I want to know if these people are getting gofundme requests from people they know. If so, what are they doing differently from me?

Because if you're getting gofundme requests from people you don't know, we've all been getting hit up for money from shady "charities" forever; it's just that the internet has democratized the technologies used to ask randoms for money. This isn't really a change, in my mind.

I'll accept that it's a cultural change when I get these sorts of requests from people I know, rather than from random strangers.