Crowdfunding: The American Dream

Dexerto - A pizza delivery driver braved a snowstorm to deliver to a wealthy neighborhood, only to receive a $2 tip. However, a police officer soon stepped in to help.

The Rock Star Pizza driver, Connor Stephanoff, walked half a mile to ensure his order was delivered. In a viral TikTok posted by police officer Richard Craig, he’s seen navigating the hazardous conditions in Brownsburg, Indiana, while snowplows worked to clear the streets. 

Stephanoff had initially driven to make the delivery, but his route was obstructed by a school bus crash that blocked the road. Determined to complete the order, he left his car behind and continued the journey on foot through the storm.

Craig was outside assisting residents with the treacherous road conditions when he spotted Stephanoff trudging through the snow-covered street. Concerned for his safety, the officer urged him to move to the sidewalk. Stephanoff explained that he was braving the snow to complete a $40 pizza delivery.

The definition of "The American Dream" is forever changing. When Christopher Columbus first alerted white people of America's existence, the dream was to find a boat that would take you across the Atlantic Ocean to a place you would maybe not starve to death. That was pretty much it. Make it to America, build a house out of logs, have 16 kids, hopefully half of them survive child birth, then ban together as a family and use the resources at your disposal to stay alive until you die of natural causes in your late 40's. "The American Dream" was simply not to die.

After a few hundred years later, American's got a little more comfortable and started demanding things like freedom. So America declared war on the British. King George sent 24,000 brightly coated men in a single file line to take turns being shot by American's hiding in bushes until Britain was out of soldiers and we won our freedom. From there, a more modern American dream took shape. Get some form of schooling, use it to build a business/career from the ground up, and take the money from that to raise a family and give them rich, fulfilling lives. Or if you were a woman, the dream was to seduce a man capable of that. 

Nowadays, "The American Dream" takes on several different forms. Women can achieve things on their own. People no longer feel obligated to start families. Nobody is satisfied with just "living comfortably". The goal is unlimited wealth. Basically the American Dream is Dave Portnoy. Start a business from scratch, work your ass off for x amount of years, and sell your business for more money than you could ever spend in your life. If you play your cards right, someone might even sell your business back to you for $1. 

But there's an even better version of The American Dream than Dave Portnoy's version. If you really play your cards right, you can completely skip the middle part where you "work your ass off", and go right to unlimited wealth. Or at least fast forward through some of it. The American Dream is to be in the right place at the right time and catch a wave of internet money that sets you up for life. Investing in crypto at a right time, being the first hot girl to dance provocatively on the newest social media app, being the hottest ring girl at a Netflix fake boxing match, being a hot girl who makes a viral joke about spitting on dicks, or having any instance of you being wronged caught on camera so that sympathetic strangers give you money.

“Did you get a good tip?” Craig asked. “Two dollars,” Stephanoff replied, looking at the receipt again before clarifying, “Well, $2.15.”

“Two dollars?” the officer exclaimed, taken aback. “Are you serious? Cold-blooded! Two dollars. Look at this man—he walked through hell and high water to deliver a pizza.”

In the caption of the clip, Craig wrote: “The delivery was about 1/4 mile past where the bus was blocking the street. This young man did not allow this to discourage him. He didn’t call his manager to complain, he didn’t call the customer and tell them their $40 pizza order could not be delivered.”

To show his support, the officer gave Stephanoff $15 and set up a GoFundMe campaign with an initial goal of $500. Remarkably, the fundraiser has surpassed $25,000 at the time of writing.

