Can you fault them though? Everywhere you turn you're being asked to tip or donate. Influencers and corporations constantly astroturf social media. The rise of LLMs has made it necessary to question every interaction that occurs virtually.
Honestly, I worry for the people who aren't cynical and how they're going to be deceived, manipulated, or straight up scammed.
You can just not tip them, you don't have to assume they're out to get you and spread that cynical bs like it's based on anything. It's just virtue signaling with shitty virtues
Honestly, I worry for the people who are cynical and how they're going to deceive themselves by assuming everyone wants to manipulate and scam them
Exactly! But you should use the internet with a heavy level of skepticism. Anonymity and the power to connect any one from anywhere is what makes it great, but is also extremely easy for bad actors to take advantage of.
I never blame the people asking for tips, I instead blame those giving them.
I'll list my Bitcoin address for anyone who would like to tip me! As I wrote out this whole comment for free, a tip seems quite reasonable here. If you disagree and choose not to tip me, that's ok since tips are optional...but please don't start rambling about how others should be tipping when you yourself did not tip me when provided the opportunity.
Glad you're not on my well wishes list, I'd hate to think my weekly reminders that I'm thinking about, and appreciating, people in my life we're taken as attempts to extract their resources.
It takes very little to try to offer happiness into someone's life, and you never know when a random offering of positivity might be what someone was needing at that moment.
We're all human. And even if this is copy and pasted I applaud that delivery driver making an effort to spread pleasantness.
That's the optimistic interpretation. The cynical interpretation is that they'll hit you with "Have you heard about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" when you open the door.