What Does It Feel Like To Win The Jackpot!?
The Lottery Request Diaries
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 )
(click a # & then click the tiny pic to the left to magnify the screen shots!)
January 29, 2011: by the Dollar Scholar ~ Minutes after learning that Lottery Officials named Holly Lahti as the other winning ticket of the $380,000,000 Mega Millions Jackpot AND that she did not want to be publicly identified – we followed up our fake AZ Killer Jared Loughner page by immediately making a Holly Lahti personal page & fan page, with our sights set on an in depth experiment. Floods of friend requests came in with short messages of congrats or pleas to help. Then raging rapids of requests & messages bombarded the page within an hour of the media’s mugshots made Holly front page news again. From every walk of life came the masses. (Kind of makes me think of those zombie movies – coming in a pack, appearing out of nowhere they advanced.) They all came in search of just a tiny piece of a new found empire . We started compiling all of the personal messages coming in, noticing the stark contrast & mix of them – from funny & comical ones to the sad, dark, desperate screams for help – all of which fluctuated from sincerity or strategy, undertones of honesty to deceit, between playing it off like there was no agenda with faking congrats to short & straight to the point with no BS given. Who really meant it? Who had no agenda? Who was sincerely just saying Congrats, wishing Holly & her family well, & giving advice out of the goodness of their heart? We saw it all – a hundred thousand requests were made for anything & everything you could think of. Toilets, wheelchairs, teeth dentures, movie scripts, a thousand different business ideas & inventions, music careers, & on the list goes. Requests for money from little kids saying their parents need help (legit or were they the parents impersonating a little kid?) to deeply in debt individuals without shame asking for their debts of $1.9 MIL to be paid for. A lot of “I never thought I’d have to do this” & “I’m not asking for a hand out, but a loan“. Long winded stories that were paragraphs long concluding they needed $5,000, to short 2 line messages asking for a short & sweet $100,000. There were the lottery winners who were messaging Holly out of the goodness of their heart to offer advice how to handle the life & all sorts of financial advisers offering up their services. An Oprah Executive to a NY Times reporter to tons of interview requests & smaller tv shows wanting Holly for their new series. Single mothers & single fathers casually mentioning they have kids, & that they don’t live so far away, & ever so subtly suggesting a future play date. And then of course there was countless filth – which we did not compile except for 1 example, lol.
Is the desperation so great, or is it a naive & careless nature of people on the internet that made thousands & thousands of people take our Holly facebook page at face value & send off the most personal, excruciating private details of their lives? In an age of heightened fear of identity theft, the majority of these messages ended with everything, but a time their front door would be unlocked to break in. Home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. Some even took it upon themselves to include their bank account numbers & hoped Holly would just be inspired by their story & deposit x amount of thousands of dollars into it, no questions asked. Just wake up & be surprised with money randomly showing up in the bank by a secret Santa without ever receiving a message or agreement or contract from Holly. Is this logical? Reasonable? No, but it’s brought back memories because I saw it running rampantly as a 17 year old high school student which allowed me to pull off the nation’s largest investment operation ever for a minor – creating front page headlines across the country, & ultimately to jail. No due diligence went on then because what I did looked good, & no due diligence went on now because the Holly page looks real, but why not stop to think that people have the same names, people play jokes/pranks all the time on the wild wild internet. Well I’ll go easy & stay on theme so chalk it up to desperation.
Which makes me really hope that Holly will come across this in a week or month or six months, & pick a bunch of pleas & pitches from the compilation we’ve gathered for my networks curiosity, insight, & entertainment in providing an award winning blog. If you ever wanted to know what it feels like to have the attention of the world because you won millions of dollars – you will now. Imagine being in Holly’s shoes & even if you were generous & wanted to help – having to say no to 99% of the requests. In just 2 weeks 100,000 requests have come in, so even if your saying YES to 1% of the most desperate pleas & most promising pitches of potential careers to root for – your blowing through millions of dollars right there. So NO has to be said at a depressing rate. Even though it is not her responsibility to take care of the world, it sure feels that way if you have half a heart & read a handful of the messages. A father repeatedly broke the “Please only send 1 message because I am flooded” request of ours by sending a slew of messages in a frantic state as his tone escalated in the days leading up to this blog, ending with claims that his children & wife will be living in a tent by the end of the week.
Fathers in desperate financial states & feelings of hopelessness have killed off their families & themselves in murder-suicides that you hear about in the news more then once a year. If you can LITERALLY save some families, why wouldn’t you do that in the very least – even if you weren’t an adventurous entrepreneur type that wanted to fund the passions of young skillful people so they could pursue their careers.
