Five bucks for great justice

It all started as all good things start these days : on irc.

Always the humble and obedient spirit you all know me as, I wasted no time in following the direction of the better informed, and so added the task of "make acct on fiverr, comb site for anything may be useful to us." to a competent PM. Combing the resulting list of listings of possible interest, the correct test avenue immediately jumped at me : bunches of people willing to put up and distribute fliers on their college campus.

Now Trilema prides itself in containing at least one piece grossly offensive to any conceivable demographic group, no matter how defined (have you noticed this by the way ?) and so selecting a proper little something that'd speak to the interests and preoccupations of college kids today was not hard at all. Turning that into a flier... even easier. Making it really really funny ? Not too hard either.ⁱ

Meanwhile it's been about half a week or so, and the early results are here. In summary, 3000 fliers ordered in total from 20 different providers, most black&white, some color, aboutⁱⁱ two thirds to be put up and a third to be distributed by hand (in some cases with commentary), which set me back 0.55421 BTC + miners fees. Definitely cheaper than a Buttcoinⁱⁱⁱ.

There was exactly one cancellation, possibly the only bookish girl in the lot, that actually read the whole thing. Or who knows, maybe her printer was slow. Turns out that fiverr puts a two week hold on your funds in this case, which indicates to me they've probably been raped by fraudsters in the past.^iv

Other than that, the results can be split in two groups. On one hand textual results, such as

"i love that it deals with bitcoin, i'm actually running for us house as a libertarian." later said job's done, gave a list of where on campus (baylor u.) he put fliers up.

or

Thank you for the order and your flyer looked great. I completed your order today and everything went fantastic! People seemed interested in your flyer and I hope to work with you again very soon! There were a lot of people out today so it was a perfect day to complete your gig. I would suggest more volume at different venues to increase exposure. I have done this with people in the past and they truly were pleased with the delivery.

Thanks again for the order.^v

or

completed, no pix, handed 150 out, says people responded positively and flyers looked good.

or

completed, said had a great time handing them out, sent a series of pics, reviewed.

On the other hand, visual, such as :

Now considering half^vi the people haven't reported yet on their activity, as well as the aforementioned reading comprehension considerations, it may perhaps be excused that the entire exercise has produced no social media firestorm of ire and protest, as some had anticipated. It turns out that on direct and actual examination, the bulk of US collegiate kids are a lot more tolerant to heresy than currently depicted in the media. This stands in stark contrast to the same exercise a few years ago in Romania, which yielded some very VERY bitter & butthurt people.^vii

Trilema gets a ton of trafic anyway, and so neither the 19th nor the 20th stand in any way as remarkable (the 19th shows ~21k uniques, which is slightly above average, the 20th about 16k, which is a little low, approximately on par with an average Saturday^viii). The depicted article (/2013/the-gentlemen-prefer-coeds-club/) received a little under 200 hits this month, so it's way deep in the heap of articles, far far away from disrupting the top three (wherein, as every single day for the past 18 months or so, /2012/cum-se-suge-pula-ghid-pentru-juma-de-sex-oral/ holds on to its second place^ix). I did look for google keyphrases, but the only thing containing either "gentlemen", "coeds" or "blondes" was "clubbing clitoris".^x

This may get an update towards the end of the month, if I remember. But either way, fiverr is basically a decent way to buy some college kids a beer - which is not altogether a bad way to spend some money. Their activity is not likely to amount to much, but this not because they won't try, or do work. Instead, mostly because they're powerless, which I guess is as it should be.

Then again, and to be perfectly fair, the results of such things are eminently unquantifiable. Kinda why corporation-economy and lands of "laws not men" collapse in short order : the lack of incentive to do the unmeasurable right thing suffocates society through absence of white swans.^xi

PS :

1. You see, the item consists of picture, wall of small face text and clearly separated large face text. Guess how many college kids form their notions on the basis of image and title only, without reading the actual body ? Guess and be amazed! [↩]
2. Seeing that this is quite far from a well specified and intimately controlled activity, "about" is good enough at this juncture. I wouldn't even know if people put up all the fliers they claimed, for instance, and it'd cost more to find out than to re-do. [↩]
3. That was a little over a year ago. If this observation doesn't teach the virtue of patience, nothing will. [↩]
4. Easy way to launder stolen funds : put dirty money into such a website, bid on projects of your own, reject the bids, withdraw the money, all clean. [↩]
5. Yes I know this looks cookie cutter. I tried to google for it with no results. [↩]
6. Exactly half. 10. [↩]
7. Though to be perfectly fair, these were dumb kids imagining themselves kings of an imaginary hill, reacting negatively to what they perceived as a breach of the "rules" of "fairness" that they themselves had self-servingly & conveniently imagined. Much like should you take your Caterpillar excavator to the place where kids play with models in the sand the boys that thought they had the better toys might start wailing. [↩]
8. Apparently people are least likely to read me on Saturday for some reason. Or maybe I'm least likely to write then ? [↩]
9. The first place often changes, currently being held by /2013/mpoe-pr-almost-two-years-in-the-swamp-an-anthology/ [↩]
10. Perhaps Awstats reports of google keyphrases aren't that accurate, as this seems quite improbable on the face of things. I'm too lazy to log into google itself, so I guess it'll stay a mystery. [↩]
11. A crude equivalent of Taleb's black swan, a white swan is a positive event (no matter how big or small) that is impossible to replicate. Like say the pleasant aroma of a good cigar, it's not something manufacturable, and so not something easily found in the US. [↩]