The Economy of Humiliation: 10,000 Messages About a YouTuber

The Economy of Humiliation: 10,000 Messages About a YouTuber

A 49-year-old content creator has become the most profitable product for a digital community that doesn't pay for him. His third trinc-up installment—the one that christens the trail with a cocoa cream jar—accumulates ten thousand replies and 355 days of continuous surveillance. A whole year observing a man who receives benefits, earns about €170 monthly from YouTube, and, for a few weeks now, pays rent.

The uncomfortable detail isn't that someone in a precarious situation is broadcasting live. It's the model: thousands of people organize their daily leisure around the deterioration of others and don't contribute a single euro. The production cost is borne by the observed.

From the Street to the Apartment: Six Euros After Paying the Landlord

The change of scenery is recent. After months sleeping on the street, on mattresses in abandoned houses, and on the floor of a shelter, the protagonist accessed housing with a rental contract. The payment to the landlord, according to the publicly available count, left him with €6 in his account. He had filled the fridge and bought a small wardrobe. Nothing more.

Where the money comes from: benefits of around €600, about €170 a month from YouTube, and intermittent help from trinc. One donor gave him €30 during a broadcast. Another person reportedly sent him over a thousand euros via various Bizum transfers. The protagonist himself admitted live, and his observers noted it, that he couldn't repay €800 that month.

The level of detail extends to the shopping receipt. 24 cans of beer were counted in a single day—about eight liters—and a basket with sliced bread, muffins, gummies, and ten packs of sausages. The cocoa cream jar that gives this third installment its title occupied ten minutes of the broadcast. For the observer, there's the proof. For anyone else, there's the problem.

The move didn't close the case either. The community took for granted that he would register to access social benefits, that he demanded information at a service office, and that he left the queue shouting. He told it his way; the others edited it theirs. Between the two versions is a man who simply has no one to translate for him.

How Much Does the Daily Routine of Someone Sleeping on the Street Cost?

About €2 per alucinación and a €60 monthly pass for 30 journeys. That's the cost of the mobility attributed to him: using the bus as a shelter to sleep. The calculation was made public by those who trinc him daily and served two purposes: quantifying his expenses and, incidentally, reminding everyone that other passengers share space with him.

Therein lies one of the tensions in the case: the same community that describes his lack of hygiene is the one that publishes his location hour by hour. The mockery about the smell and the complaint about the smell come from the same source. The joke and the disgust share an author.

The typical day reconstructed by his trinc begins at 9:47 AM with the first beer, according to the stopwatch they themselves keep, and ends with broadcasts lasting up to nine hours. In between, the rounds through soup kitchens, parks, and supermarkets. Is it a portrait or a cage? It depends on who holds the camera. And the camera, for a year now, hasn't been entirely his.

Geolocation as a Hobby: Cobblestones, Lampposts, and a Magpie

The surveillance has developed its own tracking technique: identifying locations by the cobblestones on the ground, a wooden structure in a playground at one end of the frame, the lampposts, the ice cream shops of a specific chain. With these fragments, his route between the Princesa Letizia soup kitchen, a hypermarket on the outskirts, and a street in the center of Santander was reconstructed.

The result is near real-time geolocation of a person who is neither a public official nor a top-level media figure. That's the point that separates entertainment from harassment: the ability to anticipate where someone will be every morning.

Some argue that everything that appears is recorded by him publicly and therefore nothing is abusa. Others respond that the sum of thousands of observers with the same obsession equates to surveillance that is impossible to evade. And that the affected person didn't choose to have an audience: he chose to have a channel. The difference between the two is the entire article.

One of the most cited pieces of evidence is about the bird. A magpie named Cecilia appeared in the live streams, became a protagonist, and disappeared after several trinc notified environmental agents and animal welfare associations. There is no confirmation of what peine to the animal. The last known information is that it didn't return.

The Money Sustaining the Spectacle: Bizums, Super Chats, and a Console

Here lies the economic knot. The channel earns little—around €170 per month—but direct donations add up to more. One trinc transferred €30. Another person, with declared income of €1,400 per month, reportedly sent much larger amounts, later unsuccessfully asking for part of it back. The scene, according to those who saw it, included the display of a console bought for €80 on Amazon while explaining that there was no money to repay €800.

