A business model for the post-dot-com age: online begging, where people set up web sites with sob stories about dodgy spouses or crippling credit-card bills and wait for soft-hearted suckers to PayPal them money. The difference between a pockmarked junky begging on the street for heroin money and a woman in Brooklyn asking for money to pay off her Prada bills comes down to presentation; well, that and the social acceptability of the addiction.

Want to say something? Do so here.

Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Remember my details.

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.