Initially voted down because I was sure it was going to be stupid, but this is the first crazy idea I’ve ever heard for generating a billion dollars out of nothing that could actually work. I mean, ever. You win some kind of award.
That’s actually a significant problem to overcome with the virality here—the idea is complicated enough that it needs a solid paragraph or two to be explained, whereas for max virality it needs to be snappy enough to fit in 200 characters or so.
“Join this group to raise $20,000 for charity!” is normally a nearly ideal viral meme and in this case is true, but since 99.99% of things like this are fake people are annoyed by meme copy that is obviously not true, even though it is actually true. What I’m leaning towards now is something about “togetherness”, how together we can make a difference or something. I am very open to suggestions on this point.
“Craigslist users matter. 100 million lives could be saved by a billion dollars. That’s ONE banner ad on CL for five years—for charity. Craig’ll do it if we ask for it. We just need to ask.”
194 characters.
Hotlink the word ask to a page with a larger pitch that’s one more click away from the place they need to type. The $20k per person thing goes in the larger pitch.
I think the people doing it would have to actually be regular CL people. Maybe see about checking first with CL forums in big metro areas… make a meetup out of it maybe? I don’t personally think its money “out of nothing” though. Even if people don’t feel the “epistemic pain” I suspect ads do impose a dust speck style cost on their viewers.
I agree. I’m not even sure if there are hard-to-explain methods for that price.
If you were really going to do it you’d want to figure out a lot more about the details (like where to direct the money to maximize the goodness of the outcome in a way that was intelligible to people, and whether ads of the sort proposed could really generate the predicted amount).
But the numbers you ended up with could be plugged into the text without changing the emotional impact. The pitch is aimed at people’s sense of “making a difference” and “belonging to a community” and “being heard” and so on, not at their excitement for dollar-efficient charity. The stated problem was the difficulty of pressing the right buttons in a compact and readable way that would (hopefully) get viral traction.
The numbers just have to be enough to feel like they matter for the text to be sufficient. The emotional impact of “Half a million...” versus “100 million” is probably not large, even if the real world impact is 200 times less. This is (if I understand correctly) the whole point of the “shut up and multiply” slogan in this community—recognition of our lack of cognitive sensitivity to numerical differences.
But that is part of what I meant about the fact that its really not money “out of nothing”. Watching a single ad costs you something. Equally, a trillion ad impressions is a lot of cost to impose on people’s minds. At some point, the damage to CL and the world might really be worse than the number of lives saved.
It’s not clear to me that the relative impacts could even be worked out in advance… if ads were put up according to the whims of the passionate few, the money ended up in dumb places, there was a backlash and CL’s functioning as an institution people can trust was damaged, and the world economy had X amount of value destroyed thereby, then the whole thing might be a net negative. The damage to CL’s reputation with people who didn’t understand why the ads had suddenly appeared might have to be monitored in real time rather than predicted in advance.
But assuming there was an honestly great thing to be gained that was really blocked by nothing more than a bit of text… well… there was some text to work as the first draft :-)
As for “regular Craigslist people”, the people who post on the forums are not regular Craigslist people. Maybe some of the local forums are representative Craigslist users, but the Craigslist meta-discussion forum where this would be on-topic has particularly hardcore users. I expect the regular posters in the Craigslist feedback forum to respond negatively to this because they do not like change. I can’t know until I ask, but I think we want to build some momentum separately before making the case to the people who populate the Craigslist feedback forum.
Most people are Craigslist users. I’ve certainly used it and I expect >50% of people here have used Craigslist at least once. I guess my point is that whatever people we get to do this will effectively count as regular CL people. Craigslist is a public service that is supposed to belong to everyone, right?
I do think that converting hardcore Craigslist users to our cause is a good target, as they will have more influence and will be willing to work harder.
This is probably my fault for not looking at the right reference class again, but most people don’t have Internet access. stats (though most North Americans and (by a tiny margin) Europeans do)
Yeah, reference class thing, I meant most North American internet users have used and are aware of Craigslist. Even someone who doesn’t use it regularly, but is aware of Craigslist’s existence and when it is useful counts as a user, imo.
Sure, that’s advertising though. The vast majority of people on facebook wouldn’t be put off by such a title, even after reading the full description and learning that the words “a BILLION” should have actually read “potentially a billion”. Regardless, you can replace “BILLION” with any non-specific alternative.
“Convince Craigslist to donate a ton of money to charity!”
I actually think there could be a decent angle in promoting your group like similar groups with some simpleminded emphasis that your group is different, e.g. “How to ACTUALLY raise money for charity with just a few clicks” or some improved variant of that. I know I would be curious enough to click.
Initially voted down because I was sure it was going to be stupid, but this is the first crazy idea I’ve ever heard for generating a billion dollars out of nothing that could actually work. I mean, ever. You win some kind of award.
That’s actually a significant problem to overcome with the virality here—the idea is complicated enough that it needs a solid paragraph or two to be explained, whereas for max virality it needs to be snappy enough to fit in 200 characters or so.
