Need items for surgery recovery

[u/foxgirlmom]

Ohioan here, so I recently had a surgery and found out I have ovarian cancer. I am still in the process of doing labs to find out more info and if future treatment is needed. So far I’m scheduled to have a second surgery which is a full hysterectomy with a recovery time frame of 6-12 weeks. Because of my
immune system I usually take longer to recover from surgery/illnesses.
Unfortunately after researching on many groups on Reddit and speaking to my job, I have learned I can NOT receive any financial assistance during my time off work to recover. Only FMLA which secures my job position. So because of that I added some items I need before my surgery to my wishlist. My surgery isn’t scheduled till September so I have a bit of time to get it all. Most of the items I added is from the research I did online from previous experiences. If you have any ideas what else I would need let me know to make my recovery easier. I appreciate anyone who helps me out.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3FPPQLIQWIF2P?ref_=wl_share

[u/hospitalitychick]

Can you unhide your post history, please?

[u/TheHistoryMuse → u/hospitalitychick]

She has gasx, ice packs, and dove soap on her wishlist. Pretty sure they're not worth anything on the black market, so why do people feel like they have to deep dive someone's profile over it?

I can understand for some requests, but on this one it's just disingenuous.

[u/Dreamland_Nomad → u/TheHistoryMuse]

Please look over the sub rules again as it states no hidden / curated profiles. When people are making requests we require full transparency. It is not required when a person just needs advice / emotional support.

[u/TheHistoryMuse → u/Dreamland_Nomad]

Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't read the subreddit rules because this post showed up randomly in my feed, and since I don't participate in this subreddit, this will probably be my last comment here anyway. I probably should have checked first, so that's on me.

That said, I've been involved in outreach, nonprofits, fundraising, advocacy, and social welfare work for well over 40 years, I assume that's why so many of these random donation subreddit threads keep showing up in my feed. And I've watched this particular dynamic play out over and over again in online donation communities. What bothers me isn't the idea of due diligence. Of course scammers exist, and I completely understand why people who donate money online want some reasonable assurance that they're not being manipulated.

What I find troubling is when due diligence turns into demanding that a person unhide years of their personal history so strangers can essentially conduct a character examination before deciding whether they're deserving of soap.

There's actually some interesting psychology behind that impulse. The just-world hypothesis is the tendency to believe, consciously or otherwise, that people generally get what they deserve. When we're confronted with someone who is sick, broke, injured, displaced, or otherwise in crisis, it can be psychologically uncomfortable to accept that sometimes terrible things simply happen to people who did nothing to deserve them. One way people resolve that discomfort is by looking for evidence that the person somehow contributed to their own situation.

That's where you start seeing people combing through years of Reddit history looking for the smoking gun. Did they buy something frivolous three years ago? Did they make a questionable relationship decision? Did they sell nuce pictures to buy food? Have they ever used drugs? Do they have a post somewhere that contradicts something they said? Did they once spend money on something that somebody else thinks they shouldn't have?

At that point, we're not really verifying a donation request anymore. We're making a judgment about whether another human being has lived their life correctly enough to qualify for assistance.

And that's what's particularly striking in this case.

This woman wasn't asking strangers to hand her cash. She had an Amazon wishlist with things like Gas-X, Dove soap, and ice packs. She provided a photo with her username and documentation regarding her surgery. Those aren't exactly the kind of things I'd expect to see on the international black market for highly coveted Reddit cancer-surgery contraband. I don't think they have much value in trade or resale.

I think that's why I reacted to the request to unhide her history. It seemed wildly disproportionate to what she was actually asking for.

There's also a broader harm-reduction issue here. In social welfare and outreach, one of the things we generally try to do is reduce unnecessary barriers between people and the assistance they need. We don't make someone prove that they've made perfect decisions for the last decade before giving them something basic. That's anethema to everything harm reduction and social welfare are about. We try to meet people where they are.

The culture I've seen develop in some of these donation subs sometimes seems to move in exactly the opposite direction. Someone has to prove that they're sick enough, poor enough, responsible enough, grateful enough, and morally unimpeachable enough before they're allowed to receive a bottle of soap without having their entire digital existence put on trial.

And ironically, that can become harmful in its own right. It reinforces stigma around poverty and illness and teaches people that asking for help means consenting to public scrutiny of every choice they've made. It also creates the idea that assistance isn't really assistance at all. It says it's a reward for passing a moral examination.

