Check out this D.C. Craigslist RNR flamebait:
washington, DC craigslist > northern virginia > rants & raves
Couple in need
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Reply to: [please-dont-flame-the-happy-hubby-2-b]@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-03-21, 8:08AM EDT
This is a long shot, but here goes. I am 38 year old dealing with overwhelming task of getting married for the first time. My future wife and I are both employed, hard working tax paying citizens. She owns a condo in Las Vegas which unfortunatley has be to be short sold to get out from under that burden. At our age we basically are paying for our wedding by ourselves, which is putting further and further in debt. I can easily say it is the best investment we both have ever made! Unfortunatley we are still in need of help. With only 1 month till the big date. That is why I am posting this. If find you can donate, even a little bit I could not thank you enough.
God Bless
Jason
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Re: Couple in “need” (the courthouse steps)
Regarding this beggar bridegroom and his “long shot” at satisfying his nuptial “need”:
Maybe “Jason” still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too.
Otherwise, why is he begging a bunch of strangers on Craigslist to help pay for his catering bills? Is he even trying to hit up his parents or his fiancée’s parents? Is he shaking down his buddies and his girlfriend’s girlfriends? After all, at least those folks can look forward to attending this blessed celebration that he’s not even inviting us to crash in his charmless appeal.
When “Jason” and his lovely bride-to-be made these wedding arrangements many months ago, there were obvious signs that we were already heading into a recession, if we weren’t there already.
Besides that, if he’s 38, that means he was in his early twenties when the last recession hit. Of course, it could very well be that it didn’t hit him too hard back then, either.
Perhaps like a lot of D.C.-area workaholics, he is already married—to his career—and doesn’t have a concrete idea of how dire things are out here for many people.
Maybe he somehow thinks that asking anonymous strangers to help finance a wedding is not an asinine thing to do in an economy where anonymous strangers are losing their jobs, having to drop out of school to pay their bills, postponing retirement because their life savings are depleted, witnessing their businesses fold, and sacrificing their health while trying to stay afloat.
He may believe that asking for donations to carry on a lavish rite-of-passage party is not a tacky thing to do at a time when people are getting kicked out of their housing, watching their marriages & relationships fail, trying to explain unsettling new realities to their kids without upsetting them, having their “friends” turn their backs on them, losing their minds and their identities, becoming victims of crime as those with less scruples grow even more selfish and desperate, and more.
To be fair to “Jason,” so many people in our generation get suckered in by our parents, our friends, our sad-sack middle-class assumptions about the “American Dream,” and the extortionists of the wedding & hospitality industries who prey upon the princess-for-a-day fantasies of brides-to-be.
I’ve been to a few weddings in the last ten years where the families blew tens of thousands of dollars on a weekend—only to find out that the blessed couple filed for divorced within 3-5 years anyways... Many of these were extravagant affairs that were almost embarrassing to participate in because of all of the tasteless excess. Half the time we didn’t even know why these conspicuous consumers and careless carousers invited us to these over-the-top shindigs, as we barely knew the couple or the family.
I don’t know what the facts on Gen Y are but they can’t be very good either.
Our baby boomer parents have done a lot of us a huge disservice. Their rules no longer apply to many of us but they still keep at it, urging us to follow in their footsteps and hit all the adult milestones in the correct order, at the right time, just like they did.
I just want all you older (boomer and Gen Jones) folks to know that we are not all as blissfully oblivious and shameless as “Jason” appears to be.
washington, DC craigslist > northern virginia > rants & raves
Couple in need
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: [please-dont-flame-the-happy-hubby-2-b]@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-03-21, 8:08AM EDT
This is a long shot, but here goes. I am 38 year old dealing with overwhelming task of getting married for the first time. My future wife and I are both employed, hard working tax paying citizens. She owns a condo in Las Vegas which unfortunatley has be to be short sold to get out from under that burden. At our age we basically are paying for our wedding by ourselves, which is putting further and further in debt. I can easily say it is the best investment we both have ever made! Unfortunatley we are still in need of help. With only 1 month till the big date. That is why I am posting this. If find you can donate, even a little bit I could not thank you enough.
God Bless
Jason
----------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Couple in “need” (the courthouse steps)
“Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
—Ambrose Bierce
—Ambrose Bierce
Regarding this beggar bridegroom and his “long shot” at satisfying his nuptial “need”:
Maybe “Jason” still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too.
Otherwise, why is he begging a bunch of strangers on Craigslist to help pay for his catering bills? Is he even trying to hit up his parents or his fiancée’s parents? Is he shaking down his buddies and his girlfriend’s girlfriends? After all, at least those folks can look forward to attending this blessed celebration that he’s not even inviting us to crash in his charmless appeal.