“Join this group to raise $20,000 for charity!” is normally a nearly ideal viral meme and in this case is true, but since 99.99% of things like this are fake people are annoyed by meme copy that is obviously not true, even though it is actually true. What I’m leaning towards now is something about “togetherness”, how together we can make a difference or something. I am very open to suggestions on this point.
“Craigslist users matter. 100 million lives could be saved by a billion dollars. That’s ONE banner ad on CL for five years—for charity. Craig’ll do it if we ask for it. We just need to ask.”
194 characters.
Hotlink the word ask to a page with a larger pitch that’s one more click away from the place they need to type. The $20k per person thing goes in the larger pitch.
I think the people doing it would have to actually be regular CL people. Maybe see about checking first with CL forums in big metro areas… make a meetup out of it maybe? I don’t personally think its money “out of nothing” though. Even if people don’t feel the “epistemic pain” I suspect ads do impose a dust speck style cost on their viewers.
But those numbers are grossly wrong. $10 per life saved isn’t true of any easy-to-explain method.
I agree. I’m not even sure if there are hard-to-explain methods for that price.
If you were really going to do it you’d want to figure out a lot more about the details (like where to direct the money to maximize the goodness of the outcome in a way that was intelligible to people, and whether ads of the sort proposed could really generate the predicted amount).
But the numbers you ended up with could be plugged into the text without changing the emotional impact. The pitch is aimed at people’s sense of “making a difference” and “belonging to a community” and “being heard” and so on, not at their excitement for dollar-efficient charity. The stated problem was the difficulty of pressing the right buttons in a compact and readable way that would (hopefully) get viral traction.
The numbers just have to be enough to feel like they matter for the text to be sufficient. The emotional impact of “Half a million...” versus “100 million” is probably not large, even if the real world impact is 200 times less. This is (if I understand correctly) the whole point of the “shut up and multiply” slogan in this community—recognition of our lack of cognitive sensitivity to numerical differences.
But that is part of what I meant about the fact that its really not money “out of nothing”. Watching a single ad costs you something. Equally, a trillion ad impressions is a lot of cost to impose on people’s minds. At some point, the damage to CL and the world might really be worse than the number of lives saved.
It’s not clear to me that the relative impacts could even be worked out in advance… if ads were put up according to the whims of the passionate few, the money ended up in dumb places, there was a backlash and CL’s functioning as an institution people can trust was damaged, and the world economy had X amount of value destroyed thereby, then the whole thing might be a net negative. The damage to CL’s reputation with people who didn’t understand why the ads had suddenly appeared might have to be monitored in real time rather than predicted in advance.
But assuming there was an honestly great thing to be gained that was really blocked by nothing more than a bit of text… well… there was some text to work as the first draft :-)
Asteroid defence, for one: http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm
Anna Salamon gives an estimate for lives the SIAI can save per dollar in this talk: http://vimeo.com/7397629
That is a good 194 characters.
As for “regular Craigslist people”, the people who post on the forums are not regular Craigslist people. Maybe some of the local forums are representative Craigslist users, but the Craigslist meta-discussion forum where this would be on-topic has particularly hardcore users. I expect the regular posters in the Craigslist feedback forum to respond negatively to this because they do not like change. I can’t know until I ask, but I think we want to build some momentum separately before making the case to the people who populate the Craigslist feedback forum.
Most people are Craigslist users. I’ve certainly used it and I expect >50% of people here have used Craigslist at least once. I guess my point is that whatever people we get to do this will effectively count as regular CL people. Craigslist is a public service that is supposed to belong to everyone, right?
I do think that converting hardcore Craigslist users to our cause is a good target, as they will have more influence and will be willing to work harder.
This is probably my fault for not looking at the right reference class again, but most people don’t have Internet access. stats (though most North Americans and (by a tiny margin) Europeans do)
Yeah, reference class thing, I meant most North American internet users have used and are aware of Craigslist. Even someone who doesn’t use it regularly, but is aware of Craigslist’s existence and when it is useful counts as a user, imo.
“Help Craigslist donate a BILLION dollars to charity!”
“Support Craigslist in donating a BILLION dollars to charity!”
“Convince Craigslist to donate a BILLION dollars to charity!”
In order of increasing truthiness and decreasing pizazz.
Using the word BILLION in all the marketing without good evidence that’s what’s at stake seems dubious.
Sure, that’s advertising though. The vast majority of people on facebook wouldn’t be put off by such a title, even after reading the full description and learning that the words “a BILLION” should have actually read “potentially a billion”. Regardless, you can replace “BILLION” with any non-specific alternative.
“Convince Craigslist to donate a ton of money to charity!”
I actually think there could be a decent angle in promoting your group like similar groups with some simpleminded emphasis that your group is different, e.g. “How to ACTUALLY raise money for charity with just a few clicks” or some improved variant of that. I know I would be curious enough to click.