Lindsay Pereira

Picture this: You’re travelling by car and stop at a red light. A well-dressed guy comes up to your vehicle, flicks open a laptop, logs on to the Web and shows you how you can pay him some money for no particular reason. Unbelievable and untrue.

But if sites like Send Me a Dollar (http://www.sendmeadollar.com/) are anything to go by this scene is far from improbable in the near future.

Beggary has always been an art. The looks of despair, absolute starvation, or undisguised envy are all carefully cultivated and honed before being unleashed on unsuspecting softies and poor little rich kids like you and me. On the Internet, however, things are slightly different. Beggary has gone respectable and spawned a couple of sites to prove it. Send Me a Dollar, for one, uses the straightforward approach. It exhorts you to simply ‘reach in your wallet, pull out a buck’, and send it to a given address. That’s it.

Why? You ask, you naïve thing, you? Well, in exchange for your dollar, the site lets you post a short notice on its message board, advertise your own Web site, say hello to a friend, or do anything else you want (read, not specified). All currencies welcome, says the whiz kid behind it, adding that it’s just a wacky idea you probably wish you had thought of first. I’ll pass, thank you.

Looking for a worthier cause to donate your hard earned money to? Why not try Dollar Me (http://home.neo.lrun.com/younessi/dollarme.html)? All this guy wants is a dollar (still forty-four bucks here, people) in order to get himself a place in the Guinness Book for receiving the most dollars in the mail. What you get for this effort is, well, a personalised thank you via email. If that’s not incentive enough, you’re a real cynic.

Save The Suburbanites (http://www.savethesuburbanites.com/) is run by people who want to quit their mundane jobs for a year so they can go see the world. A noble cause, obviously, considering they also guarantee to ‘spend your money only in the most self-serving, pleasure filled ways possible’. Makes one wonder why we all bother trying to find a job anyway.

Next stop is a site we can all relate to. The Society To Prevent My Employment (http://egomania.nu/causes/indexsoc.html) is created by a ‘Princess Natalie.’ With princesses turning to beggary, inflation must be a lot worse than we thought it was. The page tells you why you should donate, what you can do if (shudder) you’re poor, and what you get in return; the answer to the last one being, “the satisfaction of keeping me in the lifestyle I am accustomed to”. Sounds far-out? May be, but Natalie claims to have made over $368 so far. Chew on that for a while.

Calling itself a ‘research project’, Mail Us Money For Nothing (http://www.mailadollar.com/) came about because the people involved were curious to know how many people would mail them a dollar simply because they asked. If only things were that easy when it came to getting that annual pay raise.

Leaving aside the mere dollar, it’s $3 American that this hard-to-please guy wants. His Buy Me A New Stereo Homepage (http://www.agt.net/public/skidder/) is self-explanatory. And why would one do that? Because, says Mr Alec Smart, "A thick wallet is actually bad for your back." The stereo in question (a Panasonic CQ-DF88) costs approximately $299.95 and, considering the fact that the site is still up and running, maybe most people can live with a minor backache.

All this talk of money brings us to another important question: Why ask for a buck when you can ask for a couple of thousand? The hard working man behind Send Me Thirty Thousand Dollars (http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Marina/2634/30000.htm) obviously believes in that little aphorism. Does it work? At last count, the collection box said: 0 x $30,000 currently equals $0,000.00! The responses make for interesting reading though. Begging meets JavaScript thanks to the Cyber-Bum (http://web2.airmail.net/gandolf/you.htm). He begs you (pun intended) to make him "richer than Bill Gates", assuring you that you can make a difference. Contribute at the $90,000,000,001 level and you become his ‘Friend For Life’ with a plaque and letters of recognition. What more could one ask for in life?

On the positive side, but only just, is the fact that integrity apparently coexists with shamelessness. All that The Squeegee Guy (http://www.website1.com/squeegee/) wants to do is clean the inside of your monitor screen. No, you don't need to send any money in this case, simply click a button asking whether you would or wouldn't.

All things considered, begging online may actually be a viable alternative for some of us. After all, you know what it costs to get an Internet account, don’t you?

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