We could use a little more naivete

Working nights in Lodi, there aren’t a lot of ways to connect to people (especially if you aren’t a big drinker). So one of the ways I pass the time after work is on Internet communities. A few of them are about certain hobbies or topics, but I also have a couple I lurk and very rarely comment in “just for fun,” and my favorite of those has theme days (Macro Mondays, Off Topic Tuesdays).

Today, for Off Topic Tuesday, someone posted about Nicole Rodovsky, a disabled woman who is facing eviction because she lost her HUD support and didn’t know to appeal. She’s on the wait list for emergency assistance and to get back on HUD, but in the meantime, she’s fallen behind on rent. She tried to make up the difference on her own and failed, so she turned to the Internet in a last-ditch effort, asking people to donate just $1, to keep herself and her service cat (yes, you read that right) Diamond in their apartment instead of on the streets.

Most of the responses were positive, and quite a few people said they’d chipped in a dollar or at least passed the story on. But one or two people spoke up and called it a scam, and said that those of us who’d bought the story were naive.

I thought that was really sad. I know we’re in a weak economy right now, but even so, a good many of us can afford a dollar, and what else can we spend a dollar on? A bottle of water? A candy bar? Two stamps? So if it is a scam, it’s not nearly on the scale of most of them.

And going through her blog, it would be an incredibly elaborate scam — there are several years of entries, including photos and video, of Nicole and her cat and new scooter.

But even more, it’s really sad that cases like these are so often scams that this is our gut reaction. I have to admit that even before anyone said anything, I’d gone and checked it out for myself, and googled the blogger to see if her story was legit, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. (I’d already given a couple bucks, but still.)

This shouldn’t be our gut reaction. Just because a woman pretended to have cancer on the Internet, or because some people aren’t actually homeless or use the money to buy alcohol, we shouldn’t immediately doubt stories of those in need. But those stories tend to get a lot more publicity than the stories of people who actually do need and receive help, and who go on to be successful or change lives. Bernie Madoff gets way more press time than Brenden Foster, and that shouldn’t be the case. When did schadenfreude become more important than showing the good that people can do?

So I prefer to be naive. It’s incredible to see dozens of people commenting on a message board that they’d donated a dollar, $2.50, $7. It’s beautiful to hear that Nicole has raised nearly $500 in under a day, and that so many people are pulling for her and Diamond to stay in their home — complete strangers from all over the country and even from other countries, connected by the Internet and a tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt. If that’s what naivete inspires, then I’m all for it. We need more of it.

There is enough bad in the world without our own pessimism. Why look for storm clouds instead of silver linings?