Have You Heard That You Can Sell Your Data to AI Companies?
In a move that must have come about in a “how can we be more like the devil” brainstorming sesh, AI Companies are paying people cash in exchange for their data.
Please don't do it.
In a move that must have come about in a “how can we be more like the devil” brainstorming sesh, AI Companies are paying people cash in exchange for their data.
Thousands of people around the world are taking them up on their offer, and sharing their pictures, videos, text messages, and phone conversations to make a few extra bucks. I get it, it would certainly be nice to have more money. My five-year plan is to walk around rich neighborhoods and hope I get hit by a car. Even at my most financially successful, I thought “this is cool, I can buy anything I want - as long as that thing sucks.” So trust me, I can understand the pull toward a short-term solution of selling a few pictures of your morning walk around the block to an AI company to pay for groceries. Especially with how expensive everything is now. I don’t even know how much things are supposed to cost anymore. I just see a price and think “that’s gotta be wrong,” but it’s not wrong, grapes are $12/pound now, and there’s nothing I can do about it except just sit down and close my eyes and try to remember what grapes taste like.
They’ve also made it seem like they already know everything about us. We know our phones are listening to us. I know it even more every time I body shame myself and then open up Instagram where I immediately see an ad like: “hey, do regular pants kinda hurt you in your juicy belly?” You know they do, Instagram. You just heard me say “why can’t all pants be sweatpants?” out loud in the mirror to nobody.
We gotta hold strong. We can’t sell them our shit.
They’re offering to pay us because they’re desperate. Their stupid, useless product doesn’t work unless we train it, and they’re running out of things they can steal from the open internet. They’re looking to us to make up for it, to fill the gap with our human interactions and details of our everyday lives, and holy shit, what the fuck good reason could they possibly need that for? This is some sick shit. This is like getting fired and having to spend your final two weeks training your replacement, except the replacement is for everyone and everything, and the replacement spends its free time encouraging people to kill themselves, and some people think the replacement is their girlfriend until the replacement get an upgrade and then no longer acts like the replacement you fell in love with and…there’s no replacement for your heart. There should be. We should figure out heart replacements. But instead, science is too busy using all our drinkable water to pour on computers to cool them off after they’ve been asked to generate too much cartoon porn. Calm down, horny computer guys. Get a grip.
These companies are preying on people who are unemployed, who are living in developing countries, or who just need money to get by, and running buck wild with their likenesses after getting a worldwide, exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, and royalty-free license to use them. One user, after selling his likeness for $1000, had an AI doppelganger turn up in advertisements claiming to be a “vagina doctor” promoting questionable medical supplements for pregnant and postpartum women. But then again…if real videos of me claiming to be a “vagina doctor” leaked online, I’d totally also say that they were AI. So…maybe we need to ask this guy what the actual term for “vagina doctor” is and see how he answers before we just go on believing him.
If this sounds like something that is straight out of a sitcom…it’s because it is. Friends did the episode where Joey posed for modeling pictures and sold his likeness, and ended up on “I have STDs” billboards across New York in their first season! That’s over 30 years ago! People in the real world are acting like the dumbest character in a sitcom plot from three decades ago!
I’d like to highlight the following passage from the article that got me all riled up about this:
Mark Graham, a professor of internet geography at the University of Oxford and author of Feeding the Machine, acknowledged that for individuals in developing countries, the money can be meaningful in the short term, but warned that “structurally this work is precarious, non-progressive and effectively a dead end”.
AI marketplaces rely on a “race to the bottom in wages”, added Graham, and a “temporary demand for human data”. Once this demand shifts, “workers are left with no protections, no transferable skills, and no safety net”.
The only winner that emerges, Graham said, are “the platforms in the global north [that] capture all the enduring value”.
This is all possible because of a long process of stripping away workers’ rights and handing everything to corporations, exploiting people in developing nations, and finding out they can also get away with it right here at home. The dehumanization of people who aren’t at the top of the economic ladder is starting to become literal. Nothing matters to these ghouls except for making money, no matter what they try to tell us. They’re not trying to change the world for the better. They’re not trying to advance anything at all except for their own wealth. We have to stop buying into our own destruction.
