Getting strangers to give you stuff on the Internet is the new awesome

I was having a conversation yesterday about how much time I spend on the internet, and started thinking that maybe I should start refocusing my efforts away from posting my photo on various friendsites, and start using cyberspace to make some money instead. I have sold my fair share of goods on ebay and amazon and such, but there are a lot of people out there really making the internet work for them in some pretty creative ways ...

For example. A few years ago, this girl named karyn (in the poorly photoshopped photo) got herself into $20,000 worth of debt thanks to the familiar dilemma of expensive tastes without the budget to back it up. She started her own website asking her fellow humans to take pity on her and help bail her out of credit card hell.

i thought that most people would turn an unsympathetic cold shoulder to this girl, since she obviously got herself into this situation by having an uncontrollable itch for expensive handbags. I mean, I would probably like to own a few pairs of Prada shoes myself, but realize that I can't really afford them because I have heard of something weird called "financial responsibility". I would think that the rest of the nation would be as equally unforgiving of a girl with an obvious shopping problem, but people gave her money! In 20 short weeks, her low-budget website received over two million hits and all her debt was paid off... Believe me, this shattered everything I ever knew about "consequences" and having to live with them.

Or then there is this guy who was all over the news a few weeks ago for his creative use of the barter section of craigslist. He started out with just a paperclip, with the goal to somehow score a house. A free house.


Apparently he took that ridiculous red paper clip and traded it for a pen shaped like a fish, which he traded for a doorknob, which he traded for a camping stove, which he traded for a bunch of other things until as of the last thing I read, he was up a year of free rent in some duplex out in the desert. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out that he got a pretty good deal.

And then the other day, my friend forwards me this website that an old friend of hers from high school started, giving everyone the opportunity to adopt joey's hair. Looks like joey is looking for some help to afford hair transplant surgery, and is turning to all of us to make it happen.


i don't know. i kind of want to give him five bucks. mothers day is coming up, and naming a few hairs after your mom in honor of it might just be the new awesome.

All I know is that making millions on the internet is totally the new awesome. I have got to get in on this.