When “Jason” and his lovely bride-to-be made these wedding arrangements many months ago, there were obvious signs that we were already heading into a recession, if we weren’t there already.
Besides that, if he’s 38, that means he was in his early twenties when the last recession hit. Of course, it could very well be that it didn’t hit him too hard back then, either.
Perhaps like a lot of D.C.-area workaholics, he is already married—to his career—and doesn’t have a concrete idea of how dire things are out here for many people.
Maybe he somehow thinks that asking anonymous strangers to help finance a wedding is not an asinine thing to do in an economy where anonymous strangers are losing their jobs, having to drop out of school to pay their bills, postponing retirement because their life savings are depleted, witnessing their businesses fold, and sacrificing their health while trying to stay afloat.
He may believe that asking for donations to carry on a lavish rite-of-passage party is not a tacky thing to do at a time when people are getting kicked out of their housing, watching their marriages & relationships fail, trying to explain unsettling new realities to their kids without upsetting them, having their “friends” turn their backs on them, losing their minds and their identities, becoming victims of crime as those with less scruples grow even more selfish and desperate, and more.
To be fair to “Jason,” so many people in our generation get suckered in by our parents, our friends, our sad-sack middle-class assumptions about the “American Dream,” and the extortionists of the wedding & hospitality industries who prey upon the princess-for-a-day fantasies of brides-to-be.
I’ve been to a few weddings in the last ten years where the families blew tens of thousands of dollars on a weekend—only to find out that the blessed couple filed for divorced within 3-5 years anyways... Many of these were extravagant affairs that were almost embarrassing to participate in because of all of the tasteless excess. Half the time we didn’t even know why these conspicuous consumers and careless carousers invited us to these over-the-top shindigs, as we barely knew the couple or the family.
“In economics, a study (done by Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute) challenged the notion that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it.[16] The study, 'Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?' focuses on the income of males 30-39 in 2004 (those born April, 1964 – March, 1974) and is based on Census/BLS CPS March supplement data.[17]
The study, released May 25, 2007, emphasized that in real dollars, this generation made less (by 12%) than had their fathers at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in the portion of father/son family household income generated by fathers/sons have slowed (from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%), barely keeping pace with inflation, though increases in overall father/son family household income are progressively higher each year because more women are entering the workplace, contributing to family household income.[18]”
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
The study, released May 25, 2007, emphasized that in real dollars, this generation made less (by 12%) than had their fathers at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in the portion of father/son family household income generated by fathers/sons have slowed (from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%), barely keeping pace with inflation, though increases in overall father/son family household income are progressively higher each year because more women are entering the workplace, contributing to family household income.[18]”
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
I don’t know what the facts on Gen Y are but they can’t be very good either.
Our baby boomer parents have done a lot of us a huge disservice. Their rules no longer apply to many of us but they still keep at it, urging us to follow in their footsteps and hit all the adult milestones in the correct order, at the right time, just like they did.
I just want all you older (boomer and Gen Jones) folks to know that we are not all as blissfully oblivious and shameless as “Jason” appears to be.
3 comments:
I work in the wedding industry and even I find this pathetic...
Really, if you cant afford it dont do it and really totally dont go into debt to do it.
my favorite internet solicitation was www.giveboobs.com
Oy, some people will tell any sort of sob story to get cash from suckers.
Sleepless: the Baby Boomers were the last generation that lived in a USA that wasn't clearly overpopulated and running out of resources.
We sort of knew that it was likely to happen, but it sure hadn't happened yet, and most of us honestly thought that we were already taking care of it by pressing certain positions on certain issues. We never really expected things to turn out as they have.
For one thing, not even the most fantastic science fiction writers ever predicted that we'd be successfully invaded by Mexico, fer goodness sakes. None of those writers seemed to think that we'd ever see $4.00 gasoline before World War Three. Nor that Wall Street would lead an economic crash so global and epic that the Great Depression may soon be referred to in history books as the First Great Depression. And for all we know, they may write up the next decade or so as "the Second Civil War".
All I know is that even though I qualify as being on the trailing edge of the Baby Boom, I still haven't been able to buy my own house or a brand-new car, which my grade-school dropout (he was 12 in September 1929) father was able to do a few times.
The more I think about it the more I realize that they have a simple solution if the need cash....sell a kidney or two. If this is truly a life-altering event for them, why not go full Gift of the Magi style and give up a prized possession to do this.
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