The man called "Mr. Cutdown" by his followers gives away money and other free perks daily on Twitter but as he's no billionaire, he cuts down on his lunches to do so.

Unlike Yusaku Maezawa, the founder of online clothing retailer Zozo Inc., who offered to give 1 million yen ($9,100) each to 100 people out of his own pocket, Cutdown is an average guy who gives stuff away to strangers as his secret pursuit.

“I give gifts every day as a hobby,” his Twitter profile states. “I'm not rich, so what I am doing is funded by what little money I save by cutting down on spending for myself.”

The gifts set him back several tens of thousands of yen per month, or half the allowance he receives from his wife taken out of his monthly salary.

Over the past two years, he's given away about 1 million yen, which he saved by spending less on his lunches and other expenses.

He said he's never told his wife and child about what he's doing.

Online “cash giveaway” programs, where wealthy individuals or companies give money to complete strangers for nothing, have created a huge buzz on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following Maezawa's January 2019 tweet, numerous similar donor accounts sprang up on Twitter. 

Once coronavirus infections began to spread, some donors began stating their goal was to help people suffering under the pandemic, prompting a surge in tweets containing the Japanese word for “cash giveaway.”

The Asahi Shimbun, to find out how many online donors there were, singled out Japanese-language Twitter accounts containing the words, “cash giveaway” and “present,” in their account name or profile. The search excluded prize competition programs by businesses and other similar cases.

More than 340 accounts were found that said they had given away cash or products, or were at least claiming they were doing so, as of Feb. 18.

Curious to discover what kinds of people were becoming cash donors, The Asahi interviewed Cutdown, a thirty-something programmer who works for a Tokyo company.

He said he gives away cafe coupons, food and other products, worth about 500 yen per item, by lot every day to his Twitter account followers and people who retweet his tweets.

Cutdown revealed that he got the idea to start giving stuff away from a tweet he stumbled across that said, “I received a request saying, ‘Please take my money, because I want to give cash to a stranger,’ and I got 5,000 yen.”

He said that finding someone who wanted to give money away to strangers actually existed both baffled and intrigued him.

In March 2019, he began doing it himself.

Many of the recipients of his gifts thank him with tweets. One total stranger thanked him for his gift, a toy, by sending him a photo of their child playing happily with it.

“I found it extremely fun to come into contact with a curiously real world that stretches on the far side of the virtual world,” he said.

Cutdown currently has about 41,000 followers, up from the 18,000 or so he had until March last year. He now receives messages asking directly for assistance, such as, “I need some extra household money,” which he never received before the pandemic.

He said he doesn't believe what he's doing is charity. Instead, he called it the “inexpensive hobby” of a man who doesn't drink or smoke.

Cutdown said he feels that he has likely given unintended birth to a circle of “paying it forward,” which is about passing on the benefits received to somebody else.

Once, he said, someone he gave a 500-yen coupon to then gifted a 100-yen coupon to somebody else. Another person who entered his lottery to win a gift sent him a cafe coupon with the message saying, “Thanks as always.”

But not everyone is thrilled with the idea of giving cash away for free. Numerous Twitter users have posted tweets criticizing the trend.

“It’s really so indecent to throw money around,” one user posted.

“I only feel embarrassed by those who are after somebody else’s cash,” wrote another.

The practice has also attracted fraudsters, with a number of individuals posing as cash donors and approaching applicants with suspicious proposals.