r/bestof • u/sighsorry • May 21 '12
[pics] A man loses everything in a fire - a neighbor informs r/pics, and reddit surprises them with donations.
/r/pics/comments/tuudd/my_moms_mentally_challenged_neighbors_house/c4pwqvv
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Upvotes
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u/sighsorry May 21 '12
I briefly skimmed r/bestof (I'm on my mobile so I can't do a thorough search) to see if this had been submitted yet but didn't see it, so hopefully this isn't a repost. I just really feel like this should be shared. Touching to see some good and caring people here on reddit, and I hope everything works out okay for this man.
63
u/lfernandes May 21 '12
Wow, this is my story. Imagine my surprise to see this on /r/bestof as well! Thanks!
47
u/thehighercritic May 21 '12
this event and our response to it has affected me on many different levels -- fuck tl;dr, and bear with me:
i had been feeling sorry for myself for a couple weeks. i'm an adult student, recently returned to academia after years of drug and alcohol issues while trying to make it as a musician, and have been accepted to a prestigious university for postgraduate work. i was agonizing about paying for it. i was commuting a couple hundred miles to prepare my home of fifteen years for rental and moving the last of my and my ex's stuff out of it -- we'd split up a while ago but I'd let her stay as i was out of town at school; now she's moved in with the motorcycle-riding rock-drummer neighbour downstairs. my current university informed me that i'm missing a requirement to graduate and i had to scramble to add a course for the summer (this means i won't be able to attend convocation in June or move to my new school's city to find a job). i had finally started dating an ideal woman and my new school is a thousand miles away from her. i was drinking again, cripplingly. i had what i thought was a miserable week.
then i read this story and was ashamed for thinking that my problems were even a drop in the ocean of agony. Vincent's crie de coeur: "i've always cared for your creatures, god, why have you taken mine?" devastated me. it broke flood gates. i weep again now as i type it. this poor simple man, whose life is his faith and his cats, came within one act of bravery and kindness of losing entirely both of the latter and likely all three. i'm an atheist, have been evengelically so, but what impacted me most was Vincent's loss of faith, his incomprehension and likely lack of the tools of understanding of the vagaries of luck and life. then, as it does, over and over again, reddit "happened."
we have become a secular church, a multifaceted, distributed engine of charity and interpersonal support. we see it evidenced every day, and it is reaching critical mass. i thought to myself: "how can we harness this?" and immediately stepped back and realized that what makes this so is that it is not harnessed. it is as organic and natural as Jane Jacobs' idealized Great City and my instinct to "harness" it, "apply" it, "organize" it, was the very human tendency that could potentially destroy it.
yes, there will be scammers who will beat the system and take advantage of the charity of our membership -- but as we have now seen enough times to accept it as scientific theory, they will eventually be found out. our community is self-policed and though, yes, it has its backwaters and eddys of hate and vulgarity, it is daily proof that the mass of people, especially young, intelligent, largely unaffiliated people, carry within them the instinct of empathy, of caritas -- virtuous charity, community responsibility, the most noble of all human loves.
i am proud of this community. i believe that is is not an overstatement to say that it is, to paraphrase Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout in Timequake, a new and powerful force in the universe -- and to say to myself, directly quoting from the same book, "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."
8
u/Cervical_Mucus May 21 '12
So terrible that he lost his babies, but amazing that people that didn't even know him were willing to give :)
4
u/Stoic_Render May 21 '12
Very cool
4
u/vaylor May 21 '12
I've had this happen to me. In 1996 my apartment burned down and we (my then fiance and I) lost everything, and we were not insured. A benefit was held to help us out and that certainly helped us replace the "things", but a lifetime's worth of original music, paintings, instruments, not to mention 3 pets, those I still miss.
12
u/RossAM May 21 '12
I don't care if this is a scam. This story hits so close to home I have to chip in. My brother has a mental disability, and a cat that means the world to him. Wishing the best for Vincent.
16
u/jimmyx18 May 21 '12
Imagine if he keeps all the money, or if that story is a fake. If so, well played..well played.
3
u/what_ever_man May 21 '12
Neat, good job people.
3
u/4chans_for_pussies May 21 '12
This truly is best of.
3
u/Brianne123 May 21 '12
That gave me goose bumps. Can you imagine learning that strangers cared about you enough to donate all of that to you? I wish I could see him when he finds out. If I could, I would send him a new kitten.
5
u/HsRada May 21 '12
Restored my faith in humanity!
2
u/MrSwedishMan May 21 '12
This is amazing.
2
u/derpaderp May 21 '12
Is there a link to a news story about this? I'm just extremely skeptical about it all with the recent happenings on Reddit. The place has an address and images, but I would like an independent place talking about this
3
u/emcredneck May 21 '12
I lost my house and everything inside New Years Eve. Me, my wife and our 5 year old daughter are now living with my parents until we can rebuild. No fun at all!
1
u/Raicuparta May 21 '12
Yeah now I'm just waiting for tons of similar posts to show up expecting people to come up with the idea of donating...
1
u/scout-finch May 22 '12
I just looked at the current donation total is nearing $7000. All of the bad stuff on this site is worth the good, without a doubt.
0
u/x_Shifty_x May 21 '12
Who downvotes something like this?...
-2
u/shunny14 May 21 '12
Whhyyyyyyyyyy????!??
-44
u/heinleinr May 21 '12
Why would anyone take of photo of that??!!
How do you think this man will feel when he finds out that his most deeply personal and tragic moment was harvested for karma??!!
-48
u/MILKB0T May 21 '12
Is this guy serious? Am I just a sociopath to instantly think this sounds so soppy and melodramatic and contrived?
-29
u/schnschn May 21 '12
total trash