Just a good deed – NRC

“I hope this made her day better,” Australian @lifeofharrison captioned his TikTok videowith a heart and #wholesome. In the nineteen-second video, he asks a woman, sitting alone at a table in a shopping center, drinking a cup of coffee, if she can hold a bunch of flowers while he puts on his coat. Which can.

But then he wishes her a nice day and walks away, without flowers. She tries to call him back, but he doesn’t look back. The woman sighs.

“This is sooo cute,” one viewer wrote in a comment. Another: “Her look also at the end I can really look at this for hours.” And: “You can just see that she needed it.”

These kind of videos, with some makers happily a random act of kindness name, are in great demand on social media. So good deeds are passionately conceived, performed and recorded, because that is good for your karma – and the likes. But the videos do not always tell you what the involuntary recipient thinks.

Maree, the woman in Harrison’s video, was not asked for permission to make or post the video, she later told ABC Radio Melbourne. She first saw the video when an acquaintance sent her a link. At first she didn’t think much of it, but that will pass, she thought. It has since been viewed 65 million times and liked 12 million.

She was full when she saw an article describing herself as an “old woman” with a “heartbreaking story.”

But these contrived actions are not ‘random acts of kindness’, she said on the radio, because it is not about the receiver. “I feel like a click bait.” And it is a condescending assumption that women, especially older women, are happy with flowers from a stranger.

Harrison Pawluk’s team then informed ABC that filming in a public space and publishing it does not require permission. And besides, he just wants to spread love, right? So far, he has only harvested gratitude, his manager said in a statement to ABC. But if he did upset someone with his videos, they can of course send him a personal email.

Meanwhile, Pawluk has uploaded two more videos in which he spreads his love and leaves a bunch of flowers with a woman. One of them leaves the flowers and leaves, but that doesn’t bother Pawluk much. He did a good deed and TikTok saw it.