Carrie just didn’t want to spend Christmas alone.
She went on Craigslist and posted a listing under the title, “Anybody need a grandma for Christmas (Tulsa).” Her message was short and sad.
It read, in full: “I have nobody and would really like to be part of a family. I can cook and I can cook dinner. I’ll even bring food & gifts for the kids! I HAVE NOBODY AND IT REALLY HURTS! Let me be part of your family.”
This should be the part of the story where a big family offers to take Carrie in, she spends a wonderful day with them, and their feel-good segment on the local news goes viral. The Christmas spirit would be felt by all.
Thanks to misfits on the internet, things didn’t go according to plan.
Some responses to Carrie’s post accused her of trying to exploit another family’s Christmas goodwill. Someone even told her to commit suicide.
“I couldn’t understand why people I don’t know were being so rude and hateful to me,” Carrie told the New York Times in perhaps the most concise explication of the state of the internet in 2019. “I was crushed.” Carrie posted a follow-up on Craigslist about the responses giving her an “extra shot of pain.” She deleted the entire post.
Thankfully, one post went even more viral than Carrie’s initial one. Carson Carlock, 21, took a screenshot of Carrie’s Craigslist listing and posted it on Facebook with the hashtag #FINDGRANDMA. Carlock empathized with Carrie because his mother spent her last Christmas alone, she being too ill to travel and Carlock unable to overcome car troubles for the trip. Carlock’s mom has since died of cancer.
Even after Carlock’s post went viral for all the right reasons, Carrie was hesitant to trust strangers after the internet abuse. But on Dec. 23, she met up with Carlock in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hugging and crying. They made plans for Carlock to have Christmas dinner at Carrie’s house.
Without the internet, Carrie wouldn’t have suffered abuse from strangers. But without the internet, she wouldn’t have received the even bigger outpouring of love. Maybe the internet didn’t ruin Christmas after all.
