EXPLOITED social media personality Rupert Allen has expressed thanks to all those who assisted him financially over the Christmas holidays, after the Jamaica Observer published an article entitled ‘Rough Christmas for Rupert’ highlighting his plight.

Although the donations are far from the amount need to restore Allen’s life to one of decency for the poor comedian, he was full of praise for those who stepped forward with a helping hand.

Among the people who ensured Allen received, at least a proper meal on Christmas Day, were YouTubers Claude “Big Stone” Sinclair and Osbourne “Peanut Dread” Lewis, who both travelled to Kinloss in Trelawny from Kingston to extend their love.

Big Stone donated $20,000 to Allen, while Peanut Dread gave him $6,000. At the same time, realhelpinghands.com managed to raise more than US$200 in crowd funding since last week through donors in Jamaica and overseas.

“The Christmas was nice. Mi drink a cup a tea and then mi eat rice and peas and chicken,” an excited Allen told the Observer on Tuesday.

Careen Codlyn, who is Allen’s caretaker, said it was very pleasing to watch Allen enjoy “rice and peas, chicken and curried goat”.

According to Big Stone, he was moved by the Observer article which highlighted Allen’s predicament. Big Stone expressed a desire to see something engraved in law to prohibit people from taking advantage of the less fortunate on social media.

“When I saw the article, I did not know that he was in dire need. He lives with his mother and brother in a very small room and it really hurt my heart. As a philanthropist and humanitarian, I thought that if I intervened it would make his crowd funding more attractive and people would contribute more, knowing that I left from so far in Kingston to Kinloss, Trelawny, to give him my contribution of $20,000 to make a difference.”

“I notice a trend where vloggers are using disabled people, people of unsound mind, people who cannot even make a correct decision and they use these people for monetary gain. They think they are helping them but they are not. It is all ridicule and done for laughter. I think that practice should be outlawed and stopped. We cannot afford to use our less fortunate for our personal gain and amusement,” he said.

Chief operations officer of realhelpinghands.com Oliver Toth said that although funds were trickling into the account, he won’t stop until Allen gets the type of help that he needs.

“We were at US$215 when I checked it on Monday. He got 4,000 likes on the Observer‘s Instagram page but only seven donors. That is a big disconnected but I understand. We have to basically update his campaign everyday. People who proactively update their campaign see the updates trigger the algorithms and the updates are what donors like to see. When you do updates, it increases donations by 150 per cent. Even though it over US$200, it is his money. I think it is great and we need to keep it going.”