Boy has my opinion of Holly changed from the previous entry. Maybe I was “lovestruck”. She’s pretty, but pretty with 180mil!? Deadly lol. Moving on, personally, I think Holly Lahti is a poor representative for a young adult to finally win the lottery. Usually it’s the elderly with a foot in the grave, or just boring middle aged peeps that win or on welfare collecting government aid minorities that spend their handouts on lottery tickets. And with all those types brings an unexciting flavor & lack of energy to the stage. In review it surprisingly seems to be no exception here. Thought we were in for a change, that she would razzle & dazzle us. Become America’s Sweetheart, do some tv & cool things. Deleting her facebook in the 10 days prior to coming forward with the winning ticket? LOL why? What harm does having a facebook, just sitting there, do? Oh no, 10 messages just came in, oh no 20 more, 50 more!?!? NO NO NO messages are flooding my inbox! Why can’t that be amusing, entertaining, informative, an interesting fortnight of reading!? So yeah, delete your facebook so peeps don’t have a convenient for them/convenient & safe for you outlet to send their desperate pleas – so instead it propels them to call, show up at your door, or send crazy packages with who knows what’s in it! Yep, so you can thank DollarScholar.com for rounding up the crazies to the sincerely desperate in need of help, & pick amongst the 100 hours worked to showcase this out there for you & all – LATER! Jeesh, you could have ensured her friends weren’t harassed by making the friend list private. Hell, you can make your whole profile private. I’ve never understood the types that cut themselves off from the whole world like this. Also goes for any facebook peep that removes the “Send Message” feature. Like, really? Are you that mundane, boring, lacking curiosity to not be open to seeing who is trying to contact you, get a hold of you, some long lost friend or love!? I’d say it’s the same type that never buys a $1 lottery ticket – they don’t dream, hope & have fun with ambitions, desires, etc. It seems like a tragic way to live 🙁 I know I’m eccentric, crazy, dorky, goofy, outgoing, personable – but still, Holly your not handling this well & the majority DO feel the same. I mean if there’s 1 type of employment that would at least somewhat prepare her to handle a lot of money it was working in a bank! She’s acting like an older generation skittish recluse. She’s throwing off signs that she isn’t going to help a soul outside of her family & friends. She’s got that right, but don’t expect the media to ease up on her then. Deleting her facebook says a lot. It’s just an over dramatic gesture which is now mimicked in her over dramatic disappearing act that made the media think she was running from her ex with those mugshots in our heads – but DollarScholar.com reports in our exclusive story that she didn’t get beat up by him & was not a victim of abuse! So she’s running just to run, leaving behind a mess of harassment from reporters unto her small town by skipping out on the press conference & making everyone go crazy for a picture & the profile of the winner. (No, not the facebook profile) & being a little weasel if you ask me. All this could have been avoided by simply doing the traditional press conference, like the Washington couple who came forward ever so gracefully with the other winning ticket because they understood it’s the nation’s right to be curious, & a winner’s obligation to satisfy that curiosity! Or else give back the millions of dollars you won off millions of citizens losing dollars over a two month period of a jackpot build up with no winner until you came along! Then you can go back to being a private citizen! Until then, your a celeb girl. Comes with the territory. Don’t play a state lottery if you can’t handle it. It’s a public system.You can’t win a $380 MIL jackpot & not expect people to dig to satisfy their curiosity for a form of closure. A lot of people invested their hopes, dreams & $ into this mega millions run at history – including me, so my invested interest & your utter let down of fulfilling the smallest obligation has fueled the fire for DollarScholar.com to lead the way with the Holly Lahti media craze sensation. The people saying how horrible of the media to dig up her mugshot as the picture to use of her – well whose fault is that!? She refused the press conference! She disappeared! The negative portrayals are a result of HER decisions. She is the Lebron James of poor decisions & handling a situation horribly.
I can’t say what Holly is going to do, but I did promise the peeps that all messages will be reviewed & considered. Was very careful with the words, never did we say we were Holly the lottery winner in the wording on those profiles. Hopefully Holly will review & consider what we have displayed for her & all to read (who has seen my site according to angry friends of hers) so we are on her radar, but regardless of her intent to be a hero to some or not, the Dollar Scholar is going to pick up her slack. I’m winning the lottery ( if your sneering or mocking this claim you need to do your homework on me first) & when I do – it’s this (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14) list that DollarScholar.com has spent hours compiling that will be first helped.
I’ve day dreamed about winning the lottery & doing all kinds of things with it. For starters, giving the clerk that sold me the ticket $100,000. Second, getting a film crew with a fake cover story for a show & going around acting in need of a place to crash at friends, etc & seeing how I’m treated then in 6 months go back & reward those that showed kindness & helped. Biggest in my visions though is setting up a website where I’d invite all of America to submit their request for help. If I won $100 MIL I’d find the 1000 most compelling, in need or unique & cool stories, get a good mix of life saving impact cases to boosts to careers needing to get a push & I would give out $20 MIL of it. NO one needs $100 MIL !!! I’m a huge lottery fan, & have publicly stated over & over on my Facebook wall that I will share 13% of the jackpot to everyone on my network:
So now besides the 13% for my networks, as of today I’m officially adding the list of all you Holly Lahti hopefuls to my plans. If you see your name on one of the compiled lists, & you asked for help, let’s revisit when I win because ITS COMING! So far, the closest was 2 numbers away from $85 million Dollar Scholar destiny…
Now everyone, put down the book you’ve been reading, pull out a tissue & start our (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14) compilation because it is your fellow humans at their most primal. You’ll cry in laughter, & you’ll cry in sadness….