Mildly Interesting

Iirc, he was doing that up until about the moment that this photo was taken. He started soloing because he was too awkward to make friends at the crag. He gets really good at it, doing it purely out of an enjoyment of doing it - before this photo, he was living out of a van, basically jobless, no social media, just dedicated to climbing.

Then the news of his solo ascent of half dome gets out, 60 Minutes does a piece on it, and gets this photo. Turns out a lot of people are captivated by the feat. Suddenly he has offers coming in from every direction to become a pro athlete, to endorse products, to do commercials, etc. So what does he do?

He figures that if he was going to do the climb anyway, then he might as well have a camera pointed at him to get paid. This allows him to not have to work part time jobs, and climb full time. He starts really raking it in, and what does he do? He buys a slightly nicer van, then donates what he doesn't spend on his still very modest lifestyle to efforts to alleviate global poverty.

Speaking about the potential influence he could have on others, he has noted that free solo rock climbing is typically a self-limiting experience. A random 14 year old might think they want to go free soloing - but every human has a natural self-preservation instinct that will kick in after you are about a dozen feet off the ground, and said 14 year old will quickly realize that what they are doing is a terrible idea. It takes years of practice and mental exposure to get to the point where free soloing even very easy routes isn't a completely paralyzing experience - at which point, we would say that such a person has sufficient experience to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to take on. His point has been borne out - I have yet to hear about any people who have died soloing right after they watched Free Solo.