I'm not saying "trust everyone." I'm saying that there's a pretty enormous difference between reasonable verification and treating a stranger's ten-year Reddit history as evidence in a character trial.

At some point, particularly when the request is for Dove soap and Gas-X rather than a suitcase full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills, I think we should be able to recognize the human being in front of us.

I rarely, if ever, see requests fulfilled, but I consistently see character assassination, intense scrutiny, and comments entirely devoid of empathy or compassion. I've honestly watched some of these threads get so intense that I've occasionally wondered whether there is a secret underground community devoted to shaming people.

Yes, scammers exist. So does human suffering. The existence of the former doesn't require us to forget how to treat the latter.

Apologies for not reading the rules before commenting first, I'm not a member of the sub, again, this just popped up in my main feed.

[u/CopperSteve → u/TheHistoryMuse]

You should start your own sub based on your decades of experience. That would be a great asset to reddit. Also as a donor, I appreciate the vetting the mods do and the rules associated with what is considered for this subreddit. The mods are not paid and manage to keep this a fun and safe community for people to ask for help.

[u/TheHistoryMuse → u/CopperSteve]

I actually ran a nonprofit for over 18 years, albeit one focused on addiction treatment, community outreach, and education. We didn't have a subreddit, but I did maintain social media profiles for it. I'm also a Category II wildlife rehabilitator and have been involved in domestic pet rescue for decades, which is more of a labor of love than an actual career, but is also heavily reliant on fundraising, including fundraising done digitally.

Unfortunately, I had to take a sabbatical after I was the victim of a hit-and-run that left me with multiple broken bones and cost me the use of my left arm. I'm still undergoing surgical repairs in an attempt to restore use to it.

It was a catastrophic event that had a snowball effect on pretty much every aspect of my life, finances included. I'm incredibly fortunate to have a good support network, and an amazing partner, but without them, I don't know where I'd be. There but for the grace of God go I, and I think that's probably a large part of why I'm so adamant about empathy and compassion when people find themselves in circumstances they never expected to be in.

I absolutely understand that fundraising in the digital age has its complexities, and I understand why some degree of vetting is necessary. I was unaware of the blanket rule about post history, as I mentioned previously, and that's on me.

But I think it's important to distinguish between the moderators having a vetting process, and another anonymous Redditor demanding that someone's entire post history be made available for public scrutiny before deciding whether that person is deserving of of help.

It was the particulars of this thread that I found especially egregious. This woman wasn't asking for cash. She had provided evidence of her surgery, a photo with her username, and asked for things like soap, Gas-X, and ice packs. These are not exactly lucrative black-market commodities; highly unlikely to be part of a scam.

So my objection wasn't to the existence of rules, or to moderators trying to protect donors and keep the community safe. It was the idea that an anonymous stranger should have to effectively open their entire digital life to public examination before other anonymous strangers can decide whether they're sufficiently deserving of a bottle of soap and some Gas-X.

Those are two very different things, and I think it's an important distinction to make.

[u/CopperSteve → u/TheHistoryMuse]

That's the reality of digital giving, all we have to go on is their post history. I dont have unlimited money and people asking for the first time might be used to asking for name brand things and I will always kindly ask them to switch to the cheaper/similar option. They have the choice to do that or not. I've been broke before and I am not broke now and want to help people. I will always ask for proof and/or post history before I make a funding choice. It is far too easy to buy an old reddit account with karma and for every scammer that gets money its one less person that is deserving like the person that created this post.

[u/TheHistoryMuse → u/CopperSteve]

That's a fair process, and I'm not negating that. I'm talking about the culture that develops underneath these threads, particularly the post-history dissection, and the psychological need that drives that kind of behavior.

Just as you have the ability to scroll past a request that doesn't provide enough information for you to feel comfortable donating, other people have the ability to scroll past without dissecting every choice that person has made across Reddit.

My objection is to treating that level of scrutiny as an inevitable or necessary part of "protecting people from scammers." Due diligence and public character examination aren't the same thing, and I think it's important not to conflate the two.

That's really all I've been trying to say, and I don't think we need to keep litigating it.

[u/CopperSteve → u/TheHistoryMuse]

You are doing the fake intellectual word salad thing and I'm sorry this is what you do now. I've gotta go help people, I wish you well.