Charity rage: When well-meaning people go way too far

UPSET over the hunting of a lion, people threaten to kill each other. A woman’s husband dies and Coles cops it. What is it about goodwill that makes people lose their minds?

WHAT is it about goodwill that makes people go feral?

“Give, but give until it hurts,” the always well-meaning Mother Teresa taught us. But in a couple of perplexing examples just this week, that touching sentiment seems to have been somehow misinterpreted as: “Give ... until you’re inspired to hurt someone”.

Just this week, a do-gooding current affairs program inspired thousands of Australians to reach out to a suffering family, but also — probably unwittingly — inspired a bit of corporate hate.

Sharon Chan’s ordeal is tragic. The story of the pregnant Sydney mum — whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack last week, leaving her to raise two sons, one with Down syndrome and leukaemia, and another child due any day — touched so many viewers that the Rotary page set up to take donations for the family repeatedly crashed.

But the charity site wasn’t the only online victim of this injustice. Well-meaning Australians, filled with rage at Ms Chan’s situation, took to the Facebook pages of major supermarkets and other television shows as, it seemed, they felt the need to direct their frustration towards The Man.

“Give to Sharon and her boys from the ACA current affair program,” one post to Coles’ Facebook page read. “Give free groceries for her and her boys ... petrol, money, something ... show people you are not a heartless company out for profits.”

And there were others demanding the corporate giant mirror their goodwill.

“Everyone in Australia is on board and you should be too. Show people you are not just about profit ... deliver free groceries for a year, or give free petrol ... you decide.”

‘You decide’: A charitable Australian found a way to take aim at Coles over Sharon Chan’s situation.

Conservationists, also with good intentions, have been pushed to the point of being abusive this week.

Glamorous American game hunter Sabrina Corgatelli was accused of rubbing salt in the wound as animal lovers reeled from the killing of Cecil the lion.

Their protests at her posing with a dead giraffe and sharing the image online were valid — some people don’t want to see innocent and protected animals hunted for sport.

But how does Photoshopping the woman’s head onto the slain animal’s lifeless body help the cause? And then there were the shocking death threats over her proposed visit to New Zealand: “We should all book on these (hunting tours) and then when we go don’t hunt the animal hunt the **** Sabrina!!!”, “We’ll have a hunting party ready and waiting for YOU. Evil b****”, and “I will personally cut your head off and mount the **** on my wall”.

Probably a little over the top.

Not welcome.

The logic here appears to be that threatening to hunt and murder a woman, and make a trophy of her genitalia, makes up for the hunting of a giraffe.

It’s charity driving us to hypocrisy and it’s all a bit weird.

Clinical psychologist Sally-Anne McCormack blamed the internet for this unusual, but not uncommon, behaviour.

“We see injustices everywhere and thanks to the internet, we see more injustices than we’ve ever seen before,” she said. “On top of that, and thanks again to the internet, we have shorter attention spans and so we have this incredible anger and frustration and we want to deal with it quickly.

“Because we really can’t do much to change these situations, by talking about it on social media or blaming someone else on social media, we kind of feel that at least by sharing the message, we kind of relinquish our duty to do something about it.”

Ms McCormack said that after watching a current affairs program, or seeing an image of a slain animal, we might feel emotionally involved.

“We might do what we can do to help, and then get frustrated we can’t do more,” she said.

“We get these bees in our bonnet, grab hold of this cause, and get irrationally upset over it, but not everyone feels that need to direct their outrage somewhere.”

So, the moral of the story is: be cool. Make your donation, sign the petition, then step away from the Facebook or Photoshop.

Think: ‘Do I really need to take that next step?’. Because chances are it’s a step too far.