Comments | amelia_g: What do you think of cyberpanhandling or cyber-begging?

amelia_g

What do you think of cyberpanhandling or cyber-begging?

Sep 20, 2010 13:57

What do you think of cyberpanhandling or cyber-begging?

by Amelia G : September 16th, 2010 We’ve all seen people online begging for PayPal donations or cash in the mail or for people to buy some product from them . . . not because the product is good or because they are working for a charity, but just because they claim to need money. Some say ( Read more... )

decrease, cyberbegging, cyber begging, cyberpanhandling, cyber panhandling, paypal, empathy

Comments 5

hardrockitty September 21 2010, 09:00:35 UTC

There is a difference between selling a product or a service and begging. I see a lot of people who have online garage sales or home craft products. I look at this as entrepreneur-ship. However strait up begging is just LAME!

amelia_g September 21 2010, 10:27:43 UTC

I am totally down with someone being like I-made-a-cool-T-shirt-please-consider-buying-it. I love entrepreneurship and DIY both and I think those are drives which should be encouraged a lot.

What bothers me is when they tell everyone they should buy the cool T-shirt because its creator has such a bad situation.

Especially in the digital world, there is an intimacy, but we don't necessarily know what someone else is going through.

It might be past my bedtime. Does that make sense?

hardrockitty September 21 2010, 10:37:43 UTC

Yes :)

msicenhour September 21 2010, 11:10:46 UTC

I agree with you all the way on this one. I have known several people over the years doing this paypal donation thing. There were times I had in my very recent life where I lost my job twice and where me and wife had an extremely hard time getting by. One time I remember where we only had 12 cents to live for 6 day until we had my wife's student living money on here account, and I remember doing over night construction of sets for arenas in Frankfurt when I lost my job there and didn't qualify for unemployment payments. Never once did I consider going on line and asking for help. I don't know. Maybe I have too much self-respect to do this. I would refer to this as a type cyber Sinti-Roma behavior with these people going from one social network to another.

amelia_g September 21 2010, 21:22:38 UTC

I had to look up the definition of Sinti-Roma. When I got to college, it was my 12th school in 12 years, so I've had the Greek mythology unit, for example, repeatedly, and wholly missed some other stuff. Thank you so so much for starting the online portion of my day with wit and education. Very awesome ( ... )