For the third time in the past three months, a popular celebrity is tugging on Reddit’s altruistic heartstrings to raise money for a good cause.
Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor best known as Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World,” is performing a Q&A on Reddit to collect money for Clear Path International and Mines Advisory Group, two organizations dedicated to helping Vietnamese injured by explosives.
Since launching the AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) at 10:30am ET, Goldsmith has raised more than $3,000 after his post reached the top of Reddit’s front page.
“Although the [Vietnam] war has been over 40 years, every day, people in this beautiful country suffer terrible injuries and many die and will for years to come,” Goldsmith said. “Hard to believe that more bombs fell on Vietnam than dropped by the allies in the whole of WWI and WWII combined. To see the pathetic human toll and not do something about it is something I can’t do.”
To help encourage people to donate, Goldsmith agreed to read the top-voted comment in the thread out loud in a video if enough money is raised. Samuel L. Jackson did the same thing in May to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association. Jackson’s AMA was a huge hit, collecting 14,955 comments from redditors eager to have the Pulp Fiction star read their 300-word monologue. One of the most popular monologue requests, thanks to the pranksters at 4chan’s random imageboard /b/, was the Navy Seal copypasta, an obscenity-filled screed that perpetuates the Internet tough guy stereotype.
A week ago, actress Kristen Bell joined Reddit to play a game of Would You Rather to raise money for Invisible Children, an organization working to bringing Africa’s Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony, to justice for human rights abuses.
So far Goldsmith has answered questions like who he thinks is the second-most interesting man in the world and when was the moment he realized that his Dos Equis commercial was something special. Goldsmith also provided some background on how he landed his iconic role in the first place.
Photo via visiblebleu
