I am so cynical and yet not cynical enough

I have always had a pretty high level of cynicism for 'too good to be true' deals from anonymous public.  And I have developed a pretty good level of  'yes the public is so dumb they will fail to see through the media'  thanks to cases like Matt Shepherd.   I knew that WY was no hotbed of of homophobia but even I figured it was possible that a couple of young men were so full of hatred that they killed Matt because a gay man had flirted with them.   Then came to find out that that was just a media invention and inspired the killers  lawyer to use a lame 'gay panic' defense but that folks who were involved in the case knew that Matt was a meth dealer and the pair that killed him were clients, one was on a 5 day meth bender and was bisexual and had been in bed with Shepherd.  But they wanted to present a narrative that gays needed special protections from the masses who were not enlightened like the rich urbane folks.

But still I tend to take people that I meet, even through internet bulletin boards at face value when they post about all the stuff they do and then find myself disappointed and angry when I find that when I do them favors like hauling their horse, or even giving the horse a quick boot camp when it was getting unruly to nip in the bud the chance of it going outlaw they just take the favor, mumble a quick thank you and slip off w/o cleaning up the horses pen even though the mom has bragged online a lot about how they cleaned up the pen of the neglected horse they took under their wing.

Perhaps I should have been flattered that they knew they didn't have to worry that I'd leave their horse standing in shit over his fetlocks, but I was pissed that they didn't clean up after him when they came out to ride.   Then it was "oh you are on the *cookie list*"  We always bake Xmas cookies for folks that have done nice stuff for us during the year.  Except I found out they came to the town where I work, but didn't bother to stop to leave me any after several postings about how I was getting cookies.   I didn't need any dumb  cookies but to have been told over and over about what they were baking and oh you were so nice you are on this list it was a let down when they didn't bother to bring me any.

Last year it was hauling them to Garden of the Gods and cleaning all the horse pens where we stayed, not just cleaning up after my horse, but I told myself it was ok since they did the supper, but when the taking them to an endurance ride this year turned into "R *has* to volunteer for band the night before"  and I had to demand that twin brother J come so I would have some help when I thought about it and was like "oh shit I can't handle that by myself"  it was kind of the last straw for me.    J was a great help but I'm still so annoyed at prima donna R and mom that I don't want to do anything with the family anymore.      But I feel a bit bad that J is paying price for the lazy sister and the mom that is not discouraging sister from using the fluttering lashes to get out of doing the work for what she wants.