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Internet Charity and the Road to Hell
Jan. 23rd, 2014 03:45 pmGood intentions, am I right?
I have a lot of trouble with one aspect of the current incarnation of the Internet, and that's the tsunami of charitable causes that tends to come crashing to shore every day. I do mean every day. Every day that I'm on the internet I come across dozens of requests for support and money for every cause under the sun, from orphans to wetlands to cancer patients to people with illnesses I've never even heard of and can't even pronounce. These are often accompanied by requests to reblog/retweet/repost in order to spread the word and raise more support.
Here's the thing. I am unlikely to EVER click on one of those Paypal buttons, or even to repost things.
The first reason is that I respond VERY badly to guilt-trips. Having Facebook posts exhorting me to put something up for "just one hour" makes me want to hit things. "You can't spare one hour for the orphans/cancer/dying puppies?!? YOU MONSTER!" Because not posting shit like that on my timeline TOTALLY means I love cancer and want people to die, routinely kick puppies and think people with autism should be locked away (or insert whatever cause of the day you'd like). Sure.
Another good way to make me hit the back button? Exhort me to "give up [my] morning lattes" for a week/month/whatever. Those $3 can go a long way! You know what? I DON'T FUCKING BUY A LATTE EVERY MORNING. Yes, I have a job. Yes, it pays me very, very well for what I do. You know what else? I have a house to pay for, a family to support, and a job in a different city that requires me to have lodgings there (that I also pay for) and for which I buy gas for my car. The only reason we have a second car is because we got help for it. We are extremely careful with our money, because what we have has to go a long way every month, with very little room for slip-ups.
Yes, I also realise that the lattes are a metaphor, and I could easily replace that with "Give up the books/DVDs you occasionally buy/whatever." The idea is that other people are worse off than me, and societal morality dictates that I owe it to them to give up whatever small luxuries I have in the name of charity.
You know what? It's still really fucking patronising, and I hate it. It assumes that it never occurred to me to do that. "Oh," I am supposed to think. "I could simply give up my morning triple-shot mocha frappuccino with whipped cream, and give that money to support this orphaned, homeless kitten that needs a new kidney! WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THIS BEFORE?"
*eyeroll*
Relatedly, a lot of people who work are barely scraping by. They are crippled by debt, or working minimum wage as the sole income for their family, or (and I am lucky not to be among them), or have other completely legitimate reasons for not giving money to Random Cause X. Or maybe they just don't want to, which is also a perfectly legitimate reason, thank you very much.
So, in conclusion: guilting me and talking down to me are a surefire way to make me not want to have anything to do with the cause you're promoting.
Here's another reason I won't click on your donate button: I am an old-fashioned girl, and I prefer my charitable causes accountable for their donations.
Let's make up a fake example. SickGuy McGee needs $5,000 for his surgery, according to his website. How do I know that McGee exists? Or that he's actually ill? Well, his friends all vouch for him, so it must be fine! Okay, let's pretend he's a legit person, and actually needs the surgery. People flock to his website, and now SickGuy McGee has received an incredibly generous $7,893 for himself. That's $2,893 more than he asked for. An organised charity has systems in place to funnel extra funds, but a private person doesn't. So what's the protocol, here? Does SickGuy McGee get to redistribute those funds as he sees fit, when people donated in good faith specifically for his surgery? The money is his, technically, so he can buy himself a new flatscreen TV just as easily as he can donate the "excess" to another organisation of his choice. What if some of the donors don't agree with his choice of charity for their donation? What if SickGuy McGee decided to donate to an explicitly religious organisation whose values don't align with theirs?
It's a sticky mess, is what it is. It's SO easy to lie on the internet, so easy to take advantage of good, honest people to part them from their money in the name of a "good cause."
Sometimes, the "good causes" are nothing but scams. Lord knows, I heard enough of these stories when I was working my previous job for the RCMP in Montreal. Good people who got conned into sending money to people who lied in order to make a quick buck. I heard the same stories, over and over again, every day. One can argue that those people were stupid or gullible, and sometimes they were succumbing to their own greed (scams often prey on people who are already vulnerable), but overall? The internet is rife with people trying to take advantage of others.
Sometimes, the "good causes" are worse than that. One man posted a picture last year of his "missing" wife and daughter, wringing his hands about how worried he was since they'd disappeared, and why, oh why would the police not help him? It was terrible! So the internet dutifully reposted the picture and spread the word for him and lo, they were found! The problem? They weren't missing. They had run away and changed their names because he was an abusive bastard, and he tracked them down and killed them both.
What a heartwarming ending to this beautiful story of families separated and reunited, right?
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, don't you know. This is why I don't reblog pictures of missing people/kids unless a) I know the family personally, b) the picture was issued by a police department. I never, ever want to be even inadvertently responsible for something like this.
If you've made it to the end of this post, I am very impressed. I am not trying to say that people who do contribute to individual causes on the internet are bad, or stupid, or gullible, or whatever. I simply wanted to state my case for my own actions and what motivates them.
