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online
begging
This page considers what has variously been
labelled as 'cyber begging' and 'online panhandling'.
It covers –
introduction
Why sit on a street corner silently threatening or being
despised by passers-by when you can beg online from behind
the safety of a computer monitor and even become a minor
celebrity?
Some individuals have adopted cyberspace as their place
from which to beg, soliciting donations via spam
or through web sites.
incidents
Karyn Bosnak, author of Save Karyn: One Shopaholic's
Journey to Debt and Back (London: Corgi 2004), went
online with www.savekaryn.com in 2002 -
Hello!
My name is Karyn, I'm really nice and I'm asking for
your help! ... Bottom line is that I have this huge
credit card debt and I need $20,000 to pay it off. All
I need is $1 from 20,000 people, or $2 from 10,000 people,
or $5 from 4,000 people — you get the picture.
So if you have an extra buck or two, please send it
my way. Together, we can banish credit card debt from
my life.
She
congratulated herself "for thinking outside the box,
using the internet as a resource and taking a bad situation
and turning it round". One response was dontsavekaryn.com
(archived here).
Practitioners of cyberbegging seem to have enjoyed more
media coverage than success, with most sites going offline
within 14 months. Penny Hawkins went online with helpmeleavemyhusband.com
(archived here).
Others sought donations to pay for breast implantation,
holidays, fertility treatment, education or tools and
instruments. Saveshane.com apparently was less persuasive
than Ms Bosnak's site.
Other examples include Saving Mandy by rescuing a fashion
student from debt (here),
Jeremy of Gimme a Buck and helpoutbrian.com (archived
here),
the latter by a self-described "real, 26-year-old,
kindhearted, hardworking, aspiring paramedic" who
reportedly commented
I'm
sure I could pay off my own debt someday. But why not
take the help now if I can get it?
We preferred parodies such as The Society to Prevent My
Employment (here),
where Princess Natalie announced "I don't want to
work, but I like nice things".
Savebuster.com delightfully announced
-
Hi.
I'm Buster. I need your help. I need some money.
If SaveKaryn.com can help a girl raise thousands of
dollars for her credit card bills, and HelpMeLeaveMyHusband.com
can help some woman unload her old man, then I, a friendly
cat, should be able to beg for some money to cover the
bills I've racked up for the Human. I know times are
tough, and I know you're thinking, "Yeah, right
-- I work my butt off so I can send money to a *cat*
who's shilling on the Net."
But hear me out. I'm a really great cat - the kind you'd
pet as you're walking down the street, the kind that
makes "prrrrrrup" noises when he sees you,
the kind that rolls around, belly-up, in that cute way
the humans love. If you've ever rubbed a fluffy cat
belly, you understand. Why do I need money? Well, I
can't get a job. I can do vermin decapitation, tongue-based
grooming, and upholstery demolition, but there's not
much call for these skills in a down economy.
Buster
was soliciting donations for PAWS
Pets
are Wonderful Support (PAWS),
a San Francisco non-profit that helps low-income people
with AIDS and other disabling illnesses keep their pets.
PAWS supplies these people and their pets with donated
pet food and vet care; if they're too sick to properly
care for their pets, volunteers help walk dogs, groom
cats, and so on. Without the help of PAWS, these folks
might lose the wonderful companionship of their pets.
Since people with AIDS or other debilitating illnesses
may become isolated from family and friends - or may
be coping with painful medical treatments - the company
of a pet can make a world of difference.
scams
A darker side of cyberbegging is apparent in email scams
that abuse the recipient's generosity (or merely gullibility)
by purporting to seek donations for individual disaster
victims or charitable organisations.
As discussed elsewhere on this site, those scams are the
flipside of the '419' fraud, exploiting kindness and naivety
rather than the recipient's greed and credulity.
They feature supposed representations on behalf of legitimate
bodies such as the Red Cross. They also include recurrent
solicitations by supposed starving orphans and frozen
Eastern European grannies, highlighted here.
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