by Karyn Bosnak
$14,154.10 TOTAL DEBT August 11, 2002
-$432.00 my money
-$2,630.84 your money
-$682.46 eBay sales
$10,408.80 TOTAL DEBT August 18, 2002—WEEK 8
EIGHTEEN
GRAND DEBT TALLY
-$118.00 my money
-$1,884.80 your money
-$537.82 eBay sales
$7,868.18 TOTAL DEBT August 25, 2002—WEEK 9
-$75.00 my money
-$1,146.49 your money
-$605.13 eBay sales
$6,041.56 TOTAL DEBT September 1, 2002—WEEK 10
-$50.00 my money
-$606.07 your money
-$316.79 eBay sales
$5,068.70 TOTAL DEBT September 8, 2002—WEEK 11
-$100.00 my money
-$426.80 your money
-$254.38 eBay sales
$4,287.52 TOTAL DEBT September 15, 2002—WEEK 12
-$75.00 my money
-$460.33 your money
-$327.72 eBay sales
$3,424.47 TOTAL DEBT September 22, 2002—WEEK 13
-$85.00 my money
-$466.68 your money
-$78.50 eBay sales
$2,794.29 TOTAL DEBT September 29, 2002—WEEK 14
-$75.00 my money
-$447.19 your money
-$0.00 eBay sales
$2,272.10 TOTAL DEBT October 6, 2002—WEEK 15
-$90.00 my money
-$343.11 your money
-$174.19 eBay sales
$1,664.80 TOTAL DEBT October 13, 2002—WEEK 16
-$100.00 my money
-$344.48 your money
-$0.00 eBay sales
$1,220.32 TOTAL DEBT October 20, 2002—WEEK 17
-$100.00 my money
-$103.03 your money
-$287.26 eBay sales
$730.03 TOTAL DEBT October 27, 2002—WEEK 18
-$100.00 my money
-$220.82 your money
-$19.65 eBay sales
$389.56 TOTAL DEBT November 3, 2002—WEEK 19
-$114.16 my money
-$136.60 your money
-$138.80 eBay sales
$0.00 TOTAL DEBT November 10, 2002—WEEK 20
THE AFTERMATH
After the Today show appearance, it took me twelve more weeks but my debt was eventually paid off. The money slightly decreased each week, and I did hit a few snags along the way.
I found out that it was The Smoking Gun that called my grandpa, and they called him again after I was on the Today show. So I called the reporter myself and yelled at him. He said that they knew who I was for weeks, but were trying to find “dirt” on me. They were unsuccessful. A few days later, they ran their story anyway. For a photo they pulled two shots from my Today show appearance, one of me looking in the air like a ditz, and the other of me smiling really big like a fool. They couldn’t have been more unflattering. The most upsetting part about it though wasn’t the photos. It was that the article started out by saying “Meet Karyn Bosnak. She’s the 29-year-old self-described ‘hottie’ behind savekaryn.com…” They said my age! Twenty-nine, damn! They did find dirt on me!
Anywho, it was a short article, only a paragraph, but at the end it said “We’d hit it!” After calling around and asking my friends what “We’d hit it!” meant, I found out that it meant they would have sex with me. Yep, the boys from The Smoking Gun would hit me! Ladies, yes, this may be degrading, but let’s be honest: you’d rather have people say they want to “hit you” than not.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it. The worst part of it was that after they published that to the Internet, a popular website called Fark.com linked to The Smoking Gun’s article, and a discussion board popped up where dozens of other guys talked about whether or not they’d “hit me” too. And although I shouldn’t have looked, I did.
“I’m not so sure I’d hit it. Who am I kidding, of course I would.”
“I’d hit it…then take the $6,000 that idiots sent her and hit the road…”
Almost all of the comments said they’d hit me! And once again, ladies, if they’re gonna talk about it, wouldn’t you rather have them say yes? Anywho, almost at the bottom, things took a turn.
“I wouldn’t hit that unless I was blind!”
“Somebody call Jennifer Grey! I think we’ve located her old nose!”
“Oh I’d hit it all right. Open hand right across the face, and a foot in the ass!”
After getting over the “she needs a nose job” comments, I came to realize that you can’t win them all.
Also right after the Today show, the governor’s office of the state of Utah sent me a letter saying that it had come to their attention that I was soliciting donations without being registered as a charity in their state. When I refused to register as a charity, because I wasn’t one, they threatened to sue me. So after consulting with an attorney friend, she convinced me to put up a disclaimer saying that I wouldn’t accept donations from the state of Utah. The thing was, if they did sue me and it went to court, I would probably have won because I clearly didn’t fit their state’s definition of what a charity was. But since I didn’t have the cash to fight the state of Utah, putting a disclaimer up was just safer and cheaper.
After that, someone complained to eBay about me saying that I provided inaccurate contact information, so they canceled all of my auctions and suspended my account until I gave them the correct information. And, I never got accepted to that PMS study. They said my PMS wasn’t “severe” enough. Right, tell that to my roommate.
