For the love of God
Putting the "fun" back in "GoFundMe"

Lately, I’ve been feeling like, we as a society have forgotten the collective value of shame. Nowhere is this more evident than on crowdfunding platforms. Websites like GoFundMe seem to solely exist to provide a stopgap for the crushing inadequacies of the American healthcare system, or to help your unemployed acquaintance get a tattoo because it would like, really boost their self-esteem, ya know?

From fulfilling someone’s desperate desire to own a hedgehog, to funding the purchase of a brand new 2024 Ford Bronco (the Sasquatch edition, obviously), there’s seemingly no whim unworthy of your financial support these days. But where’s the cringiness? Where’s the icky internal guilt? Where’s the outright humiliation that’s supposed to be associated with an adult begging for other people’s hard-earned money like some kid sitting on the lap of a mall Santa?

Reasonable alternatives to drumming up some cash (like crafting a careful savings plan or opening up a credit card or – gag – getting a real job!) have become obsolete in an age where you can simply create a GoFundMe page, sit back and watch the donations come flooding in. 

Forget using philanthropy to patch the gaping holes in the fabric of our social safety net. If that one chick from your high school can ask for $9,000 to pay for her trip to India (to get a yoga instructor certification that she assures you will help her bring love and light into the world), then I feel entitled to ask strangers to foot the bill for my nonsensical hankerings too!

Here’s a list of my upcoming (shamelessly self-serving) GoFundMe campaigns. Requested dollar amounts are TBD:

• Get someone to fix the gearbox on the Hesperus chairlift because I want to be able to cry on my snowboard at night.

• Teach Boomers how to stop using commas as periods in Facebook posts.

• Build me a functional DeLorean time machine so I can go back to 1985 and watch Mötley Crüe perform at the height of their sexual prowess (I promise not to accidentally make out with my mom while I’m there).

• Make cinnamon roll canisters less scary to open.

• Design an internet software that filters out any content related to the. intimate details of Taylor Swift’s private dating life so I can stop feeling like I’m the third wheel to all of her relationships.

• Help me figure out the name of that one song that goes “bum BA DUN ba daaaa” that Shazam strangely couldn’t identify when I tried to sing it into the app.

• Advance animal science to a point where the smell of my dogs’ food doesn’t make me want to vomit or give me nightmarish flashbacks to living downwind of the Purina factory in Flagstaff.

• As an addendum to the cinnamon roll thing: I also need someone to invent a whole new way of opening champagne bottles that doesn’t involve any popping or projectiles or other things that make me feel like I’m under siege when I’m simply trying to make a relaxing mimosa.

• Make dairy stop hurting my tummy. :(

• Convince music industry executives that we don’t need them to keep taking songs that are already good and mutate them into much, much worse remixes or cover songs (leave Tracy Chapman alone).

• Buy me a king-size bed because sometimes my husband knees me in the back in the middle of the night like we’re in a WWE SmackDown steel cage match, and I have to jostle his shoulder and say, “hey, you’re kneeing me in the back.”

• Fund my cat’s lifesaving emergency medical treatment. PSYCH! You thought that one was going to be for real, didn’t you? LOL. No, but seriously, I do need help to quit biting my nails.

• You know what? Go ahead and make it so that no foods are scary. Period. I’m already a very easily startled person, and it’s a hard condition to live with.

• Just flat-out pay off my mortgage. Not having to worry about such mundane, earthly burdens will free up the mental and emotional space for me to explore the passions that set my soul alight, such as generally not having to work or be employed in any way.

• Make truck nutz illegal. 

Thanks, everyone! Your donations mean the world to me! And don’t worry, I absolutely will not reach out to you individually to thank you for your generous contribution. I think a generic, one-off Instagram story will suffice.

With love and gratitude, Addyson.

– Addyson Santese