In this episode, Mark discusses the change in perspective Soft White Underbelly has given him, as well as his personal experience with the help and hurt of social media.
JL: How has this project done the reverse? How has it informed your projects when you do go into the editorial and commercial world? Has it?
ML: “No, I don’t think it’s affected my advertising work. I mean, I’ll go back to your previous question [about how it’s affected me personally] that I didn’t really answer is I think it’s changed my…it’s almost like a crash course in empathy.
You know, you kind of end up…no matter what somebody is going through, whatever their personality flaw is, whatever their behavior that’s irritating, or whatever. There’s something that caused that. Whether it’s brain chemistry, whether it’s their childhood, whether it’s their overbearing parent, whether it was their victim mentality that kind of set them on this path for just getting beaten up over and over again. There are so many things that are factors. And people like to say, ‘Well, you know just stop doing drugs.’ Drugs are not the problem for these people. Drugs are just a symptom of the problem. The problem is a mental issue. There’s something wrong going on mentally with all these people. Like Skid Row is [seen that way]. People [think] oh, there’s a bunch of drug addicts down there. Well, yeah, that’s like saying it’s a bunch of Caucasians or African-Americans. There’s something wrong with these people deeper than drugs. It’s a mental condition that can be schizophrenia, it could be bipolar, it can be all kinds of different things. But it’s so complicated that you can’t even possibly start treating it and make them all better. I don’t believe the solution [is that].
I mean, I want to help these people, and I’ve helped them, out of my own pocket, and I’ve spent lots of money doing that. I get a hard time all the time because I don’t really ever address what I might do for these people. I just want to make it a cold interview. It’s not about I’m going to help Janet get clean and get her life together. That’s not what this channel is about. The channel is about: let’s hear Janet’s story. Period. What I do for Janet separately is my business. But it ends up looking cold, and it looks like I’m being mean and just, like, exploiting them and kicking them out of my studio. When in fact, I’ve helped Janet and all these other people many, many, many times. Over and over again. They’ll come by and [say] ‘Man, I just need my cell phone. I gotta call my parole officer tomorrow, and I need a tent, and it’s freezing cold.’ So I help them out. I do that kind of stuff all the time. But that’s not what my channel is about.
And I get a lot of flack in the comments. They’re like, ‘How come you don’t help these people? You’re just exploiting them.’ I’m like, you have no idea. And I don’t want to make it about defending myself, so I just let it go. Eventually I stop reading the comments, and eventually what’ll happen is I’ll turn off the comments on YouTube, because it’s out of control. Like the girl, Kelly, that I did the GoFundMe campaign for? She’s this young prostitute from South Central. And her story is really compelling and got a lot of response. And I did a GoFundMe for her to help her. I met her on Christmas eve and I put up the video the next day. I edited that night, I put it up the next day, which I wasn’t even going to put a video up because my stuff is so dark. It’s like, I can’t put this up on Christmas! I just couldn’t! I couldn’t imagine putting up a video on Christmas, so I was gonna just not do one. And then I met her on Christmas eve and her story was so, just heartbreaking. I mean, she just seemed so great. I [thought], yeah this would actually work! So I [posted it].
And it got a lot of response. But then a week later she comes to me and says, this is so humiliating. Everyone is giving me a hard time for this. Because I don’t use the term ‘sex worker,’ because ‘sex worker’ could be everything from stripper to masseuse to sexual surrogate to cam model to… it could be a prostitute, it could be anything. It’s so vague.”
JL: You want the specificity-
ML: “Well, I just think, you know, if I say ‘sex worker’ it’s like you don’t really know what you’re watching. She’s a prostitute. I could say call girl but these girls aren’t call girls. They’re walking the streets and doing their thing.
So there she is, on YouTube saying that she’s a prostitute and she was very uncomfortable with that. So she asked me to take it down, and I’m looking to help her, so I took it down. But we stayed in touch, and I was helping her with some bills, and I saw that she got full-time job that paid very, very little. She could make more in two hours on the street than she was making in a whole day at this job, but I saw that she was doing this. She was making the right moves. And I saw that her story was true. Somebody tortured, tied her up in a chair and put a drill gun to her side of her head on both sides. She has the scars from that. Who has scars like that?”