By September, more parody sites popped up all over the Web, including “Save Sheeba” and “Save Karyn’s Complexion.” Like “Don’t Save Karyn,” both were exact replicas of my site. The former was a website set up by a dog asking for a million dollars. It said, “Help this bitch return to her lap of luxury lifestyle!” and had pages like “The Daily Bark” and “Buy Sheeba’s Crap,” where you could literally buy Sheeba’s crap. There was also an area on the website where you could “Give Karyn a face lift to make her prettier!” Yes, with the click of a mouse, you could pull my face in all different directions. “Save Karyn’s Complexion” said:
Wanted: Good Skin
Hello!
My name is Darrin, I’m really nice, and I’m asking for you to help save Karyn’s Complexion!
You see, Karyn has spent so much time trying to get other people to pay off her credit card debt, that she has completely ignored her complexion. To make matters worse, Karyn is now 29 years old, and her early-morning face looks like a wrinkled sheet that was left in the dryer overnight.
So if you have an extra buck or two, please send Karyn some Retin-A!
All she needs is 1 tube from 200 people, or
2 tubes from 100 people, or
5 tubes from 40 people…
You get the picture!…AND IT’S NOT A PRETTY ONE, IS IT?
Together, we can banish laugh lines from Karyn’s face!
It then provided links to buy Retin-A. I was actually hoping people would buy it and send it to me because Francis told me that was really good for my skin, and well, I couldn’t afford it anymore. But no one did. (In other Internet news, I was named “Dumbass of the Month” on some website called The Blue Site.)
But despite the negative, a lot of good stuff happened along the way too. After the Today show, a whole new wave of media happened again because newspapers started doing follow-up stories now that I wasn’t anonymous anymore. I also appeared on CNN twice and CNBC’s News with Brian Williams. In addition, fun, big color stories were done in the Los Angeles Times and People magazine. People! A whole page! And guess what else? Time magazine. I made Time magazine! Me. The biggest screwup ever! But the biggest and the best, the one I was most proud of, was that I made…the National Examiner! Yes! A tabloid! Right next to an article called “Anna Nicole’s Woes: ‘I Can’t find a Man!’”
In addition to those magazines, British Glamour did a two-page article article about my website t
hat was very flattering. And it was funny, because the same month, American Glamour called me a “Glamour Don’t,” saying that my idea was the worst way to get out of debt. Both Glamour—the same month—one celebrated my idea, the other knocked it. But the coolest bit of publicity by far was that the New York Times Magazine named me and my website one of the best ideas to come out of 2002. And seriously, I’d rather be bashed in Glamour and praised in the New York Times than the other way around.
HOLLYWOOD ENDING
Oh yeah, did I mention the movies? Well, the guy from Sony kept in touch with me and loved the Today show interview, and all the press that the website received. One day, close to paying off my debt, I got a phone call.
“Karyn!” he said, “we want to bring you to Los Angeles! We want to make you an offer!”
“Really?!” I said, jumping up and down.
“Really!” he said. “A car is going to pick you up on Monday to bring you to the airport.”
“Pick me up in Brooklyn?” I asked.
“Yes, in Brooklyn,” he said.
“Cool!” I said, thinking I’d have to take the subway.
The next Monday, that car did pick me up and took me to JFK airport. And after taking off and landing, I was in Los Angeles. “The Sony guy” had a real name, it was Jeff, and he and another producer named Lacy picked me up at the airport. They were so nice!
We walked to their car and they drove me to my hotel, which was the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. It was very fancy and on the ocean. They came in with me to check in.
“Hi,” I said to the woman behind the counter. “My name is Karyn Bosnak and I’m here to check in.”
“Oh, Miss Bosnak,” she said. “We have been expecting you. You are a very special guest of Mr. Steve Tisch.” I looked at Lacy and Jeff.
“That’s our boss,” they said in unison.
“Okay,” I said.
“Now, Miss Bosnak,” she continued. “You have one of only four rooms in the whole hotel that has a panoramic view of the ocean.”
“Really? Wow, thanks, guys,” I said, turning to Lacy and Jeff. I felt so special!
After the woman finished checking me in, she asked if I needed an escort to my room.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll be fine all by myself.”
Lacy and Jeff walked with me upstairs and I dropped off my bags in my room. The three of us went to dinner and it was so nice to eat a normal meal again. And it was Mexican food! I just love Mexican food! During dinner, they told me that we were going to have a big meeting the following day with their bosses, this Steve Tisch being one of them.
Afterward, we walked back to my hotel, and Jeff gave me $200 spending money while I was there for food and stuff. When they left, I called my friend Tracy, my old sorority sister, who lived in Los Angeles. She came over and we had a slumber party.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to wear the next day, so when she showed up, I tried on a few outfits to show her, and she quickly vetoed all of them. So, what was a broke girl to do?
Take her $200 food money and go shopping, that’s what! (Before you go and yell at me, you would have done the same thing.) All I had was an ugly pair of pants and an Old Navy skirt with pen marks on it. And I certainly wasn’t going to wear that!
So after finding a lovely number at the local Banana Republic the next morning, Tracy and I went back to the hotel and she took pictures of me while I got ready. Kind of like how Naomi and I took them at the Plaza. That’s what good girlfriends do! And afterward, she drove me to the Sony lot. When she dropped me off, I called Jeff and Lacy from the front gate.
