Jimmy Darts didn’t set out to become an internet phenomenon. In fact, he’s built a platform by doing the opposite of what most influencers do: shifting the spotlight away from himself.
His rise wasn’t built on self-promotion, controversy or algorithmic gimmicks. It was built on a simple question: what if the internet could be used to make someone else’s life better?
“There’s a lot of amazing people in the world,” he says. “And also a lot of amazing people worldwide on the internet, because this wouldn’t be possible without them.”
Today, Darts is one of the most visible faces of viral generosity online, with hundreds of millions of views across platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. His social media clips — often capturing spontaneous acts of kindness or crowdfunded life change — aren’t just there to entertain. Darts hopes they spark chain reactions.
A single 90-second clip can result in thousands of people from around the world collectively giving tens of thousands of dollars to a stranger they’ve never met. And in nearly every video, the hero isn’t Jimmy—it’s the person who showed kindness first.
That inversion is intentional.
Darts has a unique method for uncovering those people. He’ll walk into a gas station or a laundromat and ask a stranger for a favor—a few quarters, help with a task, something small but meaningful. If they respond with kindness, he surprises them with hundreds or thousands of dollars, often crowdfunded from his followers. He then tells their story.
Sometimes it’s a single mother trying to keep the lights on. Sometimes it’s a man who didn’t get paid at work that day. Sometimes it’s someone who, unbeknownst to Darts, was on the verge of giving up.
@jimmydarts “All my inventory was stolen”
For Darts, whose real name is Jimmy Kellogg, generosity started early. At age 10, his parents gave him $200 for Christmas. Half was his to keep. The other half, they told him, had to go to a stranger.
“I ended up giving $100 to this gentleman who was just out on the street, freezing in the cold,” he recalls.
“The look on his face as a little kid hands him a $100 bill when he had just gotten probably quarters thrown at him and middle fingers that day… it was just something I’ll never forget.”
Years later, that moment became a framework. Darts didn’t just want to give. He wanted to make kindness visible.
One of his early videos featured him spending a day roller skating, eating and playing basketball with a man living on the beach in Miami. It was lighthearted, even fun—until, toward the end of the day, the man opened up. Life had been unbearably hard. He was on the edge. The experience of simply being seen, heard and treated with dignity had changed him.
Before uploading the clip, Darts added the man’s Cash App tag at the end as a kind of footnote. By the next morning, the man had received more than $20,000 from strangers.
“It was just mind-blowing,” Darts says. “I didn’t know if it was a one-off, or if people really wanted to give like that. But they just kept giving.”
Since then, the numbers have become surreal: six-figure fundraisers in 24 hours, addicts off the street and into rehab, veterans reunited with family, families receiving homes, small businesses saved.
His platform has become a kind of global engine for grace, powered not by brands or billionaires but by ordinary people responding to a stranger’s story with open hearts and open wallets.
The virality may be new, but the values are not. Darts credits his faith as the source of both vision and grounding.
“I just try to do everything with friendship with Jesus,” he says. “I know that might sound crazy to some people, but I’m like, yo, Jesus is either not real, not true… or he’s real. And if he’s real, then I want to know him, and I want to be his friend.”
That theology—relational, not performative—shapes everything Darts does online. He says he’s careful not to turn acts of generosity into content at the expense of the people he’s helping. He tries not to check comments. He avoids scrolling.
“Be a producer, not a consumer,” he says.
He knows attention is addictive. But his goal isn’t to be liked—it’s to be faithful.
“Don’t get discouraged by small beginnings and don’t define success by numbers or reach or whatever,” he says. “Success is determined by obedience to God and intention of heart, not by any external thing.”
Even as his reach has grown—and with it, the temptation to build a brand—Darts has leaned in the opposite direction. He’s gotten more bold about talking openly about faith.
“A lot of times, as people grow, you’ll see that they’re less bold on topics,” he says. “But I want to be more bold about my love for God and love for people.”
That boldness isn’t abstract. It shows up in the way he lets people interrupt his day, in the hours he spends driving around hoping to find the right person to ask for help, and in how he resists the gravitational pull of digital celebrity.
“You’re responsible for what you do, not how they respond to what you do,” he says. “If God treated us that way—waiting to see how we’d steward what He gives—none of us would stand a chance.”
But maybe his clearest message isn’t just about generosity. It’s about identity.
The people he meets on the street—many of them burdened by addiction, isolation or shame—often walk away with more than financial help. Darts says it’s about helping them see that there’s still something good inside them.
“There’s gold in every single human being,” he says. “And that gold can be covered up… by things that happen as a child, things that happen as an adult. But if we can pull the gold out, we can begin to actually become who we were born to be.”
That, for Darts, is the whole point. Not just financial help. Not just viral videos. But restored dignity.
“If you’ve got a beating heart,” he says, “you’re qualified.”
To see or hear our full conversation with Jimmy Darts, check out The RELEVANT Podcast Impact Series, available on audio and video: