A while back, a friend of mine tried to finance a better prosthetis that the one her insurance covered, but came up a bit short. Because time was of the essence, she tried a GoFundMe for something like $5k iirc.

It was met by the most vicious stream of abuse, the kind of which only the internet can dish out. People were telling her how dared she ask for money for an "unnecessary" fancy knee, and that she should be ashamed because others can't even get the kind her insurance covered, and yada-yada. It was frankly quite shocking. So shocking in fact that she pulled the GoFundMe and ended up borrowing money from friends and family, something she wanted to avoid because of the humiliation.

Just an anecdote to say that while I have never needed to resort to GoFundMe to make ends meet, I would think very, VERY hard before doing it.

a definite sign of a healthy economy