When Did Dignity Become a GoFundMe?

I grew up poor. Real poor.

Not the Instagram kind. Not the “character-building” kind people romanticize after the fact. I grew up in farm country in the northwestern corner of Minnesota in the ’70s and ’80s, raised by a working community that took pride in doing the work, even when the money was thin.

Who am I kidding? I came of age in the ’80s. I was born in ’72. That matters, because the values were different then. You didn’t go to the courthouse for food stamps or welfare if you were able-bodied. Not because it was illegal, but because it was shameful. You’d be looked down upon. Hard. And that social pressure wasn’t cruelty; it was accountability.

Where wealth was absent, work was abundant.

You didn’t make a lot of money, but you made enough. And if you wanted more, you worked more. You sacrificed your free time for a little financial security. You mowed lawns. You shoveled snow. You drove truck during harvest. You tossed hay bales. You did whatever someone was willing to pay you for.

And I fucking loved it.

I knew we weren’t rich. We were probably poor, though it was hard to tell because most of the area was, except for a few rich farmers who got bailed out by the government back in the day (fucking posers). But there was dignity in self-reliance. There was pride in solving your own problems. That was the American deal: freedom to succeed and freedom to fail.

Fast forward forty years. What the hell happened?

We now live in a country where very few people seem willing to work for a dollar, and where personal hardship has been transformed into public fundraising campaigns. We’ve become a welfare culture, not just through government policy, but through expectation. And that’s not what this country was founded on.

The Founders didn’t want a strong central government controlling people’s lives, because control always costs freedom. But they also didn’t envision a society where every setback comes with a digital tip jar.

Which brings me to the part that’s going to make me sound like an asshole, even though that’s not how I mean it.

This past weekend, there was a fundraiser pool tournament for someone in league who had medical issues last year and is now struggling with the bills, at least, that’s how I understand it. If I’m wrong, I apologize. There’s also a GoFundMe. People from my team went, donated money, and afterward texted about what a great turnout it was and how everyone really showed up.

And that rubbed me wrong. Hard. Not because I lack empathy. Not because I don’t understand illness. But because of how I was raised.

I was raised believing that adulthood came with responsibility, that solving your own problems was part of your freedom. I understand helping close friends. Family. People you actually know. That’s community.

But strangers? Someone you recognize by name from one game every five months?

At what point does generosity turn into obligation?

Where do we draw the line?

If we decide we’re social beings who help each other financially, where does it stop? Immediate family? Close friends? Three degrees of separation? Four? Because we can’t do it for everyone, not without fundamentally restructuring the country into something that trades liberty for enforced collectivism.

In 1980s small-town Minnesota, no self-respecting citizen would have allowed the town to host a fundraiser to cover their personal financial responsibilities. It would have been humiliating. Today, people broadcast their hardship online and hope to strike it rich on the generosity of others.

And that’s the shift that bothers me.

Because when everyone has a GoFundMe, nobody has dignity. When every problem becomes a public ask, work ethic gets replaced with entitlement. When begging just goes digital, it doesn’t stop being begging, it just gets better Wi-Fi.

This isn’t about one person. This isn’t about illness. This is about culture.

What happened to the American spirit, the one that said I’ll figure it out, even when it hurt? When did sacrifice become optional and responsibility become crowd-sourced?

I don’t have all the answers. But I do know this: something fundamental broke when dignity got replaced with electronic begging, and we all decided that was normal.

And no, that doesn’t make sense to me. Not then. Not now. Not ever.