Conditional friendship
Jul. 7th, 2005 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenAnd in the latest instalment of LJ Drama Theatre... some days back a LJ poster falsely reported that her cat had been set on fire by persons unknown, and she needed $5000 to cover vet bills. Close friends who trusted her spread the word, and unsurprisingly a flood of sympathy and donations poured in, punctuated by frequent updates on the cat's supposed condition.
One of her friends became suspicious, and tried to check the story, only to find a mysterious lack of verification from the police & vet clinics & SPCA who supposedly dealt with this case. She posted her reservations, and was duly torn into for being the Grinch Who Stole Charity. Eventually, the culprit admitted the hoax and claimed she would return people's money, some of which at least seems to have happened.
Whether her real motivation was financial, attention-seeking, or - as she claims - to prove to her father that Internet People are real friends, I don't know. (My suspicion is 'attention' - I wouldn't be surprised if even the storm of angry comments she's getting now are feeding that, which is why I'm not posting some of what follows on her journal.) Honestly, though, I'm less surprised by the hoax itself than by the number of people who are jumping in to defend her with sentiments like this:
It was an interesting and perfectly valid experiment, it was simply carried out in a way that neglected to take into account certain easy-to-forget, though very important, things... It seems to me that if something like this would destroy a friendship, you probably weren't very good friends in the first place.
And I say, bugger the notion of 'unconditional friendship'. Trust is one of the most precious things that I can give somebody. When I give it, I accept that people are fallible, and that trust may be broken by carelessness, or misunderstanding, or anger, or failure of will. Those things are difficult and slow to forgive, I won't pretend otherwise, but with time and goodwill they can be forgiven.
But if they don't even understand the importance of that gift, and treat it as a lightweight thing to be bartered or spent for some purpose, that sort of thing doesn't fall under "everybody makes mistakes". If you can forget that trust matters, we're too far apart to share anything I'm willing to call 'friendship'.
(Admittedly, my reactions to this are somewhat coloured by my own memories of the Great Sarah Fiasco of 1997, but I think I'd feel much the same way even without that little ray of sunshine in my past.)
One of her friends became suspicious, and tried to check the story, only to find a mysterious lack of verification from the police & vet clinics & SPCA who supposedly dealt with this case. She posted her reservations, and was duly torn into for being the Grinch Who Stole Charity. Eventually, the culprit admitted the hoax and claimed she would return people's money, some of which at least seems to have happened.
Whether her real motivation was financial, attention-seeking, or - as she claims - to prove to her father that Internet People are real friends, I don't know. (My suspicion is 'attention' - I wouldn't be surprised if even the storm of angry comments she's getting now are feeding that, which is why I'm not posting some of what follows on her journal.) Honestly, though, I'm less surprised by the hoax itself than by the number of people who are jumping in to defend her with sentiments like this:
It was an interesting and perfectly valid experiment, it was simply carried out in a way that neglected to take into account certain easy-to-forget, though very important, things... It seems to me that if something like this would destroy a friendship, you probably weren't very good friends in the first place.
And I say, bugger the notion of 'unconditional friendship'. Trust is one of the most precious things that I can give somebody. When I give it, I accept that people are fallible, and that trust may be broken by carelessness, or misunderstanding, or anger, or failure of will. Those things are difficult and slow to forgive, I won't pretend otherwise, but with time and goodwill they can be forgiven.
But if they don't even understand the importance of that gift, and treat it as a lightweight thing to be bartered or spent for some purpose, that sort of thing doesn't fall under "everybody makes mistakes". If you can forget that trust matters, we're too far apart to share anything I'm willing to call 'friendship'.
(Admittedly, my reactions to this are somewhat coloured by my own memories of the Great Sarah Fiasco of 1997, but I think I'd feel much the same way even without that little ray of sunshine in my past.)
