I saw a video this morning of a young female in a nice-looking late model car, screeching into her smartphone camera like a rabid howler monkey about how dire her financial situation is (because it’s so hard to live in America). She goes on to rant about giving her greasy McDonald’s hashbrowns to some homeless guy (because she’s such a good person). There’s lots of crying, cussing, and, of course, you guessed it, virtue signaling that follows, but I’m still stuck on the McDonald’s. I have a sort-of allergy to emotional outbursts and tantrums, so pardon me if this seems insensitive to this person’s decidely public emotional meltdown, but I get this way sometimes. And this might be the undiagnosed ’tism I was allegedly smacked with, but here we go (before I implode) :

• A McDonald’s hash brown typically costs between $2.00 and $3.50, and tastes like greasy trash.
• For $3.42, at Walmart, you can get 10 of them. I don’t know why you would want one, let alone 10, but here we are.
• Say you couldn’t go to a grocery store and exercise your right to make your limited resources work for you in a half million better ways (which you can), 4$ at McDonald’s gets you a (value meal) sausage biscuit, greasy hash brown, and coffee, instead.

My point? If she’s poor, she must be new to it, because she’s certainly not exhausting all of her resources (critical thinking skills) barring any unincluded information (like was she shopping with giftcards or something, not cash) or she might not be in such dire straits. Poor people didn’t used to drive $30,000 cars, talk on $1,500 phones, pay 4 times as much for bad breakfast, and then give it away to a random passerby, let alone craft a dramatic narrative about it and publish it for the general public to enjoy. So long story short? I don’t get it. I’m out of touch and somehow, right about now, thankful for that.

And I don’t mean to jab at this poor, injured creature while she’s down. She’s clearly unwell. Most people I know are suffering at the grocery store and gas pump right now, specifically. Don’t get me started on what’s going on with the power company. The problem with opening your life and finances up to the public, fishing for sympathy (or handouts), is that the public tends to have follow-up questions. We’re nosy. My best advice for this is, if you don’t want the questions, do like the rest of us and keep your financial embarrassment to yourself. As far as unsolicited advice goes, kids, that’s a good tip. Write it down. At some point, it will come in handy.

And as for all the prattle about her being such a good person because she gave her greasy potatoes to some ‘homeless person’, in the words of Spike the Vampire–don’t make me heave. Who said you should starve yourself to death to feed random strangers (who, by the way, half the population of your town likely thinks it’s also their job to feed)? Anyhow, if you really loved the homeless man, you would have taken that five dollars over to Aldi’s and bought a bag of apples, kept them in your car, and shared them with him when he came begging, because those greasy plastic imitation potato bricks are NOT going to help him one bit, not his morale, certainly not his arteries. And they taste like a salty dish rag. That is all.

Here’s a link to the X post and the goofy commentary waxing sympathetic about this female’s pitiful plite, if you feel like punishing yourself on this lovely Friday morning.