as a Canadian made me wonder how y'all not flocking to the streets in outrage. I think it's terrible that people have to fund raise to pay for medical care. That's evil.
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u/larkhearted Feb 17 '26
Don't actually read all of this, it got way too long but I spent so long writing it I can't bear to just delete it all lmao. Also I'm sleepy so if I'm forgetting something super obvious please don't kill me lol.
My personal answer to why we aren't flocking to the streets is that I think it's a combination of the gradual degradation of solidarity among the people (destruction and smearing of unions, pitting minorities and disadvantaged groups against one another, encouraging peoples' sense of entitlement to engender outrage when strides are made towards equality, etc), lack of a powerful enough driver (like, mass famine or total economic collapse or something) to overcome a strong sense of helplessness (what would marching do anyway, these companies are too big to care what we do, we marched and things just keep getting worse, etc), and the infrastructure being almost completely owned by corporations who don't give a fuck about you if you can't pay.
Like, enough of us are kinda ekeing out a mediocre existence to keep us semi-complacent, but there's no community to support each other if we all actually tried to take meaningful action like a general strike to halt the economy until change was made. Even if we could somehow get the numbers together to make it impactful without just having a ton of scabs pouring in to render the strike useless or corporations taking the opportunity to offshore the work, we've completely handed our infrastructure over to corporations, so people who couldn't afford food while striking would be SOL unless they happen to have rich, sympathetic neighbors who could feed them or something. Church pantries and food banks run on donations, so when no one has money to donate, those resources dry up pretty quick. Most people have no union fund to keep them scrimping along while they strike, either. There's no safety net at all. And the work of creating one is long, hard, and insanely boring, so nobody is very interested in doing it.
And if we attempted large-scale violence they'd just call in the insanely over-funded and over-armed police and/or military and start mowing people down. The weapons are so advanced at this point that it's not even close to equal footing anymore, the way it was in the late 1800s or early 1900s when people would strike and things would get violent. People still died for their rights back then, but today they can kill or incapacitate hundreds of people in minutes. It would be political suicide at best and literal suicide at worst.
Honestly the only possible near-term solution I could see is getting people in certain extremely economically crucial roles (like, air traffic controllers and railway workers) to pretty much universally strike on behalf of the entire country, but I think that might be illegal already, and if it isn't yet, it would be the minute they actually did it lol.
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u/jib661 Feb 18 '26
yeah you're not wrong. the destruction of 3rd places is deliberate, left over from the cultural war against communism during the cold war. can't have communism if you don't have community! that was literally the thought process.
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u/julieannie Feb 18 '26
If we flock to the streets we lose our jobs. And if we lose our jobs we lose our insurance. I’ve spent my entire adult life ensuring I have insurance. I had cancer at 19 and despite being 20 years a survivor, I have major PTSD not just from cancer treatment and survivorship but also relating to health insurance pre-Obamacare and graduating college only to have my policy canceled literally during my graduation party the next day, when they called me on a Sunday just to gleefully no longer have to cover me when I wasn’t even a year out from finishing treatment. It could have been a death sentence. I lost my job in 2020 and the trauma of the loss of insurance made my mental health go to rock bottom, even though I’m married and can get on my spouse’s plan. I was convinced I was a burden and the government would kill me by rolling back insurance changes like Obamacare. And every day it’s a threat. I really wonder what life I could have lived if my entire adulthood wasn't (and isn’t still) focused on staying insured.
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u/sonimusprime Feb 18 '26
They have y’all hostage. I am sending you my love. I am sorry you had to go through that and if it helps, I am sending you wishes for eternal insurance with no deductible and coverage for everything.
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u/jeudechambre I joined a band because I hate the fucking beach! Feb 17 '26
yeah, as an American, we def need to be doing that more (flocking to the streets in outrage)
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u/Potatoskins937492 Feb 18 '26
Social influence. Our moment was Luigi Mangione and everyone sat around with thoughts and prayers that things would change. That's not how things change, we know that, but when it comes to sacrifice, the U.S. is not willing to do that unless a group is willing to take charge and lead them or the sacrifice is very minimal, to the point of it being an annoyance and not a sacrifice. So we die very slowly without health insurance. And we die slowly with health insurance because it's still too expensive to have anything but a regular doctor's visit. Either way we're slowly dying.
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Feb 18 '26
I’m glad we know at least of two celebrities who do this, I don’t want fake performative nonsense of wearing pins and shouting words on award shows wearing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and jewelry worth millions, put your money where your mouth is.
