RYAN FITZGERALD IS THE BEST! WINS THE FIRST EVER YOUAND AWARD! $100

Just spoke with Ryan. He's not only legit, but coming from a very good place.

"Youand: the art of mutual understanding" is awarding Ryan Fitzgerald the first ever Youand Award, in recognition of Ryan's outstanding example to the world for the great value of listening to our fellow human beings. Mutual Understanding for its own sake. Congratulations Ryan! For leading the way into the final frontier!


On YouTube, one cell of a generous offer

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | April 23, 2007
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ryan Fitzgerald , an unemployed 20-year-old who lives with his father in Southbridge , considers himself a guy who's easy to talk to.

Late Friday night, he made that a whole lot easier.

Seized with a desire to "be there" for -- well, everyone -- he posted a video with his cellphone number on YouTube, urging anybody anywhere who wanted to talk for any reason to give him a call.

"Girls, guys, whoever you are wherever you're from talk about whatever," the spiky-haired young man told the world, looking earnestly into the camera.

By yesterday afternoon, he had gotten more than 5,000 phone calls and text messages from around the world. This morning at 5 a.m., the free "weekend" minutes on his T-Mobile service were scheduled to run out.

"I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do about it," he said. "But something needs to be done, because I'm going to end up with a $20,000 phone bill."

Fitzgerald said he was inspired to act by a video of Juan Mann , whose "Free Hugs" campaign became world famous after video clips of Mann hugging strangers appeared on YouTube. Fitzgerald said he wanted to try a twist on the theme of random human connection.

"Some people's own mothers won't take the time to sit down and talk with them and have a conversation," he said. "But some stranger on YouTube will. After six seconds, you're not a stranger anymore, you're a new kid I just met."

Fitzgerald wasn't the first to broadcast his phone number to hundreds of millions of people. Luke Johnson , an Arizona man with shaggy blond hair, posted his number on YouTube in September, just to see how many calls he would get. (The answer: more than 138,400 and counting, according to Johnson's latest voicemail recording.)

But Fitzgerald says his mission is different from Johnson's -- it is about genuine human interaction, he says, not sheer volume.

Unfortunately, however, Fitzgerald later discovered that his phone company -- unlike Johnson's, which offers unlimited free minutes -- offers no such plan. He said he could not find a plan anywhere larger than 6,000 minutes, which he said he would easily exceed.

But Fitzgerald does get unlimited weekend minutes. Afire with excitement over his new project, he said, he stayed up all night Saturday talking to people -- from Maine and from Utah, Germany and Mexico, from Alaska and Denmark. About 70 percent of the callers, he said, wanted to shoot the breeze for a few minutes about their plans for the day, and to inquire about his.

Others preferred to wade into deeper conversational waters -- about 9/11 conspiracy theories, for example, or about how hard it can be to be gay.

A man in Sweden called to thank him for "trying to make a difference."

And a bunch of teenage girls who said they were from London asked him his favorite color (blue) and his favorite food (lasagna) before finishing the call with a big collective kiss -- "Mmwwah!"

A few callers seemed creepy, or even downright scary, such as the man from Maine who threatened to become violent if Fitzgerald would not meet with him.

Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said Fitzgerald's experiment is extremely risky.

"An individual like this young man may feel safe and not understand that he's being manipulated by some sociopath who will fabricate his characteristics in order to have a personal encounter," he said. "At this point, this young man is in danger."

Levin added, "There's a good chance he'll be fine, aside from the money he's going to lose. But the question is, why take a risk like that when there are so many other ways that are far less dangerous to be altruistic, to be generous, to be helpful to other people."

On YouTube, Fitzgerald's video drew a melange of e-mail responses. "Cell phones don't take collect calls, so the only one getting charged is you. NOW WHO IS . . . STUPID?" wrote one viewer. "Why don't you answer then?" Deathwisher666 wanted to know.

Jackawful said: "This is how desperate guys can get." Wrote foxybrown555: "I think it is so kind that you are trying to help people by listening."

Fitzgerald's father, a clinical psychologist, is not at all pleased with his son's experiment, said Fitzgerald. He said his dad would not be interviewed for this story.

"My dad is a doubter," Fitzgerald said.

Not so for Fitzgerald's identical twin, Sean, who said the exposure could help him and his brother move ahead in their plans to become actors and models. (They have their first job next week, they said: a marketing gig in Maine for something involving guitars.) Still, Sean admitted, he was surprised at the response.

"Who wants to talk to a complete stranger?" he asked .

A lot of people do, apparently. Ryan Fitzgerald has had so many text messages he can't respond to them. Saturday afternoon, he turned the phone to "vibrate" so he could go to a concert by the band Hawthorne Heights, but he said he tries to call back many of those who leave him voice messages. He pledges to keep it up for as long as he can, despite the expense.

"Come Monday, no way I'm going to just hang up on people and say, 'I don't have the minutes,' " he said.

He has also gotten calls from reporters. He did an interview with radio station WAAF-FM, and he has had inquiries from a smattering of television stations as well, he said.

All of this has kept life unusually busy for Fitzgerald, who acknowledges his school-free, job-free, obligation-free lifestyle is perhaps unusual for someone of his age. His normal activities, he said, include bowling, writing computer viruses (just for sport, he said, not to actually send), researching this and that on the Internet, and hanging out with friends.

He said his father buys him a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and makes him a roast beef sandwich for lunch every day.

"I never get sick of it," he said.

Fitzgerald graduated from high school nearly two years ago. He says he has not continued his education because he can't afford the itinital fees, but he hopes to begin community college this summer. He said he used to think he would study computers, but his YouTube experiment has made him think he might excel in a people-oriented field, such as human resources or psychology.

"I love talking to people," he said. "I just love helping people."

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"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut