By On March 15th of this year, Westword published an article detailing the anonymous moderator of a burgeoning Instagram account (@mcshelterdenver).
This Instagram account’s purpose is simple: to chronicle a birds-eye view of the 16th Street Mall McDonald’s, a “notorious” location here in Denver. The area is known for homeless vagrants, drug deals, and a regular police presence is expected. McShelter runs the account from an (assumed) office across the street. There’s always police, or something “crazy” going on there, something to look down and gawk at.
Make no mistake, this Instagram account is one of the more odious things here in Denver.
At a time when homelessness and transient-associated violence is an issue, year after year, and month after month after month – is this what we need? Is this helping make anyone feel safer?
The answer, actually, is yes.
It’s helping the drooling financially-stable slugs of 16th Street, who drive cars that never get booted, who never eat at somewhere as cheap as McDonald’s, who don’t have to work the counter of the fast-food giant and actually deal with these smelly people, but have to see them every day. God, it must be horrible. Being reminded of the pain and suffering happening in our communities, literally on our commutes, must be awful. Not as awful as say, actually having to be homeless, but you get the point. Oh, woe is the mealy-mouthed office drone!
Oh, pray for him, may he find a rock and a hard place!
It’s disgusting, the anonymous cowardice of the McShelter account. He’s anonymous (of course he’s anonymous) but all too willing to crow about his 500+ followers (now over 2,000, although the Instagram account settings for the account have since been changed to private). He says they’re like him, working “gigs in the area” and that in this tiny corner of Denver he’s constantly getting direct messages egging him on, encouraging him to daily catalog the “crazy” #McSituations that occur.
The blatant exploitation of people using a “cheap” food source is obnoxious enough, but that self-aggrandizing tone of this anonymous idiot is beyond repugnant. He’s aware that he’s playing with fire, but stops just short of actually doing anything about it. “[The McDonald’s is] … a nice place to stay warm. That’s why we call it McShelter,” he tells Westword’s
Re-read that disgusting quote. A “real business” would never want to associate with poor people, but if someone else could come along and do some real work and make Denver a safer place for its most forgotten people, well, that would be “a goal of mine.”
Being homeless is something to take a gander out, to leer and to point, to generate “content” for some runt’s online presence. This whole account is an acknowledgment of hurting, desperate people, and it turns them into a laugh, a quick snort out of the nose while you judge someone for eating somewhere cheap.
Of course it’s anonymous, it always has to be anonymous. The moderator has to wait to find someone as unpleasant as himself before he can reveal the cruel game he runs; turning the downtrodden into ever smaller morsels of self-masturbation, an exercise in judging those “less” than you.
I’ve never been homeless, but I’ve had so little money that for longer than I care to think about my meals for a day consisted of two granola bars. I’ve had to go without a car for months at a time. I’ve eaten at McDonald’s because I only had five dollars to my name. This isn’t to say I have some kind of “street” credibility or to say I represent the truly down-trodden. Far from it. I’ve been blessed. As many struggles as I have, as many days I wish I didn’t have to work two jobs (one full-time, one part-time), I can honestly say I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve had more money than I needed more often than not. My point is that this world is fragile. What we tell ourselves is secure rarely is. We’re all one horrible month away from being on the streets. People forget that. People have relatives and friends and support networks that prop them up and this is well and good, up unto the point at which we forget these networks are built on empathy and community.
Whoever is running the McShelter likely has people that would take him in, should he truly need it. These people are propping up a vacuous little tick, bleeding out the goodness of his world in whatever tiny greedy bites his mouth can take.
In the end, all I have is this:
Only a special kind of execrable coward would create “content” out of other people’s lives without owning their actions. If you’re going to be loathsome, at least sign your name.
As of publication, the @McShelterDenver Instagram account is still private. This author and publication do not condone or encourage harassment or threats to any parties mentioned.
