Minjae Cho boards the streetcar like anyone else heading to work, except he's decided the commute doesn't have to feel like moving through a crowd of strangers. Armed with Meta glasses and a willingness to look awkward, he spends his rides telling people they make the world better, wishing them good weeks, shaking hands with hesitant passengers who look up from their phones.
It's the kind of thing that sounds performative until you watch it actually work. Cho, now a full-time creator with over 36,000 Instagram followers at @itsmagneticmj, documents these interactions — and the footage shows something real happening. Some people warm to it immediately. Others need a moment. The TTC drivers recognize him now and seem genuinely glad he's on board.
"What I'm doing is harmless," Cho told CTV News Toronto. "I'm just saying, 'Have a nice day.' I'm not pranking people. Most people see my effort and my courage and respond positively."
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Start Your News DetoxToronto's mayor Olivia Chow picked up on something in his work that goes beyond individual kindness. If everyone reached out to just one person per bus ride, once a week, she suggested, the city would start feeling less like a transit system and more like a neighborhood. That's not hyperbole — it's the math of accumulated small moments.
TTC CEO Mandeep Lali echoed the sentiment: "Everyone could use a little more joy in their life, including on their commute."
What Cho has stumbled onto is something researchers have been documenting for years: brief, genuine human contact shifts how we experience shared spaces. A commute that feels isolating becomes a commute where someone noticed you exist. For some people, that distinction has mattered more than it should have to.
He started doing this because he was lonely too — just another Torontonian moving through the city on autopilot. Then he decided to push himself toward connection instead of away from it. The videos show the full spectrum of response, the hesitation and the warmth, and somehow that's more convincing than if everyone immediately loved it.
The ripple effect is already visible. People are talking about it. Transit riders are noticing kindness differently. And Cho keeps boarding the same buses, still doing the same harmless thing: reminding people they matter.
