It can’t be easy being a celebrity in the public eye. Everything you do gets scrutinized and if you make one misstep then it’s “everyone pile on.” Actress Alyssa Milano went through this very thing recently when she made a GoFundMe post asking for help funding her son’s baseball team trip. So how did it all go down?
On Jan. 25, Milano shared a GoFundMe page for her son’s 12 and under baseball team. “My son’s baseball team is raising money for their Cooperstown trip” she said in the post. “Any amount would be so greatly appreciated. You can read more about the team and make a donation here.” Milano started the page through her legal name Alyssa Bugliari.
On the donation page, Milano says “baseball is life our teammates are our brothers.” The game, she said, gives purpose and drives us to be our very best. But in order to compete “we must raise funds.” She also explains where the money is going:
“Your donation will go to travel costs, uniforms, and dues for families. We also might use your donations for pins or novelty items to make our tournaments memorable experiences beyond the field.”
The controversy
As of this writing, more than $15k has been raised of the team’s $10k goal. Now to the contentious part. Basically, people are upset that Milano, a celebrity, didn’t just pay for the team herself instead of asking for help. She caught a whole lot of heat on social media for asking for money from everyone when she herself is wealthy.
Immediately after posting the request, her name began to trend on X. The comments were brutal, but predictable.
“Alyssa Milano running a GoFundMe to send her kid somewhere is kinda wild,” one person said. Another said: “Alyssa Milano asking for donations? Shouldn’t she be able to fund the whole thing?”
The backlash was so intense that Milano responded on Instagram, chastising people for being so vitriolic and highlighting how her son came to her defense and doesn’t deserve to have to deal with all of the hate.
“Every parent raises money for their child’s sports teams and many of them do so through GoFundMe. I am no different,” she said. She would love to pay for “the entire team and their families for travel, transportation, hotel, food and beverage, uniforms, trading pins and all the things teams do for this kind of trip” she said, but she simply can’t afford it, adding that “maybe someday” she might be able to.
She added that even if she did pay for everything, “my trolls would find something else to be hurtful about.” Regardless, she calls out people for going to her son’s Instagram page, saying it’s “horrid” that people did so.
“Leave the kids alone. Let them play baseball. If you are against donating—don’t donate. If you’d like to donate to help the team’s families — we appreciate it—the link is in his bio.”
She highlighted a comment to her son where someone said she has a “net worth of 10 million dollars.” Then the person calls Milano “beyond ridiculous and selfish” for asking for money. Her son actually handles this really well:
“You do realize I’m only 12 and I love my mom. My mom is the greatest human of all time. She does everything for everyone.”
Why is everyone so mad?
There’s a theory as to why everyone is so mad at her, and it’s called “donation fatigue.” A professor of media studies at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Moya Luckett, told USA Today that people are tired of being asked for money all the time.
This feeling is exacerbated, Luckett said, by increased inflation, rising cost of goods and even the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine. Combine that with the fact that people are struggling to pay the bills and you have an easy conduit for hatred.
“People have an assumption that celebrities are very rich, and they’re not going to be particularly amenable to having them ask for yet more money. Especially in an economic moment like the one we’re in where a lot of people are hurting, they don’t want to hear people who seemingly have it all asking for money from ordinary people.”
Stephanie Sarkis, a psychotherapist, told the news outlet that a lot of people don’t feel like they have a voice and that directing negative feelings toward someone helps them work through those emotions, all although it’s not necessarily the most healthy way to deal with that sort of thing.
Sarkis recommends people do some self-searching to suss out what’s really driving their anger, saying that humans have “a variety of feelings that come through that we don’t necessarily take accountability for.”
Once we figure out what we’re angry about, Sarkis said, then we can ask ourselves if there’s anything that can be done to change it. Either that, or wait for a celebrity to do something off-putting and just join the pile on.
A questionable trip to the Super Bowl
By the way, the GoFundMe could have been the end of the story, if not for one recent wrinkle. Milano, who has 3.8 million followers on Instagram, shared a post of herself and her son attending the Super Bowl.
While we don’t know if she paid for her ticket or not, it’s no secret that this year’s game was the most expensive of all time. Per USA Today, tickets to the big game average around $9.5k. Predictably, people were mad. As one comment said:
“I’m a travel baseball mom. My sons team is also going to Cooperstown this summer. We are a hard working middle class family and we are paying for our son to go. Would never beg people for money to pay for my kids sports. Entitlement at its best.”
“Did she have a GoFundMe for the $18,000 tickets to the game?” someone else said. “How’s the baseball fundraising going? Pretty well by the look of it,” another comment read.
Others came to her defense, but she has yet to mention anything in regards to the Super Bowl. We’ll update this if she does.