In March 2026, a rumor circulated online that a man named Michael Torres collapsed on stage while taping an episode of "Family Feud" because he failed to win money to pay for his daughter's chemotherapy treatment.
For example, the caption of a March 24 video spreading the claim on Facebook read, "Single dad scored 199 instead of 200 for daughter's chemo — what Steve said made him COLLAPSE on stage."
According to the story, "Family Feud" host Steve Harvey stepped in and offered to personally pay for the daughter's medical care.
The video included supposed images of the man keeling over on stage while the show's host, Steve Harvey, rushed to help him.
The claim spread through posts on Facebook and YouTube, and Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true.
(Facebook user Mr. Jingra)
The video claimed Torres taped his episode of "Family Feud" on April 8, 2025, so Snopes used search engines including Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo to locate possible evidence from credible sources about the happenings. If the story was true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have reported on it, or records of Torres' appearance on the show would have appeared. Neither was the case.
The rumor was fictional, and we've rated this claim false accordingly.
The earliest example of the claim we found was a March 19, 2026, YouTube video on a channel called "Steve Harvey: The Untold Legacy," which had clear signs it used generative AI tools to create its content. The video's description did note that it contained "Altered or synthetic content," but that disclaimer was visible only after clicking the "more" button to show the entire description.
For instance, although the story claimed the man's name was Michael Torres, his nametag in the accompanying image was nonsensical, reading "TAHER." Many generative AI models, especially less-advanced ones, struggle to accurately replicate text. Meanwhile, the video's narrator sounded very robotic and inhuman. The story also contained contradictory details, like claiming that not all of Torres' five answers got points before listing five non-zero numbers.
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.) The story about Torres (and about Harvey's subsequent decision to fund his daughter's cancer treatment) resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as "stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental."
Snopes has debunked similar rumors before. For example, in February 2026, we traced the source of a false story spreading via the same methods about Willie Nelson helping a woman become a country singer.