Lately, I've been hearing of real-life stories regarding "GoFundMe" pages people have setup. It always seems like the worst quality people making off with lots of money and the good people who truly deserves help never ends up with anything.
A recent really life example was of a woman a friend of mine used to work with. She was really good looking and into "bad boy" guys. Her boyfriend was in Indonesia and got arrested for drugs. I don't know the full details of his sentencing but I think he got a few years prison (at least) and a significant fine like $100k+ or something. She made a GoFundMe with a sob story about how amazing her BF was and how the drug laws in Indonesia are unfair or whatever, she raised over $300k. After he got out of prison, they moved to Costa Rica and are now mostly retired (don't need to work). Truthfully, I imagine she posted pics of herself and got a bunch of simps to donate because she's very good looking and runs some mini workout instagram page.
Seriously though, I don't get people. Why does anyone feel compelled to help these people? These people hardly contributed anything to society, got arrested for drugs and now get to semi-retire comfortably in a different country all thanks to idiots on the internet giving these people money?
A guy I know was mountain biking and fell badly. He needed surgeries and cannot walk the same (needs crutches). His family made a GoFundMe and barely raised $10k.
Drug dealer arrested for drugs with hot GF raises $300k... guy who had accident and can't walk the same, not even $10k. Why are people like this? Our society is so fucked. We're literally incentivizing the worst kinds of people in society.
I cannot comment on the fickle nature of who gets funds from crowdsourcing sites. I can comment on the crossly political nature of Gofundme.
Gofundme has blatantly been political on who are allowed to crowdfund there. Never, ever forget that Kyle Rittenhouse had his defense funding campaign nearly instantly killed by them.
Givesendgo functions exactly the same way, and doesn't delete crowdfunding campaigns for dissident people.
Canadian truckers too.
GFM originally announced they were going to distribute the 10 million in donations they shut down at the behest of Trudeau's ministers and the Ottawa mayor to a "charity of their choice" after some nominal short window for donors to request refunds.
They only refunded everyone wholesale after some bad publicity and a few Republican politicians making veiled threats of regulating the industry.
People's emotions are the easiest way to their wallets, its marketing (read: social engineering) 101, and that's not exaggerating.
Leftists are especially vulnerable to this.
Virtue signaling and plenty of fraud. Every few months I read a story about someone being arrested for fraud in connection to one of these GoFundMe scams. It's not like they tell the whole truth when they're selling their "cause", and in many cases they straight up lie. The story you see on GoFundMe isn't the true story as you know first hand.
That's just a truism regardless of their looks lol. AWALT.
The retard got off easy. They execute drug offenders in that part of the world.
It takes a special type of person to see a request for financial help making potato salad, see that the goal has been overshot by many thousands of dollars, and then decide to send money anyway because it's funny.
Believe it or not I think the internet has done a remarkable job on documenting exactly why this happens already. You just have to look into the corners of the internet like this one where people will tell it like it is which is why I appreciate the work Kiwifarms does. I know people think I'm giving them way too much credit, but they're clearly evolving beyond documenting lolcows whether they like it or not unfortunately because of the attention they've gotten and the enemies they've made.
As the guy below me posted, it is just virtue signalling and fraud most of the time, another side that's documented is validation. I think people prefer to go to the more dramatic stories and yes there will be the simp factor as well if it's a hot girl doing it. It's also that side of they would rather throw a bit of money at a problem and pretend like they're doing something than actually put in the leg work.
It's definitely laziness and this sort of thing is why big charities for example are multi-million if not billion enterprises rather than any kind of genuine organisations. It's simply way too easy these days to take advantage of people if you happen to be the right sort of person in society that can.
Leftists value rocks and trees more than their own family so they don't mind scamming regular people, and regular people are fundamentally decent and want to be helpful to people in need. The woman in this story undoubtedly has Instagram or Tiktok followers or at the very least a way to exploit someone who does, the mountain biking guy probably doesn't.
The money probably came from the boyfriend's drug ring, OP. Dirty money laundered through GoFundMe. I doubt it was normal people who donated.
I've been strongly suspicious that foreign powers are using such sites to promote and encourage anything and everything which degrades our society.
I'm not convinced it is a bunch of normies donating. I'm pretty sure it's money laundering.
The vast money difference can be for several reasons, but the biggest is probably just the sheer number (or wealth) of people reached by the respective fundraisers.
That would help.
Consider the types of people looking at Instagram. Lowered impulse control. Pay methods probably immediately available. An outrageous story affecting this totally great content creator who I know slightly less about than my IRL friends (or perhaps with simps, a bit too much knowledge).
You may also consider the "associates" of the boyfriend, like if he was good friends with someone higher up the chain.
Contrast with an honest story of a man taking a risky bike trip and hurting himself. It is tragic that he won't walk the same way again, but it doesn't impact much anything else around him, and it isn't an outrageously unfair outcome.
I think I contributed to a gofundme (or at least something similar) once. Was around the early years of wow (I want to say bc, but could be early wotlk as well). I was listening to "blu plz" a WoW radio show from Totalbiscuit (way before he blew up). Back then he got into flame wars on the official wow forums.
It was a crowdfunding for the surgery for some cat that had hydrocephalus. Don't know in what way TB knew the owner of the kitten, but he basically said the owner couldn't afford it. Wasn't a ton of money - low single digit thousand I think (!).
I donated $10. Why? The whole internet community crowdfunding thing was new. And $10 to help a cat, why the fuck not?
I do remember there were some updates & pics post surgery via TB, so it wasn't a complete scam.
Big part is just luck. Be at the right time at the right place and some idiot boosts your crowdfunding and you get to be viral. Congratulations - you are set for live. Similar in other online activities like youtube & twitch & co. Or even video games in general - random famous streamer enjoys your game? Congrats, you hit the jackpot, while a better game might not get the attention. Hell a shit game might get more attention, because it is shit.
And your last sentence is true. If you can - be a scammer. I mean with the recent AI craze just look into generating women's pics (train a proper lora) and go on onlyfans & similar shit. Take the money from lonely losers. And I know that some people are doing that - but you could also get some of the cake. If you have no morals.
I'm not convinced it is a bunch of normies donating. I'm pretty sure it's money laundering.
May be the same logic that has people constantly falling for crypto?