“Hi,” they said. “Now after you check in, you are going to go left by the Men in Black sign, and all the way around to the back to the Astaire Building.”
“Okay,” I said, looking up to find a larger-than-life Will Smith staring back at me.
After gettin’ jiggy with it, I took a left where I was instructed to do so. I got a little lost, and after ending up in the Gene Autry Building I asked someone to point me in the right direction. I eventually found it. I walked through the front doors and took the elevator up to the correct floor.
After I checked in at the front desk, both Lacy and Jeff came to greet me and asked me to wait for a bit on a couch in the lobby. While sitting there I looked up at a huge Forrest Gump poster hanging above me. As I looked at it, I did a double take when I saw the first name in the credits. It said “Produced by Steve Tisch.”
Holy shit! Holy fucking shit! Oh my God! That’s who their boss was?! The producer of Forrest Fucking Gump?! I tried to calm myself down, but before I knew it Lacy and Jeff were back to get me. (In this case, the “f-word” is helping me convey the excitement that was going on in my head.)
“Everyone’s going to meet in Steve’s office,” they said.
“Okay,” I said. I was sweating. I was shaking. I felt like I was on a job interview, only this job interview could change my whole life. I followed them both into a large corner office, and as we walked in a man got up from his desk.
“Hi, Karyn,” he said. “I’m Steve. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“You too,” I said, shaking his hand and sitting down on a big leather couch. I wondered if Forrest sat where I was sitting. Just then, all the other bigwigs came in as well. They were all there just to meet me and see what I had to say. I was so nervous! After they introduced themselves, they started talking.
“So, we think your website is hilarious,” someone said. I don’t know who it was, because I was so nervous that I couldn’t tell. “Tell us the story behind it. What happened?”
“Well,” I started, “I moved to New York about two years ago, and I guess you could say that I went a little hog-wild and charged up a boat-load of stuff.”
I told them about my purses and shoes and lingerie, my dates, my job, and the Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan. I told them about losing my job, moving to Brooklyn, the rodents in my walls, and that sign at the grocery store.
“I just didn’t want to move home feeling defeated,” I said. “So I decided to create this silly little website thinking not many people would really go to it.”
“And now she’s kind of like the poster child for consumer debt,” Lacy said.
“It’s a very funny website,” Jeff said.
I continued telling my story about the anonymity thing, The Smoking Gun and my grandpa. And before I knew it, the meeting was over. I did it! And they loved it!
As I got up to leave Steve’s office, I said good-bye to everyone, and Lacy and Jeff walked with me back to Jeff ’s office.
“That went really well,” they said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” they replied.
“So what do I do now?” I asked.
“Well, we’ll get started on the contract, I guess,” Lacy said. “So really nothing! Go and enjoy yourself! Lay by the pool!”
I thanked them both and said good-bye. On my way downstairs, I was too excited. I couldn’t contain myself! I wanted to scream! On my way out, I said good-bye to Will Smith and jumped in a cab by the entrance to go back to my hotel.
“Why were you at the Sony lot?” the cab driver asked me.
“Me? Oh, I…,” I said shyly, still afraid I would jinx it. “Someone might make a movie about me.”
“What about you is so interesting?” he asked.
“Oh, I created this website to pay off my debt,” I said, quietly. The driver turned around.
“Are you Karyn?” he asked.
“Yes! Yes, I am Karyn!” I answered.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “You are really funny!”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said.
“Thanks!” I said and leaned back in my seat and smiled.
I FINALLY GOT THAT CONTRACT the first week in November, and my friend Jodi’s agency worked out the deal for me. I think the Sony people planned it that way, waiting to make an offer or give
me any money until the debt was paid off so they could see how the story would play itself out. At that time I took down all the PayPal links and stopped collecting money. On November 10, I officially updated my website to say that I was all paid off. Matt Lauer again interviewed me on Today, and he was as friendly as he was the first time. And cute!
INTERNET PANHANDLING
The stats are this: approximately 2,718 people gave me cash that amounted to $13,323.08. Of that money, approximately 1,407 people gave me $7,288 by using PayPal, and 1,311 gave me $6,035.08 by using the mail. The largest donation I received was $500 from an anonymous person in New Jersey, and the smallest was one penny. An equal amount of men and woman gave me that money.
In addition to money, I received gift baskets, all sorts of beauty products, fresh vegetables from someone’s garden, gift certificates, books, coupons, cat food, cat toys, catnip, stamps, calling cards, candles, household products, movie tickets, cans of food, CorningWare, jewelry, hair accessories, clothes—tons of stuff. Also, some guy named Wayne registered the domain names savekaryn.net, savekaryn.org, and savekaryn.us, so mean people wouldn’t buy them and start more anti-Karyn sites. I got to pick out two free pairs of shoes from Chinese Laundry’s website, but of course when I wrote about which styles I chose, I received e-mails telling me that I again had bad taste in shoes.
I received approximately 2,017,215 hits on my website, and over 37,000 e-mails from people all over the world. I still continue to get about 100,000 hits a month.