"Cyberbegging? Or Creative Financial Solutions?"

Did you happen to see 20/20 last night? If not, it wdealt with the sad state of the financial affairs of Americans-credit card debt, debt collectors, the typical American spending habits and how the average folks in credit card debt(not to mention other debt) can conquor their addictions.
One of the featured "guests" was a young woman in NYC who had a shopaholic streak with a special affinity for handbags-handbags that cost several hundred, even over one thousand, dollars. She shopped herself into over $20K of credit card debt and, instead of taking a second job and stopping the behaviors that got her into trouble in the first place, she started cyberbegging. Cyberbegging is panhandling, just using the net. She told her story and asked web surfers to help by giving her a dollar. A few months later, over half of her debt was paid off. Shameful? Or creative? Both?
I'm tempted to shove it into the shameful column but for one thing...a web site is basically a business. If she treated the site like a job, worked hard at it and it was successful, who's to argue? Plus, she asked for one buck-not exactly a tele-evangelist bilking viewers out of money they didn't have.
The jury is still out, in my humble opinion. Perhaps this is just the world in which we live, maybbe it's just a passing phase we'll soon get over like the novelty of chat rooms in the 90s, who knows? I do know that to show the ultimate in maturity and self respect, one should hold oneself accounttable in all situations-especially those messes we get ourselves into.