Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been making headlines lately after giving $690,000 (1 million in Australian dollars) to help Australia recover after devastating bushfires burned 26.4 million acres—and counting.
But, now let me pose you a query, dear reader: What if he’d whipped his dick out?
I sincerely apologize for conjuring that mental image, but I swear it’s relevant. Because a pivotal bit of context all those articles fail to reference is how a single sex worker outmatched the richest man in the world in donations by selling her nudes online.
Instagram model Kaylen Ward has raised an estimated $1 million after encouraging people to donate at least $10 to Australian bushfire relief fundraisers in exchange for nude photos of her. The NSFW charitable endeavor went viral instantly, inspiring a surge of donations and inciting several other sex workers to join the cause with similar fundraising campaigns. One sex toy shop even started selling an Australia-themed dildo to help chip in, appropriately named the Down-Under Donation Dildo.
Though, unfortunately, all that good faith effort hasn’t been without its costs:
“My [Instagram] got deactivated, my family disowned me, and the guy I like won’t talk to me all because of that tweet. But fuck it, save the koalas,” Ward tweeted last week.
The money raised by them and scores of others around the world will go towards helping Australian communities recoup after weeks of raging bushfires have killed 27 people and ravaged more than 2,000 homes. An estimated 1.25 billion animals are believed to have perished in the fire, including nearly one-third of the koala population in New South Wales.
And while honest, working-class folks are out there grinding hard and putting their butts on the line, some literally as well as figuratively, what does a certain Amazon CEO, the world’s top billionaire, Mr. Net-Worth-of-$116 billion do to snag a moment in the media spotlight?
Graciously donates the equivalent of what he makes in less than five minutes, per estimates by Business Insider. Now imagine, if a few sex workers can raise over a million in donations that quickly, how much fundraising potential do Sir Amazon’s nudes have?