On Aug. 22, 2024, a Facebook user posted (archived) a photo of actor Jim Carrey and included a purported quote, writing “Jim Carrey once said: ‘Imagine struggling with being homeless and someone comes with a camera in your face to give you a meal and you have to take it… Imagine that feeling. Please, stop doing that. If you go to help someone, do it with kindness and not your ego.'”
Within three days, the post received over 65,000 reactions, 2,200 comments and 10,000 shares.
One commenter posted, “Bible says that too.”
Another person said, “Amen. I am a case manager for the homeless. They have pride and feelings, just like everyone else. People who need to record it are questionable. The help and kindness is needed, but the exploitation is not.”
A different comment also read, “Bible says doing it for all the world to see is all the rewards you shall receive… do things for others anonymously and your great rewards will be when you get to heaven.”
In my research, I quickly found the oldest posts mentioning the words in the quote. I also concluded the following: While it’s certainly possible most famous actors would agree with this sentiment — and while most readers also might agree shoving a camera in a homeless person’s face for social media likes and credibility might not be a kind and humble practice — the truth was I found no evidence of Carrey ever saying the words in the quote.
Read on for my research or check out a previous story that sought to find out if actor Tom Hardy truly once said the words, “I was raised to treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO.”
Other Popular Posts About Carrey and the ‘Imagine Struggling with Being Homeless’ Quote
Weeks before the Facebook user’s post, on July 4, a user on the newer social media platform Threads posted the same picture of Carrey with the quote. As of this writing, the post received over 94,000 likes.
Similar to the comments under the Facebook post, users on Threads responded in agreement. For example, one user said, “This!!! People forget the homeless are human too and they have feelings too.”
Another comment with 1,700 likes came from a user who wrote, “If you take away their dignity it cancels out the meal. I’ve lived a fortunate life and I’ve helped many people. Some big help, some little. Sometimes appreciated, sometimes not. I never give anything with ANY expectation of anything. A ‘thank you’ is nice. I don’t even expect that. My only hope is that I made a difference in helping someone have a better day and they experience the opportunity to pay it forward. There’s probably a few or more. I don’t need to know. Karma knows.”
I also uncovered several other posts of the quote with Carrey’s name on Facebook. For example, a post (archived) from July 2 received over 455,000 reactions, 14,900 comments and 86,000 shares.
Posts from the Facebook pages Most Amazing Planet (archived) and Mysterious Places (archived) also received thousands of likes and shares.
The Origins of the Quote
The newspaper archives hosted on Newspapers.com provide one of the simplest methods to find some of the oldest known postings of famous quotes. However, my search of the website’s nearly 1 billion newspaper pages across more than 26,700 publications displayed no results.
Similarly, a search of Google Books also found no results.
According to my research of old Facebook and X (Twitter) posts, a Facebook user named Shawn Macon created the oldest known post (archived) featuring a similar quote on Dec. 14, 2018. That user’s post did not mention Carrey’s name and simply read, “Imagine struggling with being homeless & someone pulls up with a camera in your face to give you a meal or money & you just have to take it…. like imagine that feeling…. stop doing that… just help if you can & stop flexing your meager contribution for your own ego’s sake.” The post only received two reactions, one comment and one share.
Around three hours after Macon’s post, another Facebook user named Andres Sanabria posted (archived) the same text. However, his post received much more attention. As of nearly six years later, the post displayed over 12,000 reactions, 792 comments and 32,000 shares.
The oldest post (archived) I found on X featuring the quote also displayed the date Dec. 14, 2018, and was posted by a user hours after the Facebook posts. Again, these old posts did not feature Carrey’s name.
In my research, it appeared users first shared posts showing the quote misattributed with Carrey’s name sometime in April 2020. For example, one post (archived) which was not the earliest with the actor’s name came from a user named Joel Cole. That post received a whopping 465,000 shares.
Conclusion
In sum, I found no evidence Carrey ever said the words in the quote. Further, a similar quote existed online in numerous posts for at least one full year before anyone started sharing the words with Carrey’s name.
I will update this story if I uncover any further details about the origin of the quote.