What you should take away from this article is "community members help each other out with money, the Internet makes communities bigger". For the Bachelorette,

What you should take away from this article is "community members help each other out with money, the Internet makes communities bigger". For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating. This reminds me strongly of this YouTube video where an adjunct professor who's popular in the Magic TCG community asks for money for support, and gets quite a lot of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_community_college_talks_about_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_c...