How the $20K search for a missing dog on the Upper East Side sparked an internet firestorm

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A mini-goldendoodle named Rosie is missing on the Upper East Side, and a GoFundMe campaign has raised $19,458 to find her as of Friday morning.

Areas around Central Park, where Rosie went missing over Thanksgiving weekend, have been blanketed with flyers advertising a $6,000 reward.

The story gained the attention of Lucy Wong, a New York-based TikTok user with more than 70,000 followers, who posted a video about the situation earlier this week.

โ€œI need to talk about the drama thatโ€™s been plaguing my neighborhood,โ€ she began, adding that issues get โ€œa little more dramaticโ€ on the Upper East Side because โ€œpeople kind of have Upper East Side money.โ€

In her video, Wong repeated details from local Facebook groups about the lost dog and the money raised to help Shira Meged, the dogโ€™s owner, in the search. She noted that the GoFundMe was trying to raise thousands of dollars and described it as โ€œan absurd amount of money.โ€

Unsurprisingly, given the combo of โ€œwealthy neighborhoodโ€ and โ€œpet drama,โ€ the internet lost its mind in response to Wongโ€™s video.

As the comments poured in to TikTok, the story became a litmus test for peopleโ€™s values, with commenters weighing in on the search effort, the sum of money, how far one should go to find a lost pet, and the Upper East Side in general.

โ€œI lie awake at night thinking about how this is crazy as rich peopleโ€™s lives get,โ€ said one TikTok commenter.

Wong did not respond to multiple requests for further comment and said only that she would โ€œprefer not to be the face of this story.โ€

But some of Wongโ€™s claims, including how the money was being used and the kind of professional pet tracker Meged hired, were inaccurate, Meged said.

Meged, a therapist, has said on her website that โ€œno monies raised have gone or will go to lost wagesโ€ โ€“ and the web page for the GoFundMe campaign states that they are applied toward hiring a professional pet tracker, the reward for information and toward the search…

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