BUCK: Whenever possible I feel like we should tell everybody uplifting, happy stories whenever we can —
CLAY: Positive stories. Yes.
BUCK: — and I really like this one. This is from Las Vegas, Nevada, and there was a Burger King worker who, after 27 years of service without ever missing a day —
CLAY: Thirty, wasn’t it?
BUCK: His name was Kevin Ford.
CLAY: I thought it was 30 years of service. Is it 27?
BUCK: What? It was 27 years of service.
CLAY: Almost 30.
BUCK: So he finished up and this is rough. Burger King, as his going away present after 27 years of service — or maybe this individual Burger King franchise, whatever — gave him a single movie ticket, a bag of Reese’s Pieces, and a Starbucks cup in a bag.
CLAY: Oh my.
BUCK: And people felt like, this guy showed up, provided for people, did his job 27 years. So, they started a GoFundMe. I think they were trying to raise, like, a couple thousand dollars to get him a nice gift. As of this morning, it is still going. The GoFundMe campaign for this now-retired Burger King worker, Kevin Ford, is over $320,000.
CLAY: That is one of the examples — there are lots — of why social media can be awful. Stories like these where people recognize that someone has been unfairly treated and respond in this way is pretty fantastic. Certainly, this happens a lot where these GoFundMes are someone’s house burns down or someone has a parent that unexpectedly is killed, and the ability of these to go viral? That is a fantastic story, and I think we need to spend more time talking about the innate goodness of the American people that I think in a social media age often gets ignored.