United States Discus Thrower & Shrewd Business Woman Veronica Fraley Has Made Nearly $30K Off One Tweet About How She Couldn't Pay Her Rent
Obviously Snoop Dogg is the United States' official 2024 Summer Olympics mascot. But Flavor Flav has managed to insert himself into Team USA Olympic-verse as well. Now I know you're probably thinking, "Flavor Flav is kind of like a less popular, handicapped Snoop Dogg. Wouldn't it have made sense to save him for the Paralympics later this month?"
Yes that would make more sense and be much funnier, but it's not the case. Flavor Flav is at the ableist Olympics. He started out supporting the women's water polo team and has now moved on to paying the rent of financially struggling US discus thrower Veronica Fraley.
Following Flavor's generous donation, he was immediately donation cucked by Serena Williams' husband who agreed to pay her rent for the rest of 2024.
So that's $7,760 from Mr. Williams. Plus whatever Flavor Flav paid her (Veronica said Vanderbilt paid 75%, Flavor seems to be implying he paid her whole rent for August, which based on my calculations is just under $2,000)
Either way, that's pretty good. Already pushing $10,000. Pretty solid come up for Veronica. But being the shrewd business woman that she is. With the eyes of America upon her for what I'm certain is the first time in her life. She cooked up a little a little something called a GoFundMe.
At the moment, Veronica's GoFundMe has gotten up to $18,712 of it's $20,000 goal in less than 24 hours. She's closing in on a $30k profit since Thursday morning. All stemming from a single tweet about how she was short on rent (which again, if Vanderbilt was paying 75%, she was about $500 short).
She needed $500 and got $30,000. Well played Veronica. That's how you take advantage of your 15-minutes of fame. I can't help but think there's a whole lot of other American athletes out there kicking themselves right now for not sending out an "I'm a U.S. Olympian and I'm poor 👎" tweet of their very own. I wouldn't be surprised that if you did a little digging, you might find a few more Olympic athlete's trying this same move. And naturally, you might not be shocked to learn there are some not so happy people in her Twitter replies.
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Is this a bit a of a money grab? Absolutely. I'd say it's a lot of a money grab. But this is a "don't hate the player hate the game" situation if you ask me. Unless Veronica was blatantly lying about struggling with rent, she didn't mislead anyone. She said she was short money. Flavor Flav helped. Serena Williams' husband one-upped him. Then she made a GoFundMe that said nothing more than "Help support my track & field journey as I start my professional athletic career and continue representing the USA". And the people who wanted to support her did. I can't be mad at that.
Where Veronica went wrong, in my opinion, was throwing Vanderbilt football under the bus. Coming at football is always going to piss some people off (but at the same that probably help reach the "fuck football women deserve money too" crowd, so maybe it was the right move). But unfortunately, throwing a heavy disc really far isn't bringing in any money for Vanderbilt. Losing to Alabama by 50 points is. That's how the world works, and when you play that card people are gonna be quick to tell you about it.
Veronica went on to finish 13th in today's qualifying. One spot short of qualifying for the finals. But she made more money on the internet than the United States would have paid her had she won a silver medal (Gold = $37,500, Silver = $22,500, Bronze = $15,000). So considering she was never even close to being good enough to win a medal bonus, I'd say she had a pretty damn successful Olympics.