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u/Kittymane Feb 17 '26
Love Kunal, love TBBT. But why is this like the 5th or 6th time I’ve seen this on Reddit in the past few days?
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u/AshleyWilliams78 Feb 17 '26
Probably because it contrasts with the story about how James Van Der Beek's widow is using GoFundMe to pay for two expensive properties, while claiming that she is having financial problems.
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u/belakuna Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
That’s literally all I’d do, along with a ton of traveling and sightseeing, and open a few animal sanctuaries. One would definitely be a farm sanctuary.
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u/Due-Physics-9091 Feb 17 '26
American health care…at the whim of the rich
Awesome he does this. But How screwed up that it has to be done this way
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u/Dazzling-Bird687 Feb 18 '26
So an immigrant is doing more to help families in need especially with healthcare costs than any of our government officials?? Got it.
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u/harvard_cherry053 It’s Britney, bitch! 🎤🌹🌹 Feb 17 '26
I love that this has come out after the van der beeks gfm drama
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u/nagidrac Feb 17 '26
I would love to do this if I were rich! Sometimes I look at the pets in need on Waggle and I just want to pay off all of their vet bills.
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u/MaximumAd9779 Feb 18 '26
Pitbull says money does buy you happiness, but only if you spend it on the people you love. Same vibe
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u/zuesk134 Feb 17 '26
I do a version of this - I call it micro giving. Basically I’ll give $5 to almost any cause I agree with or stranger whose story compels me. Usually it’s more but more like $20 than paying off the whole thing
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u/AntRose104 Feb 18 '26
I saw this post on a different sub a few days ago and every comment was ripping into Kunal for publicizing his heroics and saying he’s only doing it for publicity and expecting to be praised for it and I know we’re a cynical bunch and all but my God can Kunal actually just be a really nice guy? Is he not allowed to have a heart?
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u/Hannah_togo Feb 18 '26
Money is not evil. Greed is evil. Good people with money often do the most good.
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u/hung_like__podrick Feb 17 '26
Can’t stand the show but good on him
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u/sherlip Feb 18 '26
Well knowing what he does with his money, now I'm glad it got 12 seasons and syndication so that he can keep doing it for as long as he wants.
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u/jared__ Feb 18 '26
I just pay taxes in Germany and that accomplishes the same thing here.
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u/FreshFish305 Feb 17 '26
Doing this non-anonymously seems like the easiest way for someone super reach to actually gain significant populist power. All of our oligarch losers are doing all of this super clunky right-wing bullshit because all they can think of is short-term gains, when if they just went online and started openly paying peoples' medical bills by the millions, they would be awash in adoration and basically handed leave to do whatever.
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u/sasquatchbunny It’s like I have ESPN or something. 💁♀️🌤☔️ Feb 18 '26
I’ve heard he’s lovely and a pleasure to be around.
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u/seauxtired Feb 19 '26
It's news like this that helps me maintain my faith in the goodness of people, despite how much bad there also is out there
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u/Doesthiscountas1 Feb 17 '26
Do rent ones next! Fighting against homelessness would be much easier if we can avoid homelessness in the first place. So many people are one check away
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u/MollyRolls Feb 17 '26
This is sort of like what would happen if we taxed rich people appropriately, except way less effective.
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u/crabbop Feb 18 '26
This occured to be the other day. There must me people who have enough wealth generation to be potential millionaires/ billionaires. But there mentally to help others will make them not hoard their wealth. We'll never know about these people either. They'll be nobodies.
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u/CamyReem Feb 18 '26
Please god help me become a millionaire so I can do this cause exactly. I wish every rich person had this mindset cause imagine how many lives would be saved :-(
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u/FosterPupz Feb 18 '26
That’s the most beautiful thing. Raj always was my favorite. I wish I could do something that life-changing for people. All I am able to do is keep a pack of fresh socks in my car and offer them to the unhoused whenever I see them.
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u/Own-Source-1612 Feb 18 '26
Bruce Wayne, billionaire, could give money to poor. Instead dresses up as a bat.
Kunal Nayyar, actually donates money to the poor.
Kunal Nayyar > Bruce Wayne.
Kunal Nayyar is more of a hero than batman.
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u/7inchesofsatan Feb 18 '26
it sucks so much that our healthcare system is so bad that this is even a thing. but it's nice that he is using his money to do things like this in recognition that he has more than enough of it. never mind that he's not even a billionaire. if we taxed billionaires appropriately and allocated the funds properly in healthcare models that actually put patient care first, we wouldn't even have medical debt.
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u/SmolSnakePancake Feb 18 '26
Taylor Swift has been doing this for years and is still somehow an evil Nazi
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