on good days I am charming as fuck

PEARL (2022) dir. Ti West

major creep vibes

I'm throwing an edging party and no you are not allowed to come.

keep reading

This is a great way to undermine the system that we are trapped in

The fact that this can be done at all shows how utterly bullshit the entire system is. There was literally no reason for that medical debt to exist in the first place.

Let's say you owe a private hospital ten thousand dollars, but you have very few assets, so they're pretty sure they're never getting any of that back. There's ninety nine other people who also each owe the hospital ten thousand dollars. (It doesn't have to be a hospital; any debt can be sold this way.) The hospital has shit to do and the low chances of you paying them mean it's an unnecessary drain on their time and resources to hound you all for it. But they can get *some* money, by selling your debt to a third party.

Let's say the sell each ten thousand dollar debt for ten dollars (I'm making all these numbers up for simplicity). So a third party gives the hospital one thousand dollars, and now all hundred of you owe that third party ten thousand instead! You're in the clear with the hospital, you owe it to these guys now! And their job is to hound and harrass you for the money you owe. If one of you pays up more than a thousand dollars, you've covered their initial investment. These guys are gambling on the likelihood that enough of you can pay your debts that you make it worth the time they spend tracking you and harrassing you.

Or, instead of trying to get the money out of you, they can just... decide you don't owe them. Why not? They own the debt. They can fork out a thousand bucks, buy a million in debt, and forgive it. That's what these guys did. (This is also a favourite move of John Oliver; if you ever see headlines about John Oliver forgiving debt, this is what he's doing). A small payment can take a massive weight off the shoulders of a lot of struggling people.

Again, I made up the numbers to simplify the math. But this is how the process works.

seventeen thousand dollars to buy SIXTEEN MILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT. Absolutely FUCKED at how cheap our misery and servitude is.

thing is, the debt companies *hate* this, because it means that it gives hope to people saddled with unimaginable debt that someone will come along and buy that debt and cancel it. So more people don't pay their debts, and they lose money. Debt buying companies do their *damnedest* to keep people like these philadelphhians and john oliver from doing exactly this.

you can do this too! Follow OP's link to https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ and donate whatever you can. For every $1 you donate, they buy $100 of debt and cancel it. I donate $10 each month just to get that amazing email that says I've been personally responsible for cancelling $1000 of medical debt - it's genuinely the best $10 I spend each month 😊

ok!

Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear so immediately that the two of you, on some level, belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you’re in love or creating things together or foxhole buddies or partners in crime. It’s so clear, right off the bat, that this is what you’re supposed to be doing, that this is what you’re for. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest of circumstances, and they help you make a life. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but. It definitely makes me believe in something.

— Fiona Apple