Cyber-begging: What a Web we're weaving
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Karyn Bosnack must be the Patron Saint of the Internet.
A few months back, a New York TV executive found herself with no job and a huge credit card debt.
She had racked up those bills not at the emergency room or paying for college or even purchasing groceries. Nope. Nor was she, as she so blithely admitted, trying to save the world or doing anything noteworthy.
Karyn Bosnack behaved as all of us do at one point or another: She indulged herself.
As a typical shopaholic, she couldn't stop buying. Then, to boot (and those, most likely, are Prada), she had expensive tastes. No Wal-Mart for Bosnack, no siree. Only the best. Gucci and Bergdorf, you see.
No wonder the bills stacked up to 20 grand.
But if Bosnack was free with the plastic, she was also enterprising.
She came up with a Web site to ask strangers to help her pay off her bills. Assuring us that she's a nice person, really she is, she reported with breathless honesty: "Nothing is really in it for you. But I do believe ... if you help me, that someday someone might help you."
How touching!
Media types ate it up, and she was featured on the Today show, all smiles and no shame.
Web surfers opened their hearts and their wallets, and just before the holiday season, she announced that she was, finally, in the black. No word yet about reformed shopping habits.
Bosnack's great contribution to society, her return on strangers' generosity, was unexpected but long-lasting: Her idea legitimized panhandling in the cyber age.
An old adage holds that a fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. Ms. Bosnack seems to have provided proof of that theorem, enough so that others are following in her wake. Of course, a sequel is rarely as good as the original, and that is being borne out in this instance.
On the one hand, it is easy to disrespect Ms. Bosnack for her own dissolution and lack of self-control. On the other hand, she choose a very creative and original solution that eventually DID solve her debt problem. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. There has been no word on whether Ms. Bosnack has reformed (Wal-Mart instead of Bergdorf Goodman??). In the end, though, I suppose it really does't matter. Ms. Bosnack used a tool that was available to her in a way that served her purpose. There was certainly nothing illegal or immoral about her cyber-begging. No one coerced anyone into sending money, right? People contributed out of their own free will. Perhaps it's not something that you or I would have done, but all it takes are a few out of the many. A dollar here, a dollar there- pretty soon you're talking about real money.
This is one of the reasons I love the Internet- wondering what new and creative use for it that someone will invent. Whether you love or hate Ms. Bosnack's cyber begging bowl, it is tough not to applaud her creativity.
