Every great MDMotivator video starts with the same low-tech ingredient: a piece of cardboard, a marker, and a sentence. The signs are the franchise. They're how Zachery Dereniowski opens a conversation with a stranger without saying a word. They're also some of the most viewed messages on the modern internet.

If you've watched MDMotivator long enough, you can probably picture half a dozen of these signs without thinking. Here are the most iconic ones, the views they pulled, and the stories behind each.

"If you have anxiety or depression, hug me"

This is the sign that changed Zachery's life. It's effectively his founding document.

The format is simple to the point of being almost confrontational. Zachery stands in a public place, often blindfolded, holding a cardboard sign reading some version of the line above. There's no music in the early versions. There's no voiceover. There's just him, the sign, and whoever in the crowd decides to walk up.

The first time he ran the experiment, the result was overwhelming. According to multiple profiles of his early career, the original blindfolded "anxiety or depression" video crossed roughly 26 million views, helped push his Instagram following past 1.3 million, and effectively established the entire MDMotivator format. People hugged him. People cried with him. Strangers told him their stories. Other strangers stopped just to make sure he was okay.

Why it works: it removes every social barrier to a hug. The blindfold tells you he can't see you, can't judge you, can't recognize you later. The sign tells you exactly what kind of person you are if you walk up. There's no risk and no performance. You're just deciding whether someone hurting deserves a moment of human contact.

That's the whole thesis of MDMotivator on a piece of cardboard.

"Who do you wish you were with right now?"

This one is gentler, more open-ended, and hits a different emotional register. Instead of inviting people to act, it invites them to reflect.

A 2022 Digital Phablet profile noted that this sign-based video had crossed roughly 8.9 million views by that point. The setup is straightforward: Zachery stands somewhere public with the sign, and whoever stops gets to answer. The answers are almost always devastating in a quiet way. Lost parents. Estranged children. A first love nobody else knows about. Friends who died young.

The video works because it gives people permission to say a name out loud that they've been carrying privately. Most adults are walking around with someone they wish they could see one more time. They just don't get asked. The sign asks.

"If you feel heartbroken or empty, hug me"

A close cousin of the original anxiety/depression sign, often confused with it because the visual setup is nearly identical. The Digital Phablet profile cited above attributed roughly 26.2 million views to a heartbroken/empty version of the experiment.

The slight difference in wording matters. Anxiety or depression speaks to people with a specific mental health frame for what they're feeling. Heartbroken or empty opens the door wider — anyone who's been through a breakup, a loss, a quiet bad year, or just a season of feeling unseen can take that sign personally. It's the same hug, but the invitation reaches further.

"Your vaccine status won't change how much I love you"

This is the most contextually loaded sign in the MDMotivator catalog, and it deserves a careful note.

In 2021, deep into the pandemic, Zachery posted a video featuring this sign and explained in a follow-up interview that the message was meant to be about love and kindness rather than vaccination policy. He's stated publicly that he is fully vaccinated and that the sign was specifically designed to step around political division — not to wade into it.

The message landed in different ways depending on the viewer, and Zachery acknowledged in a 2022 Digital Phablet interview that he tried to stay away from polarizing framing whenever possible. The takeaway from that piece: the sign was a love letter, not a position statement. Whether it succeeded in reading that way depended on the room.

This sign is worth knowing about because fans sometimes ask about it specifically, and because it reflects how MDMotivator's signs have to navigate cultural moments without becoming about the moment itself.

The "Can I have a dollar?" Setup

Not every iconic MDMotivator format involves a sign. The single most reproduced setup in the channel's history is the help-request format, which has produced some of the biggest viral campaigns of the past two years.

The mechanic: Zachery approaches a stranger — often someone who looks like they don't have much themselves — and asks to borrow a small amount of money or a small item. A dollar. Two dollars. A soother for a crying baby. A cigarette. Whoever helps him gets rewarded with something far larger than they could have anticipated.

The setup has produced campaigns including:

The setup is a kind of test in plain sight. It assumes nothing about the stranger. It just asks: would you help if you didn't know who you were helping? When the answer is yes, the video begins.

The Mystery Basketball

A more recent variant: instead of asking for help, Zachery offers a choice. A stranger is presented with two options — usually $1,000 in obvious cash and a wrapped or unmarked mystery item — and gets to pick.

The most famous version of this format played out in Detroit in July 2025 with a 51-year-old Army veteran named Chantwan, just six days out of prison after a 21-year sentence. Offered the choice between $1,000 and a mystery basketball, Chantwan picked the basketball. According to coverage from PRIMETIMER and GreaterGood, the choice unlocked a moment that ended with Chantwan receiving the basketball, the cash anyway, courtside tickets to a BIG3 game, an introduction to Ice Cube, and a Slingshot fundraiser that crossed $124,000 in donations within days.

The mechanic of the choice format works because it gives the subject a small amount of agency before the surprise lands. They picked. The video earns its reveal because the person earned the moment.

The Public-Place Vigil

The newest evolution of the sign format isn't really a sign at all — it's a setup. Zachery sits in a public place, alone, often blindfolded or appearing injured or disheveled, and simply waits to see who stops.

Recent examples include the Elvin birthday cake setup outside an Austin grocery store, and the Detroit pawn shop video on 8 Mile in the pouring rain that introduced Denise. The "sign," in these cases, is Zachery himself. The question being asked silently is: am I worth stopping for?

When somebody stops, the video begins.

The Common Thread

Across every variation — the literal cardboard signs, the help requests, the choice format, the silent public vigil — the underlying structure of an MDMotivator video is the same. A stranger is given a small opportunity to be kind, with no expectation of reward, no awareness of cameras, and no obvious reason to bother. Whether they take that opportunity becomes the story.

That's why the signs work. The cardboard is the prop. The actual question is always the same one: would you stop?

Coming Up Next

Once a stranger says yes, the rest of the magic — the life-changing surprise — usually happens through a single platform: Slingshot. Our next article goes deep on the crowdfunding engine that turns a 30-second video into a six-figure life change.

Sources

This article is part of an independent fan site dedicated to documenting the work, life, and impact of Zachery Dereniowski (MDMotivator). We are not affiliated with Zachery, his team, Kindness Is Cool, the Mental Health Movement, the KindnessWithZachery Foundation, or any of his sponsors. All content is researched and written by fans, sourced from public material, and intended as celebratory and informational. To follow Zachery directly, visit @mdmotivator on TikTok or Instagram.