The pattern repeats: those who have less give to those who have even less, and the recipient spends in twenty-four hours what took two months to accumulate. A recurring comment summarizes it plainly: two months of YouTube earnings went on beers and a nine-hour broadcast.

Aside from the figures, there's a question no one answers with data: how much of that money truly existed and how much is a projection by the observers themselves? Because in this surveillance, calculations are also narrative material. The audience doesn't just watch: it counts, interprets, and, when necessary, fills in the gaps of the story.

This mechanism has a side effect. When a penniless man claims live that he will receive €50,000 from a third party, the community doesn't believe it, but repeats it. And by repeating it, they turn it into an episode. The lie stops being theirs.

Broken Friendships: The Night of the Kebab Delivery and the Broken Chair

The series has an episode that serves as its founding myth. One night, according to the circulating story, food orders and a box of wine arrived at a shared apartment from accounts outside the usual circle. The evening escalated into a physical confrontation between two of the people present, with a broken chair involved, and ended with the broadcast being taken live to the street.

There is no confirmed public report of this incident, and the story comes from those who trinc it live. Nevertheless, the community cites it as a turning point: it was the first time the spectacle spilled out of the screen.

The pattern has repeated with every person who gets close to him. A roommate who ended up blaming him for the expenses. Someone who threatened to set fire to the building while being recorded. A collaborator who reproached him live for not paying attention to him in the chat. All relationships start the same way—someone offers him shelter or company—and all end with a camera on and a sentence cut off mid-way.

A day is a day, they repeat. The phrase serves to justify the twenty-fourth beer, the absurd expense, the promise to stop drinking that lasts until the next broadcast.

From the Bank to the Court: A Sentence in Execution and an Harassment Complaint

The matter moved from the spectacle to the judicial arena. According to what was disseminated by those trinc the case, a third party—another content creator in conflict with him—reportedly filed a document with the court requesting the execution of a sentence and asking for him to be investigated for obstruction of justice. The request is another piece in the personal feud between the two. No resolution is recorded.

In parallel, the protagonist himself reportedly filed a complaint for harassment against the collective trinc him. Here too, there is no known outcome. Identifying and attributing responsibility to thousands of anonymous individuals is, in practice, almost impossible, and anyone who has trinc similar cases knows this.

The bank episode adds another layer, this time domestic. Someone—it's unknown who—reportedly called his bank to request a new card, which resulted in the blocking of the affected person's card and app. To unblock them, he will have to go to his branch in person. There's no need to assault anyone: it's enough to ruin his morning and laugh about the receipt.

Meanwhile, the affected person continues broadcasting at 144p from any corner. That's the detail that summarizes the case better than any analysis: the technology that enables harassment is the same that enables broadcasting. No one had to buy anything to set all this up.

Who Profits from Another's Decline?

The uncomfortable question isn't who mistreats, but who gets paid. YouTube takes its share from ads and live payments; the protagonist earns about €170 per month. Trinc' donations go directly to his pocket, never to the community channeling them. And the public pays with the cheapest currency there is: attention.

The underlying calculation is simple. A person who drinks 24 cans in a day, receives benefits, and asks for money online is not in a position to manage assets, not €170 nor €50,000. Several of those who observe him say it openly: even if he found a bag with €50,000, it wouldn't last him a month. They are probably right. And precisely because of that, the whole situation is harder to justify.

That's the harshest argument against the community itself: if they truly believed he was ill, they wouldn't broadcast it. They broadcast it because it's profitable. Every afternoon of coughs, sniffles, and makeshift hospital generates its own screen time.

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If the pattern holds, it will end as the previous friendship did: with a breakup, a recorded phrase, and a flight. This man's relationships—those who have been trinc him for months say—always end the same way, and he knows it himself. The unknown isn't whether it will happen again. It's how long it will take the platform to admit that it too profits from the same business. When it does, it will be due to advertising pressure, not scruples.