Obviously $25,000 isn't setting this pizza delivery guy up for life. I'm just using Connor Stephanoff of Rock Star Pizza as a jumping off point. Connor caught the perfect storm of events to hit a nice little lottery ticket. If we're being honest, he didn't do anything particularly special. He walked 5 minutes through the snow with a pizza and got stiffed on a tip. As far as pizza delivery man horror stories go, that's like a 2 out of 10. But he was caught on video. The fact that it was a police officer who posted the video added credibility. He got the "wealthy neighborhood" label attached to the video. He's delivering pizza in Brownsburg, Indiana - a nice little suburb of Indianapolis. I'm sure most folks in that neighborhood aren't strapped for cash, but that's not a million dollar house in the background. The people living there aren't Scrooge McDucking into pools full of gold coins. But it doesn't matter. He caught a wave and made a quick $25k. Good for him. He deserves it as much as any working class kid. You can't be mad at the internet coming together to help a guy out. It's nice when good things happen to people. 

For Connor, his internet crowd-funding come-up happened organically. He didn't even have to create the GoFundMe himself. That's the most ideal, most morally right way to catch a bag of other people's money online. But there are other ways to go about it. GoFundMe is big business. People make serious money via crowd-funding. Some come about it honestly. Others do so by blatantly lying. And some find a nice little gray area. So if you're looking to make a little GoFundMe money without completely making shit up, based on what I've seen in my days of working on the internet, here's a few ways of going about it.

Hospital Bills

GoFundMe is the backbone of the American healthcare system. One of the few things people of both political parties agree on (I think), is that the system is broken. Nobody agrees on how to fix it, but we know what we have right now kinda sucks. Because of that, people are quick to shell out money when they see a poor family who's child will not survive unless they come up with $50,000. 

I DO NOT personally condone this, but if your goal is to get rich, microwaving your baby for a minute so they develop blood cancer is a high-risk maneuver. You run the risk of murdering your child. You could go to prison for life if caught. Most importantly, even if you microwave your baby perfectly to give him just the right amount of cancer, it means you start out your career as a GoFundMe Professional in the red. But you have to spend money to make money. If your baby is exceptionally cute, and you put together a well-edited video that really tugs at the heart strings, your GoFundMe earnings could exceed your bills. People won't only want your baby to survive. They'll want him to thrive. They'll want to buy him all the best toys and send him to Disney World. They'll want him to sit courtside with dad at a Lakers game. For his parents to buy a house on the lake and a brand new pontoon boat. As your baby gets older, if he develops a personality, you might even parlay your child's cancer into a career as an influencer. 

I suppose that's a bit of an extreme way of going about it, but if you browse GoFundMe, you'll see endless pages dedicated to raising money for hospital bills.

Being Fired

As much as Americans enjoy rallying around hating our healthcare system, we love rallying against big corporations even more. Combine the two and you get a Luigi Mangione, "murder a father of two in broad daylight and be revered as hero" situation. Lowly working-class you being fired by an evil, money-hungry, puppy-slaughtering corporation could be a brilliant career move. 

But it’s not as simple as not showing up to work for a week and getting fired for a reasonable cause. You gotta give your GoFundMe customers a story. Do you have a young child? If the father out of the picture? Addicted to crack, perhaps? Is your young child intellectually disabled? Is the reason you’re 90-minutes late to work every day because if you don’t walk him to school, he’ll start biting again? And if he bites Susie one more time he’ll be kicked out of the private school where he’s on scholarship, and you’ll be forced to send him to public school where he’ll surely slip through the cracks and his life will be ruined forever - i.e. the corporation that fired you ruined both you and your innocent child's life?

Or you don’t have a dear, sweet, tragically disabled child to carry water for you, then try to get yourself fired for a morally righteous reason. Say you notice a disturbing trend where the bank you work for has been denying loans to customers of a certain race. Bring that up on the bank floor during the busiest time of day. Get into a screaming match with your boss. Be vulgar. You’ll be fired for behaving that way in front of customers, but when you tell the story of how you were fired because you took a stand for minorities and fought back against a discriminatory big bank… you’ll make a year’s salary in a month. Parlay the money + your 15 minutes of fame to start a podcast where you interview other people who’ve been fired for standing up for what’s right. Create a career out "the worst thing that's ever happened to you". 

Saving Dogs

For the right audience, needy dogs can be even more profitable than needy people. Think about it. When a celebrity you sort of recognize pops up on a commercial asking you to donate to Operation Smile, and shows you pictures of children with unsightly cleft lips, your reaction is “AHH!! YUCK!!”

