GoFundMe Is Now America's Moral Tip Jar
New retirement plan: mouth off, get fired, rake in cash.
There was a time when GoFundMe existed to help the truly unfortunate: victims of medical catastrophes, freak accidents, natural disasters, and dudes who needed 80 grand to pay off their student loans and cut a double album. (True story.)
Those days are now filed under “cultural artifacts” somewhere between Blockbuster Video and MySpace.
The crowdfunded piggy bank has officially morphed into a virtue-signaling moral tip jar, where any sufficiently theatrical act of public defiance—especially if it is aimed in the vague direction of Donald Trump—can be instantly converted into cash, clout, and digital sainthood.
This week’s exemplar: a Ford employee named TJ Sabula heckled Trump during a visit to a Michigan plant and was subsequently suspended for it. Within hours, strangers on the internet had hurled hundreds of thousands of dollars at the father, husband, and “proud United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker” like he’d just unlocked a never-before-seen level of valor.
Not cancer. Not bankruptcy. Not tragedy. Yelling “pedophile protector” at the President of the United States during a workplace appearance—an obvious nod to the still unreleased Epstein files.
Naturally, someone was filming. The quick, cringeworthy clip shows Trump responding as one might expect—by mouthing something unprintable and flipping a middle finger like a naughty fourth-grader.
Ford suspended the employee without pay. The union issued a statement. And the internet, ever eager for a cause that requires absolutely nothing beyond a credit card and a sense of righteousness, did what it does best: immediately canonized him.
(Meanwhile, the White House rushed to defend POTUS, calling his hand gesture an “appropriate and unambiguous response.” I’ll give them unambiguous.)
Within a day, two GoFundMe campaigns for Sabula had raised nearly a million dollars. The campaigns were abruptly paused, with organizers offering a polite thank-you and no real explanation beyond encouragement to “support other causes.” (Possibly because they were raising more eyebrows than dollars? IDK.)
This isn’t about defending Trump’s decorum. I think we can all agree he has none. Do I wish the guy with the nuclear codes could summon a little self-restraint in public? Of course. Would it be great if “don’t flip off agitators at work events” were a low bar we could clear? Yes. But Trump being Trump isn’t the story here. The story is what the internet chooses to reward.
I get it; we vote with our dollars. And the left just elected Sabula their Inspiration-in-Chief. “Freedom of speech,” we’re told. “A patriot,” according to one campaign page. “Seizing the moment,” according to the man himself.
And maybe this was a principled stand. Maybe it was a spontaneous act of bravery. Maybe it was fate tapping him on the shoulder and whispering, This is your main character moment. I can’t say I’d never be tempted to toss a few bucks at the Let’s Go Brandon guy if I heard he was in a financial pickle. But maybe—just maybe—this was also an adult making a choice at work, facing predictable consequences, and being rewarded with enough cash to make those consequences largely irrelevant.
That’s the part no one talks about. GoFundMe has quietly transformed from a safety net into an ethical rewards program. It’s not about need anymore; it’s about narrative. It’s not about hardship; it’s about signaling membership in the correct political coalition. The cause matters less than the script. The question isn’t “Does this person need help?” but “Does this person make the right people mad?”
If yes, congratulations. The internet will Venmo you a gold star.
There are probably people who work at that same plant who have been laid off, injured, or are struggling to keep their heads above water. There are likely families buried under medical bills. There may be parents choosing between groceries and prescriptions. None of them trend. None of them get a campaign titled “Let’s Rally.” But rib the right villain, and suddenly you’re a working-class hero with a six-figure cushion and a union press release defending your “voice.”
This is what gets idolized now. Not sacrifice. Not endurance. Not responsibility. Performance.
Sabula says he has no regrets. Good for him. He’ll be fine. Make that comfortably fine, thanks to tens of thousands of strangers who experienced a fleeting rush of virtue and promptly felt the need to monetize it.
What’s unsettling isn’t the money—it’s how normal this is. How reflexive. How transactional our moral outrage has become. We don’t donate to fix things; we donate to declare things. We don’t address injustice; we subsidize spectacle.
And yes, we’re all susceptible. The left might be famous for it, but if tomorrow some clip of a teacher getting fired for pushing back on gender ideology went viral, conservatives would be flinging bills at her like she’d liberated Paris.
At some point, we should probably admit what this is: not compensation, not justice—just a crowdsourced standing ovation for people who hate the same things we do
Trump ought to have turned to the guy, smiled, waved at him, not middle-fingered him, and kept on walking. Don't give a sh*thead person any reason to think they "got under your skin".
The sad part is that rewarding behavior in this way only leads to more of it, and because the first time is novel but the 2nd time is old news, each successive attempt has to be magnitudes better. Which often means it quickly reaches stupid or dangerous.
Great when it’s rescuing kittens from burning buildings, not so great when it involves testing the limits of ICE or the Secret Service.