I have a lot of trouble with one aspect of the current incarnation of the Internet, and that's the tsunami of charitable causes that tends to come crashing to shore every day. I do mean every day. Every day that I'm on the internet I come across dozens of requests for support and money for every cause under the sun, from orphans to wetlands to cancer patients to people with illnesses I've never even heard of and can't even pronounce. These are often accompanied by requests to reblog/retweet/repost in order to spread the word and raise more support.
Here's the thing. I am unlikely to EVER click on one of those Paypal buttons, or even to repost things.
The first reason is that I respond VERY badly to guilt-trips. Having Facebook posts exhorting me to put something up for "just one hour" makes me want to hit things. "You can't spare one hour for the orphans/cancer/dying puppies?!? YOU MONSTER!" Because not posting shit like that on my timeline TOTALLY means I love cancer and want people to die, routinely kick puppies and think people with autism should be locked away (or insert whatever cause of the day you'd like). Sure.
Another good way to make me hit the back button? Exhort me to "give up [my] morning lattes" for a week/month/whatever. Those $3 can go a long way! You know what? I DON'T FUCKING BUY A LATTE EVERY MORNING. Yes, I have a job. Yes, it pays me very, very well for what I do. You know what else? I have a house to pay for, a family to support, and a job in a different city that requires me to have lodgings there (that I also pay for) and for which I buy gas for my car. The only reason we have a second car is because we got help for it. We are extremely careful with our money, because what we have has to go a long way every month, with very little room for slip-ups.
Yes, I also realise that the lattes are a metaphor, and I could easily replace that with "Give up the books/DVDs you occasionally buy/whatever." The idea is that other people are worse off than me, and societal morality dictates that I owe it to them to give up whatever small luxuries I have in the name of charity.
You know what? It's still really fucking patronising, and I hate it. It assumes that it never occurred to me to do that. "Oh," I am supposed to think. "I could simply give up my morning triple-shot mocha frappuccino with whipped cream, and give that money to support this orphaned, homeless kitten that needs a new kidney! WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THIS BEFORE?"
*eyeroll*
Relatedly, a lot of people who work are barely scraping by. They are crippled by debt, or working minimum wage as the sole income for their family, or (and I am lucky not to be among them), or have other completely legitimate reasons for not giving money to Random Cause X. Or maybe they just don't want to, which is also a perfectly legitimate reason, thank you very much.
So, in conclusion: guilting me and talking down to me are a surefire way to make me not want to have anything to do with the cause you're promoting.
Here's another reason I won't click on your donate button: I am an old-fashioned girl, and I prefer my charitable causes accountable for their donations.
Let's make up a fake example. SickGuy McGee needs $5,000 for his surgery, according to his website. How do I know that McGee exists? Or that he's actually ill? Well, his friends all vouch for him, so it must be fine! Okay, let's pretend he's a legit person, and actually needs the surgery. People flock to his website, and now SickGuy McGee has received an incredibly generous $7,893 for himself. That's $2,893 more than he asked for. An organised charity has systems in place to funnel extra funds, but a private person doesn't. So what's the protocol, here? Does SickGuy McGee get to redistribute those funds as he sees fit, when people donated in good faith specifically for his surgery? The money is his, technically, so he can buy himself a new flatscreen TV just as easily as he can donate the "excess" to another organisation of his choice. What if some of the donors don't agree with his choice of charity for their donation? What if SickGuy McGee decided to donate to an explicitly religious organisation whose values don't align with theirs?
It's a sticky mess, is what it is. It's SO easy to lie on the internet, so easy to take advantage of good, honest people to part them from their money in the name of a "good cause."
Sometimes, the "good causes" are nothing but scams. Lord knows, I heard enough of these stories when I was working my previous job for the RCMP in Montreal. Good people who got conned into sending money to people who lied in order to make a quick buck. I heard the same stories, over and over again, every day. One can argue that those people were stupid or gullible, and sometimes they were succumbing to their own greed (scams often prey on people who are already vulnerable), but overall? The internet is rife with people trying to take advantage of others.
Sometimes, the "good causes" are worse than that. One man posted a picture last year of his "missing" wife and daughter, wringing his hands about how worried he was since they'd disappeared, and why, oh why would the police not help him? It was terrible! So the internet dutifully reposted the picture and spread the word for him and lo, they were found! The problem? They weren't missing. They had run away and changed their names because he was an abusive bastard, and he tracked them down and killed them both.
What a heartwarming ending to this beautiful story of families separated and reunited, right?
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, don't you know. This is why I don't reblog pictures of missing people/kids unless a) I know the family personally, b) the picture was issued by a police department. I never, ever want to be even inadvertently responsible for something like this.
If you've made it to the end of this post, I am very impressed. I am not trying to say that people who do contribute to individual causes on the internet are bad, or stupid, or gullible, or whatever. I simply wanted to state my case for my own actions and what motivates them.
