Can we please stop crowd-sourcing our money problems to Reddit?

Over the past month, the number of people asking for a handout from Reddit has seemingly exploded. From the guy who drew in MSPaint for donations ($1000 donated) to the guy who sold ad space on his wheelchair ($1800 donated)

Now, these posts were actually quite welcome. What these users did was creative, funny, and interesting, everything Reddit should be.

What I am instead worried about is the gold rush of users (or just scammers) who see Reddit as the new era of quick-fix money crowd-sourcing scheme. How many users will see successful posts like the ones above and think to themselves "You know, I'm pretty broke/have credit card debt/am jobless, and would love a few extra thousand dollars. All I have to do is sound desperate enough, take a couple hours to make a long sob story, and cash in?" I am NOT saying the above users are like this, simply that people could see successful posts like this and prey on Reddit's good-willed nature.

I know that we want to help people out in need, especially since many of us have fallen on bad times ourselves (or are in one right now). But because Reddit is anonymous (although some of us have met each other in real life), we have no idea who really needs help and who just wants other people to fix their problems (such as one AskReddit where it was found out that the user was still gambling at FullTilt while broke).

It just seems so odd to me that we wouldn't fall for a gas can scam, yet we will willingly give thousands of dollars to someone we don't even know on the internet.

When someone says they are broke, offer useful advice and services, or if you have something that can help them out (such as food/shelter/etc), offer that instead. The people who really need the help will be thankful regardless, and the people who just wanted money will vanish.