From Cheeseballs to Charity
Using Internet Virality for Good.
Anyone can make a difference through charitable acts. Whether its donating old clothes or volunteering at a food drive, any bit of help can make a difference in people’s lives. But eating cheeseballs in front of hundreds of New Yorkers wasn’t what I was expecting when I thought of charity.
The Event that Started it All
On April 27, an anonymous man going by Cheeseball Man decided to eat an entire jar of 700 cheeseballs in Union Square Park in New York City. He took to the streets of Manhattan beforehand, placing one hundred flyers across the city to promote his event. The event was expected to render a small turnout, but ended up drawing in a large crowd of over a thousand. After Cheeseball Man went viral on social media with millions of views, news stations and networks praised as a New York “hero”.
In an interview with ABC, Cheeseball Man claimed he wanted to do more with his fame and planned to embark on helpful initiatives such as cleaning up the city, all while in costume. Cheeseball Man also managed to gather $1,069 in donations to the Food Bank for New York City in another event he held on June 14 where attendees paid to eat cheeseballs with him for charity. Little did the world know that this was only the start of his charitable stunts.
The Big Reveal
On August 1, Cheeseball Man took off his iconic orange ski mask to reveal his identity. The man behind the cheeseballs was none other than Anthony Potero (known online as Anthpo), a Youtuber with over 1.7 million subscribers who took a one-year hiatus from creating content and recently returned to the platform to continue growing his channel.
Potero confirmed that he chose not to promote his Cheeseball Man stunts to his fanbase until many of his fans began to speculate it was him. Despite fans ruining his big secret, the experience led Potero to create a group of like-minded “heroes” in a video titled “i got 24 superheroes to compete for $10,000”.
More Heroes Emerge
Through dozens of tryouts, Potero managed to form a group he called “The League of Legends” (not to be confused with the popular video game) who came together to compete for a $10,000 cash prize, some of which was donated to charity. Even though there were many contestants who did not make the cut, the virality of Cheeseball Man created a trend that led newer creators to make their own superheroes and hold similar events for charity.
After seeing other people like Peaman, who ate a two-kilogram bag of peas at the University of British Columbia to raise nearly three thousand dollars for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, I was convinced that anyone could put on a mask and pull off a charitable stunt to help their community. Even if you can’t get any money for donations, you can still hold an event to bring people together for a good cause.
The Challenge
A student at York University known as the Banana Man held an event last month where he ate eggs at the York Water Fountain and gave out free food to attendees, although his plans seemed to be more of an effort to go viral on campus after holding another event to give so-called “therapy” to students, which they used as an opportunity to make jokes.
This posed the roadblocks of trying to be taken seriously when it comes to running events for charity. Having a worthy cause doesn’t always mean people will take you seriously if you dress up in a costume and do some outrageous act. Despite the outliers like Banana Man, others such as Peaman and Cheeseball Man showed me that anyone can make a change in their city by holding ridiculous events like theirs.
What We Can Do
Students here at UTM can make their club fundraisers more interesting by dressing up in costumes, holding events where students can perform, or even bring something aside from money to donate. To me, it’s all about presentation and promotion. What sets a good fundraiser aside from the rest is going beyond a table and poster and giving students what they want most from university: a social life.
What brought hundreds of people together to university campuses and public parks were events with a simple idea: to watch someone in a costume do something ridiculous. As students, we don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to make a fundraiser interesting if we have the willingness to do something eye-catching. Even if we don’t become internet famous in the process, gathering attention to a good cause is what matters most to me.
