From the seedy underbelly of the Baltimore-related blogosphere comes That Guy’s On Heroin (TGOH), a year-old Tumblr filled with reader-submitted photos and videos of people stumbling around the urban prairie of Charm City.
It’s the sort of thing that might make your average tourism or elected official cringe, but does it have a higher purpose, as its anonymous founder says it does? Or is it instead mocking people at their worst moments?
The blog’s proprietor writes on the About page: “This blog … is a real depiction of heroin addicts wandering city streets in a wacked-out, semi-conscious state.”
Each submission comes with an approximate location around the city (Patapsco and Pratt, Greenmount and Oliver, Light and Lombard), as well as a rating of the person’s outlandishness on a five-point scale and a cheeky photo description, which, well, probably isn’t accurate.
Visit That Guy’s On Heroin.
The blog’s founder, who asked to remain anonymous, started the site in March 2012. About six months after the blog’s founding came the TGOH Facebook page, which is responsible for between 10,000 and 50,000 page hits a week, said TGOH. On the actual blog site, TGOH averages roughly 1,000 unique visitors per day. We admit that some here at Technically Baltimore have become frequent visitors of late.
“I basically wanted to raise awareness to the issue,” said TGOH in an e-mail, who wouldn’t say anything more than that he “lives in a rowhouse” in the city. “And, instead of ignoring addiction, like the U.S. has for decades, possibly use this awareness to raise money to help fight addiction in Baltimore city.”
Though the founder of TGOH says he can’t yet go into detail, he has plans of doing just that: raising money through the site and donating it toward drug rehabilitation efforts.
So while some readers might be sending in photos for a few laughs — and the descriptions underneath the photos are overwhelmingly irreverent — TGOH insists that the blog isn’t some exercise in schadenfreude.
Whereas the occasional Reddit thread or Twitter discussion characterizes these kinds of photos as cruel to the person who may be experiencing a very weak moment in his or her life — and even cruel to Baltimore, which is portrayed as crawling with drug-induced zombie addicts — TGOH sees something else.
“By not showing those pictures you’re not helping those people either, and in many cases people that [messed] up have no idea how they look to the outside world and actually convince themselves they are doing OK, so you’re probably hurting them by letting it go on unopposed,” TGOH said. “I want people to be disgusted by what they see.”
I have walked out my door when I lived in Hampden and Mt Vernon to people “jack knifed” over in front of my door step a half dozen times. I have seen people nearly get killed walking across charles street with their pants hanging down. I have stood in line at ROFO behind a man who had shit his pants and was oblivious to it. Living in the city, I know these people exist. But would anyone else know the reality of drugs in Baltimore if it were not documented? If he had done classy head shots of them in front a white back ground sober would not tell the truth of what drugs do. Writing an essay for the Baltimore Sun would have no impact whatsoever. When the Wire was over, we all knew Bubbles was an actor who was pretending. This is truth. He is forcing you the viewer to deal with it.
nomatter what they think or pretend the site’s purpose is, its used to mock and gawk at human suffering, plain and simple. The site owner is condoning and encouraging it whether they like it or not.
Shaming people for their addictions has no statistical evidence behind it as a successful way to curb or deter drug use.
The site is disgusting, inhmane and potentially libelous.
So it should just be ignored? It’s a sad reality that people should be exposed to.
its a pretty absurd and pitiful that the only things you can imagine doing
are to either ignore something or to post photos of sick people on the
internet.
Or what? Telling their parents or writing an article that tells the type of people that do nothing about it? Publicly shaming people about their addiction like this can really force someone to reevaluate their lives. In addition, if the page views equal revenue, the owner of the blog is donating it to Baltimore specific addiction charities. Far more than you commenting on an article with a holier-than-thou attitude.
It seems that TGOH is poking fun at these people, rather than doing anything to help them. Do they honestly believe that the people shown on the blog are ever going to see these pictures? Some of them might not even have access to the internet. Plus, the majority of the descriptions that are added to the photos are just cruel…this does nothing to help addicts in any way. Why not start up a fund-raiser of some sort, or collect donations to put towards drug rehabilitation programs? They say that they “plan” on doing this, but when? Why is it necessary to make fun of these people that are obviously struggling with addiction…I just don’t see the point of it all, really.