Skepticism makes me sad

The world is upsetting to me. Because it has fundamentally changed my basic nature.
Let's go through the time line that brought me to that realization this afternoon.

Still waking up with my first cup of coffee (it's been rough sleeping lately), I was scrolling through Facebook and found this link to a plea for donations/assistance.

It's a horrendous story. A man walking through Brooklyn gets harassed and then attacked and wakes up with a literally broken face. And he has no health insurance. But the donation page doesn't offer any of that information - that's what I got off of someone saying they knew him, one of the people posting this link around Facebook, often on the pages of prominent/well known Drag personalities who are likely to have a lot of fans.

In reading the page, my gut reaction was "how much cash do I have in my account right now?" My gut reaction with "help". Then, just to get more information about what happened I looked up the name. Nothing but a Friendster profile that hasn't been updated since 2006. So I tried some news searches - surely there would be at least one little blogger blurb about a really violent gay bashing in hipster-land Williamsburg in February. Surely. Right? Nope. Nothing.

Then I realize that there's no actual information about the assault, what happened, background. Anything. There's no police report as far as I can tell. There's no information at all about this happening. And suddenly - I realize I'm building this case for this all being a scam to prey on the good natures of these Facebook queens and their fans. Who want to help and who feel awful for this person. I realize that my instincts drove me to double check, to verify - like calling back the bank who just called me and asked for my account information. Like checking phishing sites to determine the veracity of an email from PayPal I just got. Like a million other scam-reflexes I've developed in my time on earth.

And now I'm just sad. Sad and frustrated that it's become only natural to second guess when someone needs something. That my gut reaction says that this is cooked up by someone taking advantage of a lot of people for really shitty reasons and that there is unlikely to be a Barie Shortell in a hospital bed in pain who needs my monetary help. And if there is - that need is going unmet. Because what? Because it doesn't add up? Because it feels sketchy? Because I've come to learn when someone taking advantage of generous natures looks like?

I don't hope this happened to this man. But I do hope that if it really did happen, that this is a cobbled together, poorly explained effort from his friends, in desperation, to help him. For the sake of everyone who is being sent this link and donating. Preying on the better natures of humanity is far far worse than preying on their weakness and hate. Because trust and compassion are extremely precious non-renewable resources. Once they're gone they're just ... gone.


I'm going to keep searching for something about this. Get proven wrong, and donate to help this man. At least that's what I hope will happen.

Until then, I'm just sad that my skepticism is so easily triggered.