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Buddy, Can you PayPal me a Dime?

In the aftermath of Savekaryn.com, "cyber-begging" websites have sprung up all over the Web. Is it just a fad, or is virtual panhandling here to stay?

By Kirk Peterson

Save Karyn, and buy her stuff!
credit: Karyn Bosnak

Since late June of 2002, Karyn Bosnak has become has the poster child for dot-com generation savviness, Internet ingenuity, and, according to some, the greed and self-entitlement that is often associated with victims of the Internet bubble collapse.

For her part, Bosnak insists that she never intended to create a firestorm of controversy when creating her website, savekaryn.com. The 29-year-old Brooklyn-based former television producer (she worked on the ill-fated daytime talk program The Ananda Lewis Show) says her intentions, in creating her site, were much more innocent. "I always thought about it as a lighthearted look at debt; I never realized so many people would take it so seriously."

Like many young, successful New Yorkers, Bosnak readily admits to having an inclination for shopping sprees and nights out on the town. She thought nothing of her weekly pedicures, frequent trips to Gucci, or Upper East Side apartment, with its sky-high rent. After years of living "high on the hog," as she puts it, Bosnak had racked up over $20,000 in credit card bills. When she lost her job last fall, she found herself penniless and debt-ridden, and was forced to move out of her chic Manhattan apartment to a cheaper one in Brooklyn.

By late spring, Bosnak was living hand-to-mouth, she recalls. "Sometimes, I couldn't even scrape up enough money to get to work," she says. She managed to find work producing shows at The Discovery Channel's Animal Planet programming, but the pay was not enough to cover her bills. And that's when the idea for savekaryn.com struck her. "I guess it goes back to that theory, the one that everyone has thought to themselves at some point in their life, that if only 20,000 people gave me a dollar, I'd have $20,000. The only difference is that I didn't just think about it, I did it."

Support Independent Journalism
credit: Paypal

On her site, Bosnak asks people to donate money to her through PayPal, an Internet service which allows Web surfers to donate money or purchase items from websites with their credit cards. By placing a clickable PayPal icon, or "button," on her site, Bosnak enabled visitors to her site to send money as quickly as they could point and click. Bosnak has also raised several thousand dollars by auctioning off her used designer clothing and accessories on eBay. She even sells, "savekaryn.com" merchandise, such as t-shirts, coffee mugs and mouse pads on her site, the proceeds from which go partly toward her fundraising. "Together, we can banish credit card debt from my life!," she cheerily exclaims, promoting her own personal charity.

A week after launching her website, Bosnak was featured in the "hot sites" section of USA Today. Within days, she was receiving thousands of hits a day, and thousands of dollars in donations each week. During the height of publicity, the week of August 18, Bosnak received $2,630 in donations and $682 from eBay. Although most donors only toss her a few dollars, one anonymous donor coughed up $1,000. Since she launched it, her site has racked up one million visits, and rung up $13,323.08 in donations. Bosnak expects to have her debt fully paid off by mid-November, 2002.

Binislawa Refugee Camp
credit: Christopher Allbritton

"I think many people in their 20s and 30s can sympathize with Karyn," says Todd Asher, a 30 year-old operations manager at Bloomberg Television in New York. "I can relate to her plight, because after college I accumulated quite a bit of debt myself, I only wish I came up with the idea before she did!"

What started as one woman's experiment has turned into an Internet phenomenon. "Cyber-Begging," as it has been termed, had been added to the list of Internet fads that often come to go with the blink of an eye, such as amihotornot.com, which allowed you to rate the hotness of certain courageous web-surfers, and hamsterdance.com, which displayed dancing and singing hamsters all over your web browser.

Since Bosnak's awe-inspiring success, cyber-begging sites have multiplied all over the Net, vying for people's cash before the fad disappears into the Internet graveyard. Jennifer Glasser, a 24-year-old Canadian who suffers from Lyme disease, started helpjennifer.com in the hope that people would help her pay off her $50,000 in medical bills. Penny Hawkins, a 40-year-old nursing student from Tacoma, Washington, started her site, helpmeleavemyhusband.com, so that she could put herself through school and support herself, allowing her to divorce her husband.

