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 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.