Where'd All the Good People Go?

Well, Jack Johnson, I may have an answer to your question. I recently discovered the website reallotterywinner.com, which is run by a mysterious young philanthropist referred to only as D. The name reminds me of neo-anarchist rabble-rouser V in the film V For Vendetta, but from what I can tell, D's intentions are completely benevolent.

Let me give you a little backstory. I did something today I have never done in my life. I bought a lottery ticket. The jackpot is currently over $200,000,000 which, coincidentally is about $199,999,600 more than my bank account balance. I know thats not a coincidence at all, I was just trying to be funny. Anyway, I arrived home full of romantic notions of the private islands I would buy and the lavish parties I would attend once the millions were mine. I've always had a thing for numbers so I went online to try to find out how much money I would actually net in the unlikely event (1 in 175,000,000 chance I believe) that I would win. I found some tax calculators as well as some advertisements for fool-proof lottery systems (you'd think that if these were real, the creators would simply win the lottery every day and not try to get rich off of idiots on the internet $5 at a time). I also found reallotterywinner.com. It is a blog written by "D" about his exploits upon winning a huge lottery jackpot at a young age. It appealed to my love of blogs as well as my fondness for rags-to-riches stories. Some of the stereotypes you would expect are there: he writes about buying houses and cars as well as a boat and some other extravagant purchases. But what I didn't expect to find was the fact that D seems to really and truly want to help those less fortunate than him, and I can think of no better method of garnering suggestions than this interactive website that is very personal in nature.

I spent a few hours perusing the site (I'll admit I had nothing better to do) and found I had alot in common with D.
When he won the lottery, he was in his early twenties, as I am, and had foregone college to work odd jobs. I can relate to this almost purgatory-like area after high school, trying to figure out what to do with yourself. As a matter of fact I am there right now. I also related to his self-professed nerd title and his musical aspirations. I will admit that my impetus to write this blog post stemmed from a contest on his site promising a MacBook Pro (the holy grail of laptops in my opinion) to a lucky blogger who mentioned the site. But while I am most definitely pandering for this prize, I will be completely honest with my feelings about this site. I know there are a lot of charitable people out there, but my cynical nature makes me wonder about a lot of them. In recent years, charities have become Hollywood affairs, and it seems like instead of donating to established ones, wealthy people want their names on everything. I would rather someone buy me a Christmas tree during the holidays than receive a check from the Ashton and Demi Foundation (sarcasm...though I'm scared to look, as it might actually exist.) To put it simply, giving for the sake of recognition is the very opposite of charity, and what D is doing with this site is almost a letter for letter definition. Anonymous kindness is truly the best kind. I guess I'll know tomorrow if I won $200,000,000. If I do win, I'm not sure, but I'd like to think I'd do something like D and spread the wealth.

Edit: I am writing this on my mom's desktop because in an ironic twist, my laptop just stopped getting power from the charger, which with my luck with computers means the hard drive is about to explode or something to that effect. Could this be fate? haha, seriously though, check this website out- there is still some good in this world:)

http://www.reallotterywinner.com