Behold the power of victimhood.
Did you catch the story about the waitress in New Jersey who claimed some customers stiffed her on the tip and wrote on the receipt that the reason was that they didn’t approve of her lifestyle? Donations poured in to make up the tip she had missed out on and she decided to donate it all to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Now it turns out the whwole thing was bogus. The restaurant decided to investigate and found the receipt showing an18$ tip on a 93$ meal, and the customers produced a credit card receipt showing the payment of the total amount.
The Wounded Warrior Project says it wants nothing to do with her donation.
Behold the power of victimhood, the allure and appeal of victim cred. Can you hear that appeal? Cha-ching!
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Must be something in the air.
This event has so many issues it’s hard to know what to start with.
Least relevant: I am repulsed by the practice of governments taxing tips as if they were income is that they are meant to be a voluntary gift (gratuity) motivated by personal appreciation. I didn’t agree to pay extra so the government could have a lick.
If any of this had happened the customers would have been pricks and it’s always hard for an employer to find the line between accommodating a customer who may be wearing his cranky pants a bit too tight and not having your staff degraded. That said, what would not have been the right thing for her to do: make an online spectacle of the customers–even if she didn’t think she had identified them–and her employer.
To have made it all up though is just weak and evidence that she isn’t mature/sane enough to be holding a job right now.
Patrick, ya think? Is there some common thread between the two instnaces?
The justice narrative that privielges victimhood is sick and these are two examples of that.
Related:
‘Reports of bias incidents at Vassar College that involved hateful messages left on students’ doors were actually elaborate hoaxes — and the perpetrator is none other than the student member of the Bias Incident Response Team, The Daily Caller has learned. On Nov. 14, the college sent a mass email to students advising them that Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) had received at least six reports in the last few months of hateful and insensitive messages being scrawled and spray painted on student residences. Messages included “Avoid Being Bitches,” “Fuck Niggers,” and most prominently, “Hey Tranny. Know Your Place.” Five days after the email was sent, Vassar President Catharine Hill sent a follow-up email announcing that the bias incidents were hoaxes perpetrated by two students. The students wrote the vile messages and then filed the reports themselves, claiming to be the victims of unknown haters.’
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/27/exclusive-shocking-discovery-in-hoax-bias-incident-at-vassar-college/
Adiabat, there’s a lot of that going around. There was a similar case at a university in Wyoming.
We have a culture that grants huge moral privilege to victimhood, and this incentivizes it. It’s not actual privilege and a real victim does not want his or her victimhood and can’t wait to stop being a victim. But for someone who risks nothing by presenting themselves as victims because their actual privilege is so unassailable, playing the victim is a attractive option. The umbrella term for this is “damseling” and it takes several forms – we’ve talked about the Ophelia Complex and also the Women Are Wonderful meme – and there is a term for the corresponding protector behavior – “white knight”. This doesn’t only show up in gender roles. There is a similar dance in a lot of “social justice” relationships between the benefactor and the designated victim.
Aw, c’mon. You guys are all missing the boat. There is a lesson to be learned here and no one has pointed it out. If you are going to lie, make it a good one. That server would not likely have had to wait long for a cutomern that didn’t leave a tip. Then she could quickly scribble a fake note on the receipt and no one would be the wiser. But using a real receopt that included a tip was just plain stupid. that’s the real lesson to be learned. Don’t ever think, not for a New York minute, that this will teach people to be more honest.
“Don’t ever think, not for a New York minute, that this will teach people to be more honest.”
Just more clever! Remember how police departments were complaining the CSI series was teaching crooks how to frustrate all the forensic methods they used to solve crimes?
This story really isn’t about a dishonest waitress but about a willingness to believe these stories that 1) made this much mess possible and 2) incentivized it in the first place.
Least relevant: I am repulsed by the practice of governments taxing tips as if they were income is that they are meant to be a voluntary gift (gratuity) motivated by personal appreciation. I didn’t agree to pay extra so the government could have a lick.
Amen, Snake Oil. Its invasive and infuriating.
Not related, but an erratic (deviating from the customary course in conduct or opinion (topic?)) comment with a link to three blogposts I wrote today:
South Africa: Rape and partner violence among youths
America (and Salon) still doesn’t know how to talk about rape
UK: NATSAL-3 and a bit of NISVS 2010
But… but any suspicion about false claims, any request to examine the evidence, is BLAMING THE VICTIM! And if the faux-victim is a woman, it’s proof of misogyny, too. What’s wrong with you people, being all skeptical and looking at the evidence like there are real facts to be determined? What _matters_ is that someone has claimed victimhood, and that claim is Not To Be Questioned, Period.
Tamen, those may not be related but links to oyur posts are always welcome!
Copyleft, may I direct your attention to this article by Diana Davidson?
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/why-we-need-to-fuck-their-shit-up/
Regarding the thing in Wyoming: How impossibly sheltered does one have to be to come up with ‘avoid being bitches’ as hate speech to scrawl on one’s door? I mean, if someone’s going to fake it, they’re going to go for something they see as extreme, right? That sounds like something we would’ve been told before a movie screening at my university’s scifi and fantasy club.
“How impossibly sheltered does one have to be to come up with ‘avoid being bitches’ as hate speech to scrawl on one’s door?”
Because it implies you are one in the first place? So how is that hate speech? There’s an old saying “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
If you look at the actual usage of the word “bitch” in actual speech activity, it almost always is used to condemn hypoagency and the underhanded aggression that comes out of it. I would have thought that comported with the feminist project of dismantling oppressive gender roles.
Now, to complement faux victim hood, faux ‘heroics’
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/the-truth-behind-that-epic-note-passing-war-on-a-thanksgivin
Ginkgo:
But it’s just such a milquetoast thing to write. Just writing ‘bitch’ on the door would look way more legitimate. I mean, just try to imagine the person who would go around writing ‘avoid being bitches’ on people’s doors. Does that really seem like someone who would be a threat to anybody? Does that even sound like someone who has particular prejudices? It’s the kind of think you frequently see at the beginning of a Tumblr discussion, not the sort of thing a lynch mob shouts. All the other examples were at least imitations of actual hate.
As a Brit I find the whole concept of tipping totally unacceptable. I have never tipped in my life, it is not my duty to make up for employers playing crap wages. Raise the price of the food if they have too.