I Watched My Friend Dying on Facebook. But It Was All a GoFundMe Scam.
How a group of friends ended up donating over $100,000 to a sick friend — who was perfectly fine
Several winters ago, I watched as my old classmate Cindy was publicly dying on the internet.
I did this on Facebook, where her wisecracking, self-deprecating tone suddenly gave way to a somber third-person announcement that Cindy had been secretly battling chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a little-known neurological disorder with wide-ranging symptoms.
Cindy and I were not friends, exactly. We were acquaintances who had known each other in middle and high school in suburban Ontario. But we reconnected on Facebook in 2014, when she sent me a friend request shortly before the news of her illness broke. (OneZero is anonymizing Cindy out of respect for her family’s privacy.)
I probably hadn’t thought of Cindy in about 15 years, but I had an affectionate recollection. I also had a vague awareness of her family dysfunction when we were growing up, but she was always both funny and quick to laugh. I remember a slapstick need for attention tainted by a darker undertone — the proverbial clown crying on the inside. Scrolling through her pre-CIDP Facebook posts, I felt a sense…
