Week Twenty-Three: "Go Fraud Me"

Artifice can be defined as clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others. This tool is not only used in politics, but also where we would least expect it to be - take a look at GoFundMe, for example. It is said to be "the #1 and most trusted free fundraising platform," (which I do not totally disagree with) but are all of the fundraisers on this website legitimate? Yes, I know that the majority of people on the website are truly in need of the money and are being serious about their fundraisers. In my knowledge, however, there are many people out there posting fake stories in order to earn money without doing any work. In fact, a woman created a page called "Go Fraud Me" in order to hunt down fake campaigns and expose the people that created them. There have been numerous fundraisers related to "fake cancer," "fake car accidents," "fake deaths," and more. According to gofraudme.com, there had been a 21-year old Brisbane man who was guilty to fraud after raising over $10,000 for cancer treatments, only to spend it on living expenses instead. There was also a woman that let her child become malnourished just so she could use her daughter's story to raise more than $15,000 on GoFundMe. Evidently, there have been many uses of artifice on this "most trusted" fundraising website, and the fact that political leaders use artifice in order to create a sense of faux intimacy with citizens explains that it is becoming a huge issue that needs to be addressed somehow.