Batten down the hatches, me hearties, it's ethical quandary time!

I am completely aware that if you give the average person anonymity and a forum to express themselves, sometimes they morph into a strange mutant internet beast that tends to be either extremely hostile, vulgar or completely nonsensical. There are certain places on the web that this phenomenon tends to be harsher or more benign. For example, I tend not to read the comments on popular you tube videos because it simply isn't worth the effort. Same goes for a lot of gaming forums.

One place I thought I might be alright is the Thorn Tree forum on the Lonely Planet website. I have been doing some research on a trip to Europe in the fall and posted a question about whether I should bother with a working holiday visa for Ireland to find casual work. If you just want to pick fruit for a couple weeks or help out on a farm, the $500 in fees and registration is probably not worth it. The replies ranged from unhelpful to downright hostile. One poster said that anyone who was working without a visa and from a privileged country was scum and that the only excuse for working illegally was if I had to to feed my poor family. Another said that there were many other people willing to work way harder and for less pay than me so don't bother. A third said I had two hopes for finding undocumented work, Bob Hope and no hope (which doesn't even make any sense). Disregarding the fact that these people have no idea how hard I am willing to work (I cleaned gas station toilets in the desert for minimum wage, after all), these people really pissed me off. At first I felt that the forum members were just being judgmental elitist jerks but I thought I would get a second opinion.

If a farmer is willing to hire me to do a bit of shoveling for a few euros, does that make me scum? Am I taking food out of the mouths of some poor EU family by supplementing my adventure with casual labour? . Am I missing something? Ireland isn't exactly El Salvador, after all. In

the end I will probably be going through WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), volunteering in exchange for room and board, but my sister travelled in the 90s primarily by getting random work along the way and to me it seems like a great way to absorb the culture of an area and meet people. Thoughts?

-A.