A Soap Opera
Reddit.com is bookmarked in my “news” category and at least once a day I stop by there to get a fix of weird news items. Every once in a while, somebody attempts to abuse the system and post commercial stuff that’s not supposed to listed there. Those items get usually shot down in no time, leaving the original poster exposed to the ridicule of the “redditors”.
Then a few weeks ago the following appeared on the site:
Hi Reddit.
This might be bad form, but I’m in a bit of a bind and thought I would reach out to the reddit community.
My family’s business, Soapier has undergone some drastic changes since we first started making soap. We started a home party division, we opened a retail store in a prominent Florida tourist spot… and things were going really well. Until the economy tanked, and people stopped coming to the tourist area, and… well, you get the picture.
My mom has been running this business since 1999. She brought my sister and I in five years ago, to help. I do graphics, my sister is, besides my mom, a soap making genius.
We’ve closed our store, we had to move production facilities… my sister is now working two jobs, on top of making soap for our customers, both wholesale and retail… but my mom is very far behind in her mortgage payments, along with rent payments on her old retail store (the owner has been very understanding of her plight).
As for me… I’m a mess. I live in a different state, I have some serious anxiety problems that are prohibiting me from working a full time job (I am getting help, and will hopefully get a part-time job in the near future, but it’s been very, very difficult. Agoraphobia is a fucking bitch.) I live with my gf, who pretty much pays for everything. I’ve sold off most of my belongings to help my mom. I’m running out of stuff.
I figured I would post this and offer redditors 25% off their orders, as a thank you. My mom and my sister make some fantastic products… we’ve been working hard to make this a real business and a proper brand, but the legs got cut out from under us. My sister and I now work solely for the purpose of helping our mom out.
If you do make a purchase, use REDDIT as the coupon for your discount.
I know this will get downvoted into oblivion. I’m trying very hard to do what I can to drum up business. We have no capital for advertising… and I’ve come to enjoy reddit so much, I figured I would give this a shot.
Thanks for reading.
Just like everybody else, I thought the request was genuine and honest. And like a lot of other people, I also ordered a few items for some good Karma return 
The soaps from soapier.com arrived within a week of placing my order and they were better than I expected. I swapped out some old ones in the bathroom and since then the air has gotten a really nice “minty” scent.
The original poster followed up a few days after his first post and thanked everybody for the amazing support. And the company owner (the mother of the guy who asked for help) was even featured on “Bay News 9″.
As brutal as the Internet can be, every now and then you do find a warm and fuzzy spot …
