Rae, early 30s, Digital Artist. they/he Queer. from Turtle Island. art tag is "Reucrion art zone" (I bought my copper badge before I knew how fucked tumblr is.)
I swear we used to be able to think critically about random GoFundMe asks
It used to be understood that if someone using a throwaway blog suddenly starts messaging a bunch of accounts to beg for money, they were most likely a scammer.
Now suddenly there are fucking swarms of throwaway bots relentlessly shilling GoFundMe campaigns to anyone who even so much as breathes in the direction of a trending tag or post, yet the mere suggestion that any of these could be a scam will immediately get you yelled at by self-righteous strangers.
What changed?
Because some people use specific causes as bludgeons and now people just blindly believe that anyone that claims to be suffering in a certain way must be telling the truth and must be helped at all costs. Which probably emboldens the scammers to try even more. And I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the self-righteous strangers are scammers themselves since it already feels like some of the go-fund-me vetters are scammers or just believe the scammers.
I am so sick and tired of getting either random asks or just popping into some random post about nothing remotely related to these go-fund-me’s and seeing tons of replies pushing the same scams. It’s ridiculous.
If you think about it from the perspective of a would-be scammer, it’s a golden racket. Not only do you not have to put in much work - it’s not a coincidence that a lot of these messages have the same bland “corporate newsletter” tone that pervades 99% of AI generated text - but even if someone catches on and calls you out, as long as you’ve created a sympathetic enough character, a bunch of strangers on the internet will defend you from any and all accusations.
Not only is it less work than before, but now you don’t even need to do anything to make people believe it, you just crowdsource that out, because calling out your scam is now cultural anathema.
Not saying to never help people if they need it, but like OP said, think critically about it. Do I know this person? Do I have any way of verifying their claims? Does their account have history of any activity other than “Randomly cold-call strangers asking for money”? Are they asking for money through a mechanism with zero recourse if they’re ever outed as a scammer?
I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable
haven’t been to a mooseheads game in person for over a year and apparently they made some changes to the arena…. the main one being a gigantic moose bust that flashes red eyes and shoots smoke out it’s nose when we score
update: it’s eyes turn green when the other team has a penalty
What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn’t have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.
The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.
The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.
The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we’re just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.
The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn’t being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.
So that’s cool. If you want to read more, I suggest “Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America” by Nancy J. Turner
And this is just the terrestrial resources. Sea gardens were also a thing along the coast.
