Somewhere around the world something bad is happening to somebody or a group of people. It's just part of life and matter how much we try to fight it, tragedy is inevitable and completely unavoidable. We just hope it doesn't come to our doorstep and even it does, it should not be overwhelmingly difficult to handle. Imagine picking up your phone and going through your social media and the gbammm, there's a really devasting story on your feed about a person's misfortune. It could be a story about someone who lost everything he owns to a fire outbreak, a student in the verge of leaving school because he or she does not have the financial capacity to continue or even an illness that requires urgent attention. Now during the course of the video, you find out there's a link/account number pasted at the end of it soliciting for financial support to the victim of the predicament. The pictures look very real, the story checks out and as a human being with a sympathetic heart, you feel the need to help out someone who obviously needs it badly. You go through it one more time, before sending what little support you have...
Now anybody who uses social media is no stranger to this kind of event as they happen a lot and the presence of crowdfunding has helped a lot of people get through tough times. However with the rapid growth of various scams, it is becoming very difficult to ascertain if the victim genuinely needs help or if this supposed tragedy is just another ruse to make a quick buck. Thanks to the internet, it does not take a lot to reach a lot of people and with just a well written story, realistic pictures and a video for added effects even a wanted can look trustworthy..
I once had an encounter where an old acquaintance came into my DM asking for money because his mother was hospitalized and he needed the money. According to him the surgery cost over 5 million and he could only gather 1.5 million naira. He had also told a few people I we had a mutual friendship with they were also willing to help. We created a "gofundme" account and were seriously invested in soliciting for funds from a wider audience until we started discussing and realized his story had loopholes. He gave each of us different stories; to some it was his mother, to others it was his father. The illness differed depending on who was listening at any point, that also included the hospital, how much he had paid and what was left.
Finally one person got angry enough and called out his bullshit and after series of back and forth , he could not deny the falsehood of his actions. Both his parents were safe and he was only doing all of this to raise up money to pay for his girlfriend's rent. That taught me something I'll never forget in a hurry and till this very day, I am still skeptical about donating money for public goood. I know kindness should not completely vanish because fraudulent activities exist but it needs to operate in a system where this level of dishonesty is extremely different to sneak in... Thank you.
