GoFundMe scam changed my life in an ‘absurd’ way
Boy oh boy do I have a load of philosophical hoo-ha for you to choke down this otherwise lovely autumn morning.
Are you ready? You sure? This is really going to be a stretch. Don’t say I didn’t warn you ...
I want to thank Mark D’Amico, Kate McClure, and Johnny Bobbit for turning me into an absurdist instead of an existential nihilist.
How’s that for a grabber of a first sentence?
So yeah: Existential nihilism. May as well Wikipedia this to make it clear-ish: “the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.”
Dark stuff, to be sure, but kinda sorta where I land in my darker moments. Makes sense to me. After all, I remain agnostic when it comes to the idea of a higher power, and once that box is checked off, there’s really nowhere else to turn besides “life is meaningless.”
But then came D’Amico, McClure, and Bobbit - and the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office - and my life has changed.
OK. Here we go. Hang on! This trio was charged Thursday afternoon with conspiracy and theft by deception for (allegedly) concocting the entirety of their feel-good story from last year. A quick recap: McClure claimed to run out of gas on 95 in Philadelphia last year on a cold October’s night when out of nowhere appeared Bobbit, a homeless man, who gallantly told her to wait there while he took his last $20 up the road to a gas station. He came back with a can filled of gas. McClure was so touched, she and D’Amico kept coming back to give him money, try to help him out. They eventually started a GoFundMe page and raised over $400,000 for Bobbit.
It was the feel good story of the year.
But then things started unraveling. Bobbit accused the couple of stealing some of the money, using it on themselves. Bobbit, a recovering addict, lapsed back into addiction. The story went from feel-good to feel-not-so-good.
And now, according to the prosecutor, none of it is true. Fiction from the beginning. There was no latenight gasoline heroics. Just a scam, right from the start.
For a moment there, this news really gave me more juice for my nihilist worldview. Just when you think there is some meaning in the world - you know, charity or something - the world takes a dump on your doorstep. Just terrible.
But then it got me thinking. Maybe there’s a lesson here. And leave it to Wikipedia for me to find it.
Absurdism - specifically Albert Camus’s version of it - is a much better place to live.
Basically, “the absurd” is the “conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any.”
Absurdism takes this nugget of information, and instead of falling into the nihilist trap, allows for a much better - and proactive - way to think. Again, Wikipedia: Absurdism “hesitantly allows the possibility for some meaning or value in life … encouraging merely that the individual live defiantly and authentically in spite of the psychological tension of the Absurd.”
In other words: Screw you, D’Amico, McClure, and Bobbit for allowing me to think there’s some meaning in this life, but thank you for showing me the way to go about finding some.
It’s up to me, in short. I should live my life, whether or not meaning exists. Can’t depend on the outside world - or in this case, a trio of alleged criminals - to provide it for me.
I’m obviously over-simplifying things I don’t understand completely, but whatever. Fact remains, the actions of these three have legitimately caused me to take a look at life (or Wikipedia, same dif) and make some real changes. Who knew?
Anyway, don’t worry. I’m not turning this column into a philosophy class. In fact, I’ve got a story about a local urinal in the works. No bigger meaning there, I promise.
Jeff Edelstein is a columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@trentonian.com, facebook.com/jeffreyedelstein and @jeffedelstein on Twitter.