Food stamp rage bait
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What crisis is causing millions to potentially lose SNAP benefits right now?
There's been this argument that the government shutdown isn't getting as much attention as everyone thought it would because it's not affecting that many people. That's about to change. More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP or food stamps to eat. And on Saturday, due to the shutdown, those benefits are going to run out. Last night on Air Force One, President Trump was asked what's going to happen. And he said, we're going to get it done.
We're going to get it done.
Coming up on Today Explained, the conversation around food stamps and who deserves them has always been toxic in the U.S., but this new kind of viral rage bait social media video is juicing it this time around.
Get up off your behind and do what they're asking you to do. Stop waiting for a handout. Stop moving your mouth.
Start moving them hands. No more handing you a debit card filled with other people's cash for you to go load up on Oreos. Because guess what?
If you don't work, you're not going to eat.
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How are viral social media 'rage bait' videos portraying SNAP recipients?
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This is Today Explained.
My name is Chrissy Clark and I am a journalist. I have covered the social safety net and the policies and the history that have led us to the kind of social safety net that we have for many, many years. A couple months ago, I noticed on Twitter that these videos, Chrissy, kept showing up on my algorithm. I refuse to work. The whole reason I had kids... was the amount of government benefits that you get for one child.
Now they're telling me I have to go work. Now I have to go do all this. Well, I literally got five kids. Yeah, I'll take my food stamps. I'm going to take more than a little bit.
So I'm at risk of losing my food stamp benefits because I'm not putting in effort? Are you serious? It would be usually a woman, and she would be saying something very proudly, like,
So my sister made a video about how my whole entire family gets EBT. And everyone is calling us bums because we don't work and we live off the government.
And we are proud of that. Have you seen these videos in your algorithm? It's funny. We must have different algorithms because I haven't seen them. I haven't seen them personally as much, but I certainly have. I've looked at them as sort of as a phenomenon of like, what is going on with these? And I've had a lot of questions and a lot of thoughts. Tell me where your thoughts go when you see videos like this. Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing is, of course, just, you know, like we have no idea who these people are or if they actually do receive food stamps or not. I was looking at one of these videos and it's specifically a parody account that says that it's somebody who likes to do satire and skits. So my almost 18 year old has been saving for a car and he has a lot of money saved.
But then I realized that I needed my nails done and I needed to go clothes shopping and I needed gas. So I took half of his money. So I think one thing is like, do these people, are they actually authentically food stamp recipients themselves, SNAP recipients themselves?
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