Best-selling author Shea Serrano wants all the coronavirus smoke – when it comes to helping those burdened by bills that is. The writer who penned “The Rap Year Book” in 2015 took to Twitter to use his platform to assist people who COVID-19 is hitting particularly hard economically. He raised over $10,000 and inspired his followers to help cancel each other’s debts, reported the New York Times.
With a following of over 346,000, Serrano told the Times he knew he had to do something.
“I knew as soon as they started closing stuff down, we were going to do something,” Serrano said. “I’m acutely aware what it means if someone loses even one shift. If you’re making $7 an hour and you’re not going to get $56, that screws up a lot of stuff.”
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On March 13, Serrano tweeted what rapidly became a feed that restored some users’ faith in humanity.
“f*** coronavirus … who has a bill coming up that they’re not sure they’re gonna be able to pay … send me your bill and your venmo,” Serrano wrote.
It didn’t take long for his followers and others on Twitter to go from sending serrano donations to distribute to others, to sending money to total strangers who’d shared their stories.
Writer Aimee Bender helped a user identified as Adrie Rose with a bill after Rose posted she was laid off in an email.
Though Serrano was able to verify the $10,000-plus he received via Venmo and CashApp to help others, he estimated people had given more than $20,000 based on the direct donations to each other.
Despite being advised to self-isolate, Serrano believes we can still help each other amid this world-wide coronavirus pandemic. Instead of focusing on the downside of the virus, Serrano advised to focus on doing something positive.
“There’s nothing I can do about this thing besides keeping my family inside the house for the next two weeks,” Serrano said. “For those two hours we were doing it, you got to not think about the crappy part of everything for a bit and think about — there’s not going to be good coming out of it, but we can do good.”
