Random Acts of Kindness

A random act of kindness is a nonpremeditated, inconsistent action designed to offer kindness towards the outside world.

The phrase "practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" was written by Anne Herbert on a placemat in Sausalito, California in 1982. It was based on the phrase "random acts of violence and senseless acts of cruelty". Herbert's book Random Acts of Kindness was published in February 1993 speaking about true stories of acts of kindness.

There have been several documented cases when random acts of kindness failed to produce good outcomes and have even worsened the situation. For example, in the case of the 2014–15 floods in Southeast Asia and South Asia in Malaysia, random acts of donations were not reaching their intended targets, rather being strewn about and becoming streetside rubbish that further complicated planning, cleanup, and relief efforts. Additionally, people claiming to help others randomly took selfies on social media, sparking a disaster tourism frenzy of "I was there helping", whereby actual relief vehicles were delayed by the excessively clogged traffic. Additionally there was some theft of relief supplies by pilferers pretending to be among the helping.

An explanation for such negative results is that those acts were random rather than coordinated with people who are experts in the task with a bigger picture understanding of needs, resulting in unintended consequences.

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