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When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

latimes.com

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Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#21

Post by tomjakubowski »

sp332 wrote: post #15

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

That reminds me of a great anecdote from Graeber's Debt:

"The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese."

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#22

Post by PhasmaFelis »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #8
ryanmercer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The larger theme is "Technology makes it easier for individuals to beg strangers for money". I can't open social media without seeing kickstarter/indiegogo this, gofundme that, need money quick, can someone paypal/venmo me money for thing, etc. Then a day, week, month later you see pictures of their brand new cabinets or of their vacation or they are hitting people up for money again for something else because people…

> Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!" This isn't new. This is the basis of some rather infamous socio-economic systems which have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Didn't think I'd see panhandlers get equated to Nazis today.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#23

Post by sp332 »

futureastronaut wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #15

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."

Yeah, that's part of the joke.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#24

Post by wayoutthere »

futureastronaut wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #15

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."

Millennial culture is PTSD.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#25

Post by chc »

0815test wrote: post #16
komali2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system. An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food. Unfa…

These issues aren't solved with "social welfare and safety nets", that's just throwing good money after bad. I'm totally fine with a kick-ass safety net for people who are actually in poverty , aka have trouble funding their basic needs despite very serious, sometimes strenuous efforts. But someone who is advertising their Venmo ID online is almost certainly not poor in this legitimate sense. Spending more money than…

The idea that people asking for donations online are deservedly poor because they spend too much money on social media is probably the oddest thing I've heard all year.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#26

Post by sp332 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #22
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!" This isn't new. This is the basis of some rather infamous socio-economic systems which have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Didn't think I'd see panhandlers get equated to Nazis today.

[flagged]

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#27

Post by komali2 »

supergauntlet wrote: post #17
daodedickinson wrote: post #9

Prostitution is certainly exploding. Anyone see appropriate reactions to this? How do we combat the loneliness epidemic that "social" media has caused? So many people raised on "social" media have no idea how to get to the kind of real, healthy relationship they want.

Don't really follow your logic here, you're conflating prostitution and a "loneliness epidemic"? Prostitution is as old as civilization itself. Older, probably. I don't see rising prostitution as indicative of anything other than 'poor people are low on options'

Almost certainly older than civilization itself - female chimpanzees will trade sex for food. Presumably proto-humans did the same.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#28

Post by psychometry »

futureastronaut wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #15

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."

Probably not, we're too inundated with student loans to have time for a culture.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#29

Post by gowld »

sp332 wrote: post #15

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

That's what Social Security / safety net / charity is -- sharing with people in need.

Re: When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

#30

Post by jedmeyers »

phil248 wrote: post #14
komali2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system. An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food. Unfa…

Similarly why a robust welfare state is preferable to charity. Charitable giving is free to discriminate and there's no mechanism to try and move it towards those who most need it.

Do you think welfare state actually distributes funds to whoever needs them? They are giving funds away to everyone who can check x boxes on a form, no one in the government ever verifies if the person actually needs the money, like a charity would do.
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