JL: Yeah.
ML: “Yeah. Right in front of her ear. It’s terrible. So what I’m getting at is I did a GoFundMe for her. In two days it generated 30,000 dollars.”
JL: Wow.
ML: “Yeah. Like, (snapping) like that. So, I stopped it. She actually asked me to stop it at $20,000, and I just like, I was busy. I didn’t…”
JL: I’ve got stuff to do.
ML: Next day it was $29,800 and I’m like, alright I’m stopping it. Because I don’t want to wake up tomorrow, it’s- for one thing this girl shouldn’t be having 47,000 dollars. That’ll just end up making her lazy and unmotivated. So the money that she’s generated will be helpful. So until the word of that GoFundMe, that successful GoFundMe campaign came out, the comments [on YouTube] were nothing but compassionate and positive. Really beautiful. The second the word got out that she was receiving this nice [payout] it became like, ‘Oh, her story’s fake. She’s making this up. I have pictures of her and her mom. I went to high school with this girl.’
So they created all this false stuff on social media. And she was supposed to be in Miami this week. There’s a thing on social media saying she’s in Miami with her boyfriend this week. She got fired from her job yesterday because of all the social media circus. They said that was why. Because she became like a celebrity. You know, she got 3 million views…3 million, when I put the video back up and tied the GoFundMe to it. And she became like a celebrity. But not in a good way. Kind of in a tarnished way.
And she’s working now to try and support all the claims in her story. Trying to get the adoption papers from DCFS, I think it is. And the record of the still birth that she said she had when she had sex with a Mexican guy without a condom (her pimp). Set her up for that. She got pregnant, ended up having the baby, but the baby died at birth. So she’s trying to find all these records and dig all this stuff up. And it’s horrible. Now she’s lost her job on top of it. It’s like, this is what social media can do.
So for this reason I’m thinking about and I probably will just turn off the comments on YouTube. This morning, I spent an hour looking for GoFundMe campaigns that are fake.”
JL: That are attached to your videos?
ML: Oh yeah. They use my name. They maybe don’t spell my name right, but it looks like me. And they’re using my photos. And so it looks like I’ve created this GoFundMe campaign for Jerry, or for David, or for whoever generates a lot of sympathy. And somebody’s benefitting from this, but it isn’t the recipient [they think it is].”
JL: That’s terrible!
ML: “They don’t even have a way to contact [the video subjects to even provide assistance]. Like Jerry, the guy, he was shot in the face. They removed the whole right side of his face [is gone] and part of his brain. And he’s the nicest dude you would ever meet! And I interviewed him again just recently…(Mark gets overwhelmed). It’s emotional. I said, ‘You know I have the ability to do like a GoFundMe campaign for you that could benefit you.’ And he does have a condo, an apartment now? So he’s kind of set, he’s happy.
When you listen to the second interview I did, which is a much longer one, and I’ll probably put that up in the next week. I ask him: ‘What would you like?’ (Mark pauses) Ooph…I can’t even get it. To the answer. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want any help. What he said is: ‘I just want the world to be a happy place.’
So what do you do with that? You give him a bunch of money? He doesn’t want it. And then potentially, because of what happened with Kelly, then there could be all kinds of defaming campaigns with him as well. I’m afraid to do a GoFundMe campaign with these people now because of what happened with her. So it’s a mess, and social media is a circus, and I need to get away from it. So what I’m doing is I’m starting; I’m building it right now, and I’ll probably have it up next week, is a Patreon version of my channel, which will be much more exclusive. The audience, because they’re paying 10 dollars a month, will probably be much more sophisticated, a little more evolved and compassionate. Without all the crazy negativity and hate and the chaos that goes with a platform like YouTube.”
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Mark Laita is repped by Heather Elder Represents.
