Tags for this video have been changed from 'heartwarming, free hugs, inspiring, love' to 'heartwarming, free hugs, inspiring, love, Sydney, Juan Mann, Sick Puppies, All The Same' - edited by my15minutes

I see you dag... reading these comments, at your computer, eating your dog chow, playing with your small globe of the earth...

You are one sick puppy...

What to hell?! You want moral people to serve in war? War in itself is not moral. This John Lofton is a sick puppy. He makes me feel disgusted that there are people so ugly inside as him who really think they're Christian and good. They never get it that they're far uglier than the so-called sinners they hate. They read the Bible (I guess)and make the practice of it horrible. They way they think, there should be no Bible for them- they've turned it into a filthy way to think. They should see themselves as other people see them. They are truly bad.

really dag??? yer a sick puppy.....Bet yer just now getting Mannix and Hawaii 5-0 in Aussieville....

Choggie, you are a sick puppy....

Would like to see him go up against a guy with a baseball bat. Picture this, the blade swings down and the guy blocks it with the bat...then the blade goes about half way into the wood of the bat and gets stuck...then the guy with the bat just rips the sword from the guys hands then goes over and just starts beating the piss out of the unarmed samurai. I mean, come on...that would be sweet.

I just love the irony of someone that trains for years and years in a martial art and then is totally nullified by some drunken redneck. But I'm a sick puppy....

Change the title of this post. It should be in top15. It's got over a million youtube views.

And now... for the rest of the story...

Sydney, AU

Serial hugger Juan Mann describes the free hugs he hands out in Pitt Street Mall as fast-food emotion.

His cuddling campaign received an international dose of publicity today, after a clip showing his public displays of affection won a coveted front page spot on the video sharing website.

An American television audience of millions also watched him at work, when the video was broadcast on the prime-time breakfast program Good Morning America yesterday.

....

Juan Mann (pronounced one man) is a play on words, but the hugger insisted his rules included no names, no phone numbers, no relationships and no dates.

The hit video came about after a meeting - and a hug - more than a year ago with the lead singer of the Sick Puppies, a Sydney band made up of three former Mosman High School students.

The singer, Shimon Moore, was working odd jobs by day and playing gigs by night.

"I was one of those guys in Pitt Street Mall with a sandwich board advertising a shoe sale," Moore told smh.com.au today.

The two became mates, and Moore borrowed his father's video camera to shoot footage of the hug man at work.

But his efforts to spread the love became a little too popular for some people's liking, according to a blurb on the YouTube video, which said: "As this symbol of human hope spread across the city, police and officials ordered the Free Hugs campaign BANNED."

Undeterred, Mann collected more than 10,000 signatures on a petition he presented to the City of Sydney council. Demands for a halt to the hugs petered out shortly after, and the end of the clip shows Mann hugging an official.

Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, where the Sick Puppies moved a year ago, the lead singer said he mixed the video with their song All The Same as a gift for his friend, to lift his spirits after his grandmother died.