But when Sarah McGlaughlin with the ASPCA presents you with a montage of homeless puppies set to “In The Arms Of The Angel”, you say, “Aww poor dogs, let me get my credit card”. 

Move somewhere where there’s an alarming number of stay dogs. I recommend Fort Worth, Texas. I lived there for a year in 2015 and was legitimately shocked by the amount of strays I’d see on a daily basis. I didn’t want a dog at alll, and I only made it 4 months before I accidentally stumbled up one at work and couldn't help but take him home. I was literally bullied into it. Everybody else at my office said no and it was either I take him home or just throw him back outside. 10 years later, Dock is still going strong.

Anyways, what you do is set up a generic “Save The Dogs” GoFundMe. For every $100 you make, go to South Fort Worth, scoop up a dog, and take them to get spayed or neutered. Should be about $60 a pop. That’s $40 profit per dog. Unless there's been a drastic change to the dog population down there, you should have an endless supply. Even if you can’t find the dogs a home, you’re doing a good thing to help control the pet population. Unless that's too sadistic to just go around chopping dogs balls off. But it's good for the species overall, right? I don't think Bob Barker would lie to me. Now that I type that out I think you might have to find each dog a home. Regardless, there's money to be made somewhere in the crowdfunding dog space.

Being Scammed

If you fuck up your finances in a respectable way, by making a poor decision that could have happened to any right-minded person, nobody will take sympathy on you. If you make a bad investment, or purchase a lemon of a used car that breaks down after one week, you’re on your own. But if you make a series of decisions so inexcusably bad, proving yourself gullible beyond belief, people will come out of the woodwork to make you whole.

Take a gamble and send a few thousands dollars to the next Algerian Prince who emails you in need of assistance. You never know, he could be legit. Maybe in a couple weeks that $50k wire transfer he promised you once he regains access to his family’s treasure will come through Western Union. If not, fire up a GoFundMe where you humbly admit that you believed sending 3 000 USD to your Beloved Friend, 'princeofalgeria@zmail.com' was the right thing to do. 

Obviously you set your GoFundMe goal at $50k, because that’s what you were promised. And you were really relying on that money to start the world’s first fast casual surf & turf restaurant you’ve always dreamed about. People will rally around that idea (because it rules) and soon enough you’ll be the owner of the fattest new restaurant in San Antonio. 

Sex Change

If there was ever a time to ask for support from strangers to fund your journey in transitioning to 1 of the 2 government approved genders, it’s right now while people are mad. Strike while the irons hot. And I know you’re probably thinking, “You want me to surgically sex change operation to at best come out a few thousand dollars in the black?”

First off, no. This is obviously a joke. Secondly, you’re not thinking broad enough. Your physical body doesn't need to have anything to do with your transition. It’s not for other people to decide what makes you feel like the real you. Maybe growing your hair out, putting a dot on your forehead, and purchasing thousands of dollars in gold jewelry and a bright red Range Rover is what makes you the Indian woman you’ve always been on the inside. Or by stopping shaving and doing a full home remodel complete with brand new furniture, an 80” 12K TV and surround sound speakers is what makes you feel like a man. The money you’re raising is for your journey. It’s up to you what that journey looks like.

Clearly there are more noble ways to go about making a quick buck. Getting a regular job, selling drugs, robbing people at gun point, etc. But every time I hear a story of someone making money on GoFundMe, I can't help my wheels from turning. I can't help but wonder what percentage of GoFundMe's out there are complete bullshit, and how many people are successfully getting away with it. If you go deep into the bowels of GoFundMe.com, there's some real bold asks on there. A LOT of people raising money after falling victim to scams. A lot of people asking strangers to pay for them to go on vacation. 

But I'm sure most of them are legit. And for the love of god, will somebody (not me) step up and get Ricky a god damn PS5 so he can experience better graphics and faster load times.