Hawkins credits Bosnak with the inspiration for her site. "I could see why people would send her a dollar or two, just for laughs," she says. "I figured I was creative enough to come up with something as entertaining [as hers], and---voila! A cyber beggar was born!" Hawkins insists that the money she is raising will not be used for a divorce but rather to obtain a nursing degree, so she can support herself.

Although no one can see what Hawkins really does with the money, she posts every aspect of her finances and spending on her site for all to see. If anything, she believes people more readily donate to specific website causes, like her own, than to organizations like the Red Cross, because they know exactly where the money is going. "Many people who donate do so because they feel as if they know what their money is being spent on," says Hawkins. "It's not being diverted or hidden, like the 9/11 charity fiasco."

The people who have created "cyber-begging" sites in the wake of Save Karyn's success insist that their causes have more legitimacy and try to use that fact to acquire donations. Unlike Bosnak, they haven't had shopping sprees at Gucci, nor have they spent many nights out on the town. They're trying to pay off medical bills, or, as Hawkins' domain name indicates, trying to save money in order to divorce their husbands. "People write to say they are more compelled by my cause than hers, that she is asking for a 'hand-out' and I am asking for a 'hand-up,'"says Hawkins. "I do feel that my cause is more legitimate, but, then again, financial troubles are really subjective. I'm sure Karyn would think she needs it more for whatever reasons she has."

Debate over the legitimacy have caused a wave of controversy over "cyber-begging" websites. Sites such as dontsavekaryn.com and savekarynnot.com try to dissuade surfers from wasting their cash on Bosnak, who has turned the Internet into a "complete joke." "Together, we can banish financially irresponsible losers from the Internet!," exclaim Bob and Ben, creators of dontsavekaryn.com, a parody of Bosnak's site.

Yet the debates over the legitimacy of "cyber-begging" run much deeper than satires and parodies.

"I think Karyn Bosnak is a joke and anyone who gives her money is a soulless fool," says Christopher Allbritton, an independent journalist and creator of back-to-iraq.com. "She got herself into trouble by overspending and now, because she's 'cute' and 'funny,' as she puts it, she expects people to bail her out? Please. It's late-'90s self-entitlement run amok, and I think she doesn't deserve an iota of attention."

Allbritton is an independent journalist who has worked for The Associated Press and The New York Daily News. This summer, he traveled to Iraq, looking for stories. Now, he wants to return to Iraq, to cover the war, if it breaks out. He uses his website to update readers on events in Iraq, share stories and photos, and fund-raise for his trip.

Allbritton believes that journalism done independently from monstrous media conglomerates is important, because it gives the public the chance to see things that are otherwise ignored by the mass media. "I know that to cover major stories it takes major resources, and big corporate-owned media are probably the most effective way to do that," says Allbritton. "But independent journalists, such as myself, can cover the smaller stories or the ones no one feels is cost-effective."

As a way to reward his donors, Allbritton gives them the first look at his work and photographs. He also allows them to converse with him and give him story ideas. "It's a way of saying, 'thanks' for the coin, and they get a little something that they wouldn't otherwise get. In begging, the giver gets nothing back, except maybe a warm feeling."

As for the days of "cyber-begging," Allbritton thinks the end is near. "There will always be people online asking for money, no doubt, but its heyday is probably already past. The world can only stand so many Karyn Bosnaks."

RELATED LINKS

Get your own PayPal button!

Support Christopher Allbritton

Buy Karyn's stuff on eBay

Odd Todd: You can tip him, but don't call him a beggar

Would you rather save a cat? Then save Buster

Kirk Peterson is a journalism and history major in his junior year at New York University.

Launched: 12.12.01. Reproduction of material from any ReadMe pages without written permission strictly prohibited. ReadMe © 2002 New York University, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003-6636, (212) 998-7912, e-mail: readme@journalism.fas.nyu.edu