As a bit of pessimist myself, some cynicism doesn’t surprise me.

But there are just way too many people in the world who get offended over everything, including oxygen, just like Dee said.

I think a lot of it boils down to that fact that more and more people have this sense of entitlement-that simply being born entitles them to have whatever they want, (like oh…say pirated books, growl…or the nice car that they can’t afford but they’ll go into hole because they just wants it so badly).

The majority of people USED to be willing to work for what they had, and work harder for the things they really wanted.

Now it seems like the balance is slipping and more and more people just expect to get what they want, without worrying about whether they can afford, whether they deserve, whether they earned it. But when they can’t/don’t/aren’t give, they get ugly.

In doing reading elsewhere on the history of socialism and the American welfare system, I’ve also uncovered an interesting bit of information–people have personal lines drawn between “us” and “them” – or to put it more succinctly, people who “deserve” help and people who don’t. Fewer people are opposed to a socialist system that redistributes wealth to “like” people. Many more people object to it when that wealth is redistributed to people significantly different from them.

It has struck me as a bit odd, because while I’ve seen these occasionally over the past few years, I haven’t seen them anywhere near as frequent. Some of the situations I’ve seen lately have been pretty dire, involving death or chronic illness of a spouse or family member. Not much you can do there.

There’s other situations I’ve seen though, that I wonder… ok, sure, the people are in a bad spot but no worse than a good percent of people out there. Great that their friends are willing to try to help, but it doesn’t rate on the same level as “keep from losing house”/”care for dying mother” for me. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I don’t have a lot of money myself, so if I’m donating… I’m picky about where it goes.

It also didn’t surprise me.

In my tenure as host, I’ve seen a lot of generous souls on eHQ.com and I’ve also seen a lot of people who have gotten offended or derisive about…well, hell, oxygen. It doesn’t take much and we’ve had this kind of situation happen a lot. (LOL and Emmy was not involved)

What have I learned? That a) tone being absent can turn a sly joke into misinterpreted cruelty and b) you know, some folks can’t get past their own jealousies. They forget that when you covet someone else’s good fortune, you’re also coveting the difficulties they’ve had to overcome to receive it.

Sadly, it’s a lesson some people never learn.

Your mortgage hasn’t been paid for a couple of months since your husband was laid off, and you’re finding it difficult to even pay for groceries. Your eldest kid starts school soon, and he/she needs new clothes, as the ones he/she has are ill-fitting

As for auctions to help people, I’ve donated thousands to various authors and victims of weather events this year alone, in addition to the local charity and volunteer work that I do, so I couldn’t answer that part of your question either. I’m not bitter about giving money to people. It’s actually kinda fun.

As for eBay autions specifically, many of my comments about auctions are personal jokes. This summer during one auction, I speculated as to what kind of nut job would bid several hundred dollars on a bunch of books. Boy howdy, pissed a bunch of people off. Oh well. What nobody knew at the time is that I was the nut job making those bids. *shrugs* Hey, it was funny to me. As far as I can tell by a quick look at Jo Leigh’s auction list, I was the highest single donor there. I’m a giving kinda person *weg*.

And I know you said you didn’t want this to be about Emmy, but I just feel the need to to point this out~this ironic thing:

For all of Emmy’s comments, harsh as many of them are, I don’t think most, if any of them, come from bitterness. She likes to jerk people’s chains.

She was the one who spent over $500 to win the auction I held to raise money for the tsunami victims.

And I suspect she was also one of the bidders for the auctions done to raise money for Jo Leigh.

I’ve decided Emmy is just odd…I think she likes making people think she’s a mean bitch, but generally, mean bitches don’t spend the kind of money she did on a couple of books.

I come form a very very very large, very close knit family. And when one of us is in trouble, we get help. Lots of help. So much help you want to barricade the door and leave the phone off the hook sometimes . If one of us is in trouble second cousins 3 times removed will batter down the door offering support, work, time, resources and, yes, money. We fight like cats in a sack most of the time but if one of us is actually struggling the help is there

But I’ve found people who don’t have or aren’t used to that kind of support network can seem bitter and angry about it. They assume that the person needing help has gone round the helpers and guilted them into it. They assume the helpers were forced or coerced, even exploited. They even cast doubt on whether the need is genuine.

I pity them. I pity them because it means they don’t have friends good enough or family close enough who would rally round them in times of need. So they don’t understand when it happens with other people – and because it wouldn’t happen for them

And I don’t see the shame of asking for help. Yes X did it on their own and Y didn’t get help. But just because some people soldiered on on their own, suffering and striving, does that mean that it’s somehow immoral to take help from friends and family who freely offer and freely give – knowing you would help them if the tables were reversed?