You almost can’t land on a personal page of blog, art, etc. and not somewhere see the “donate” come on. If you like my work, please click the donate button. Typically these lead down a rabbit hole to some dark snuffly Paypal account, or Russian gambling sites, or Gawd knows what. Please have your credit card ready.

I’ve never been so moved as to donate, even though I occasionally see a site where someone talented has labored mightily, and you’d like to see them make out, at least in some abstract way. But I’ve always also been annoyed by those greedy little buttons. Especially, say, when the site monger is just grabbing pictures from the web, and doing no particular service to mankind but acting as an interlocutor.

But moreover I have long had that sensitivity that the donate button actually reads: Hey, my Mom and Dad dried up, so send me the moolah so I can set on my ass with my pants down around my ankles and play point-and-click on the Net all day.

And yet…

I happened to stumble on a handsomely mounted website where the gent coordinates pictures and videos and political news—and must be doing it fulltime, ‘cause the thing updates more than daily. He liked it so much he bought his own server, and now he parcels out hosting and, of course, solicits donations for the monthly server bill.

But I saw over in the right corner…

Dude tells us his birthday is coming up, and he wants a toy. So he put up a donation trap for his Ipod People device or whichever. Like the United Way, he had a grid feed to show you how his birthday gift fund was coming along. At the end of a week: “Thank you all who helped me get my Ipod.”

wtf?

This is the kind of shit that Nixon had to make the “Checkers” Speech over. This is the kind of thing that makes CIA heads abruptly turn ass over teakettle in their canoes and drown. You just set up a till and advertise to buy yourself something? It is beyond crass, but apparently it works.

Then I began to realize that some people have made themselves into profitable corporations thanks to blogwhoring. TMZ? Perez Hilton? Where did they go right and AOL go so terribly wrong? Some people can make a buck off the Internet and some canstnot. Now social websites have become like dance clubs—faddishly celebrated, then flat out ditched and busted. Just ask Rupert (“MySpace”) Murdock, whose social site has now been “unfriended” by Facebook-destined millions. He may want that donate button soon.

You know, I could cheerfully set in front of the Inet wrapped in a Celtic-pattern blanket all day, happily cutting-and-pasting and getting paid. Instead I got a free picture blog on Tumblr (adventuretoday.tumblr.com). When my art website was in alpha mode (I need $100 to launch my Beta version, hint, hint.), my webmaster and I were full of perverse glee in putting little ads at the bottom of the pages (hah! Beatchatoit, Open Salon!), but we made sure they were Dutch ads, in Dutch, cause, well, that appealed to us.

Now I am thinking I should have put in a donate button. Assuming I could start posting my birthday wish list, I mean, what: a new Wacom Intuous 4 drawing pad? (Only $500 or so for the generously minded.) Or, I dunno, maybe a 2010 White Dodge Challenger to replace the one I lost ramping a stop sign in 1982?

A brand new car!!!!!

Anybody want to outlay $4 million for a can’t-miss animated cartoon I’ve been jonesing up?

Yes, I want my donate button and all that it brings. I want money, gifts, friends, praise, and exciting dinners with which I can lose 80 pounds in one year. I will dub this button “The Stimulus Plan for ME.”

This is so much better than suing your damp old college for $72,000 and change. Is there anyone out there who wants to donate me their Master’s Degree? Or a PhD? I don’t feel like trying to earn one now, and frankly, I won’t use it to obtain a better job. It will just make my donation scam…drive seem more credible, with a doctorate after my name.