I first heard about this from my good friend Kiiri, who doesn’t have her own blog yet so I can’t link to it even though she keep saying she’s going to do it, and I avoided talking about it at the time. Recent events have convinced me I should bitch a little about it though.

Seems some “really nice” girl by the name of Karyn has managed to rack up $20,000 in credit card debt and has put up a website asking for donations from people to help her pay off this debt. According to her website she has managed to received about $6,736.68 in donations from other “really nice” people along with $1600.36 in sales of various assorted items of hers on eBay. Combined with the money she’s been paying into it herself she’s gotten her credit card down to $10,408.80 in 8 weeks.

My first reaction on seeing the site was mild amusement, but I didn’t harbor any doubts about it working. I’ve seen first hand that there are lots of people out there willing to toss time, money, and effort behind any number of useless and stupid causes and Karyn is just cashing in on it. I’ve said many times in the past that anytime someone feels the need to spend money on me for no good reason to feel free to do so, that’s why I have my Amazon Wishlist linked on my site, but I’ve never approached it as though I thought I deserved to have people spend money on me and that probably explains why very few people do. Though Laughing Muse did send me the book listed in my currently reading section which was a great surprise.

The site has already garnered it’s fair of critical reaction including a parody site called Don’t Save Karyn which currently ranks as my personal favorite. It has also received just tons of publicity from the mainstream media which hasn’t hurt it’s ability to attract donations. Naturally lots of bloggers have weighed in on the topic including Kat over at My Single Mom Life and it was the reaction she got to her entry on it that prompted me to write my own.

Seems she pissed a few of Karyn’s supporters off by being critical of someone who’s begging for money that doesn’t really need it. Karyn’s working, is paid relatively well and doesn’t appear to be close to destitute. She just sounds like she’s really a piss-poor money manager. She may even be “really nice” as she claims on her website, but she’s hardly what I’d call a worthy charity case. You can see a couple of pics of this poor destitute woman over at The Smoking Gun as her image is obscured on her website. I can admire her ability not to give a shit what her critics think, but I think she’s in need of a swift kick in the ass more than a donation. There are a lot of other people out there that these people could be sending money to who could really use it, many of whom can’t even afford to own a computer to put up a website to ask for it.

Still, I’ll never stand against someone’s right to spend their money on stupid shit so allow me once again state that if you need to spend money on someone for no good reason, well, I’m always willing to accept it. I can even come up with a good cause for you! I need to buy a house some time early next year as I’m sick of living in this crummy little two bedroom apartment. Currently I plan on using my upcoming income tax return as part of the down payment, but if I got 10,000 people to donate $1 then I’d have more than enough for a down payment and could spend my income tax return on furniture for the house! Now if that’s not a worthy cause, what isn’t? I’ll tell the mailman to expect the onset of back problems from the upcoming flood of checks. Thank you.