ICYMI · Slate Podcasts

Our Celebrity GoFundMe Dystopia

March 4, 2026·35 min·2 clips

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, announcing her breast cancer diagnosis: "the bad news is that not all women are so lucky. So let's... make universal healthcare a reality."

Kate Lindsey opens ICYMI with writer Lorena O'Neill, who recently wrote a Rolling Stone piece about the rise in celebrity GoFundMes. The discussion starts from the strange feeling of giving as support and then watching a fundraiser keep climbing. One speaker points to a $2.7 million GoFundMe just sitting there and growing. That number gives the whole conversation a slightly unreal edge. The episode spends time on the autographed T-shirt dispute. It also takes seriously the feeling that being asked to explain your donation can come off as shame. At the same time, Lorena O'Neill makes the case that people should be allowed to choose whether they want to give. A five-dollar gift is still a choice. The conversation keeps balancing that freedom against the pressure that can come with public fundraising. Gail Stever's parasocial framework widens the subject. She says social media has moved parasocial relationships into a spectrum. On Twitter and Instagram, people can actually talk back, and sometimes they are talking back in a way that feels immediate enough to matter. That back-and-forth can make public figures feel closer to daily life. The episode uses that idea to explain why the line between appreciation and involvement can get blurry. It does not treat the blur as simple, but it does show how ordinary it has become. The conversation moves from a fundraiser to the logic behind fan attachment without losing the thread. It keeps returning to money, gratitude, embarrassment, and the question of who gets to decide what counts as support. By the end, the episode has turned one celebrity fundraising story into a broader look at online intimacy and public generosity.

As heard by us

Celebrity fundraising becomes a messy lesson in fandom, shame, and who gets to call generosity.

ICYMI turns celebrity GoFundMes into a sharp look at how support and public reaction can tangle online. Kate Lindsey talks with writer Lorena O'Neill, whose reporting on the rise of these fundraisers gives the episode its footing, and the discussion lingers on the uneasy feeling…

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Why you'd press play

You get a celebrity GoFundMe debate without the usual hot-take froth.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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