Internet Panhandling

Not quite up there with starving children in Africa, is it?

This is begging. Simple, plain begging. It’s just the same as a guy approaching you on the street for change; well, except that this guy is demanding more than $0.32 to cover the Paypal fees.

Nor do I think many street panhandlers would tell you, “I need it to get a $450,000 house so I can have crazed monkey sex like Jen promised.”

Disclaimer: The last sentence is based on purported comments reported by a biased third-party which we hope are inaccurate. They may well be just the delusions of the obviously fantasy-prone author. Our advise to Jen: Even if you said it, don’t do it!

But other than that, it’s panhandling on the Internet rather than a city street.

Why?

The person doing this obviously has a severe case of self-centeredness, with a definite shame deficiency. The appeal boils down to, “Well, I want it, so give me money.”

However, these diseases haven’t reached the terminal stage yet, because he does show signs of dim awareness that his cause might not have quite the charitable appeal of the United Way.

His F.A.Q. gives three reasons why you should give him money.

The first states, “Geek Pride! Geeks of the World Unite!!!” This appeal apparently has its limits, though, since there’s no offer to geeks who contribute that they’ll ever be able to show true class solidarity by uniting with him and/or Jen in his new house during one of their monkey sex sessions.

I guess “Geeks, unite!” turns into “I got mine, Jack” and “Charity begins at [my new] home” once the deed changes hand.

The second states, “Because you’ll be helping me get laid.” While I’ll grant you this is close to if not the Prime Directive for young men, such hormonal instructions rarely if ever extend to other men fulfilling the plan.

The third basically states, “Stop asking questions and send me money already!” In short, the Nike answer, “Just do it.”

Don’t be too harsh on him not coming up with a third reason, though. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to come up with any.

“I Want Both”

A bit later on, the F.A.Q. has this fellow asking himself, “Why not your own apartment?”

His response to that boils down to “If I do that, then I can’t get a house.” Poor baby. This guy is the new Donald Trump: he likes sex, but his real love is real property.

I mean, really. How many sex-crazed 22 year olds do you know who talk about real estate values, down payment requirements, and the tax ramifications of contributions before getting around to sex.

“Black Is White”

This is all brazen enough, but the piece de resistance is “In no way do I expect to have my way paid for me.”. Please help me out here. If that’s so, then just what is he doing?

I suspect he means that he doesn’t expect you to pay for all of it (which strikes an unusual note of realism for the website given the $53.39 collected so far), but the definitional threshold of begging is how much you ask, not how much you get.

My Advice

This character has more of a problem than he thinks. Anybody who says he is “currently living the life of a hermit . . . to save as much money as possible as quickly as possible” is unlikely to have a scintillating sexual or even social life.

I have found that most young ladies around his age require recurring capital expenditures as a requirement before, during and after the commencement of such activities.

Indeed, this is a highly risky investment that often ends up being written off as a total loss, and as any good business school should tell you about any business: no investment, no activity. Maybe monkey sex changes the usual business plan, but somehow I doubt it.

Then again, both the ladies who purport to be willing to date him wear glasses and look rather serious and studious. Perhaps he lives next door to a business school and these are aspiring MBAs whose idea of a good time is to have company while reading the Wall Street Journal in between primate procreation sessions.

Somehow I suspect such people are few and far between, and I suspect his fellow’s typical date looks more like Donna than Sharon or Jen. Indeed, this sexual prospectus includes no picture of the allegedly worthy candidate. Maybe he looks like Donna, too, and knows he needs a pile to get partners.

So we have someone who wants sex but not the ordinary and necessary expenses normally associated with it.

For such a man, let me suggest a possibility he has not yet considered:

Male prostitution.

This has many advantages. He can keep his day job. Rather than be faced with significant cash outflow, he can get cash inflow from this activity instead. Indeed, if he’s clever (and his office is deserted) enough, he can combine his daytime AND nighttime professions and get multiple cash flows simultaneously.

He won’t have to worry about excess housing costs, either; he can outsource that to the other participant (or his employer).

More importantly, he’ll have the pride of knowing that he has earned every penny of that down payment on that house he so desperately wants rather than rely on the charity of others.

Given his priorities, all the upsides definitely outweigh the disadvantage that his investors are likely to be senior, maybe very senior partners who look like Donna’s mom or grandma. At least this will be so if this is to be more of a revenue enhancement than cost-cutting measure.

What do you think? Isn’t this good advice? 🙂

For The Rest Of You

Most of you, especially those of you who find this appalling, probably think that the best way to react to this is to ignore this appeal, or maybe send a nastygram.

Bah! Novices!

If you want to really be cruel, you might want to consider sending him exactly thirty two cents AND a nastygram. That way, you’ve sent money, but he doesn’t get any of it.

Think about it. 🙂

Email Ed