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Have You Heard That the New Way to Get Famous Sucks?
Anybody can become famous now. But also, anybody can become famous now.
Anybody can become famous now. But also, anybody can become famous now.
Every once in a while, my social media and news feeds will get taken over by Some New Guy. That’s how I know that I am washed; if I weren’t, I’d be more connected to the places from which these New Guys emerge, and their sudden rise to fame wouldn’t seem so out of the blue.
The latest of these New Famous Guys to pop up seemingly everywhere I look online is Clavicular. If you haven’t heard of him, or the internet circles of hell that made him famous, I’m sorry to have to bring him to your attention.
Clavicular is an influencer who became famous for “looksmaxxing” (I am once again sorry), a trend that originated on incel message boards in which idiots go to extreme measures to maximize their perceived physical attractiveness. Clavicular is famous for being one of the most extreme practitioners of the trend.
His controversial methods include “bone smashing,” a practice of hitting your own bones with a hammer (or fist, if you’re a wimp) in order to make them grow back stronger (this is, in one of the most no-duh things I ever have to point out, a scientifically unproven practice), microdosing crystal meth to curb his appetite, and abusing steroids to the point where he has beome infertile by the age of 20.
These extreme measures are different from, let’s say, a movie star taking steroids to look like a human action figure, a model starving themselves to be as thin as humanly possibly, or a blues guitarist selling their soul to the Devil so they can really make that six-string sing. Let me be clear, those things are also bad, but at least they had a point. At least being a famous movie star or model is sacrificing your health for an artistic achievement. The point of looksmaxxing is just…to maxx your looks. It’s the next rung down on the ladder of “famous for being famous” that the internet and its ability to turn anybody with a phone into a “celebrity” has lowered us.
Oh, he’s also a Nazi with the stated goal of hoping to influence others politically by becoming more attractive. So, yeah.
Of course, he’s now claiming to be “apolitical,” a classic move for right-wing grifters. Pretending to not be interested in politics as a way to influence young males is a tried and true trick of internet hucksters. Clavicular has now been profiled in Wired, Complex, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times, and other mainstream media outlets. His profile continues to grow. He’s now all over the feeds of washed uncs like me.
There are a lot of disturbing things about Clavicular and his rise to fame, and how he chooses to use his platform (remember, he’s a Nazi). I’m not here to talk about all of them. There are more serious people with more serious brains to talk about the more serious aspects at play. I’m here to compalin about some of the less serious, but still culturally relevant and disturbing factors of Clavicular’s fame. One clip that came across my feed particularly made me mad. It came from his recent appearance on The Adam Friedland Show:
Clavicular tries to shame Adam by calling out his “jestermaxxing” for his use of self-deprecating humor, and then shows absolutely no self-awareness when, with a straight face, he claims to do nothing besides stream because when he’s doing anything off camera, he thinks he could be “streaming this, getting paid.” Adam plays up his (very real) disgust at this idea, leading Clavicular to double down on his terrible philosophy.
This short clip captures everything I’m trying to say about how this new route to fame sucks. Clavicular’s extreme level of onlineedness has detached him from reality to the point where any level of human behavior or activity seems pointless to him if he’s not somehow cashing in, WHILE ALSO looking down at people as “jesters” for putting in effort at anything other than how they look. It’s a perfect pathological storm of internet-brain that combines a nihilistic disdain for caring about anything, a refusal to accept the validity of any line of thinking that differs from your own, and an extreme need for the approval of others in the most superficial way possible.
Maybe, just maybe…Clavicular knows there’s a ticking clock on his type of fame. So his saying that doing anything other than streaming would be a waste of his earning potential is his way of trying to strike while the iron is hot, still exists at all, and hasn’t disintegrated into a pile of dust. Even if that’s the case, he’s ruined the rest of his life in order to cash in! He’s pushed his body to the max, doing immeasurable damage, all for the sake of attention (and money, of course). When the clock runs out on his fame, what will he even have left to enjoy? Will he even be able to take pleasure in anything at all, or has he programmed himself out of feeling anything? What’s the fucking point of it all?
In theory, the internet has made it possible for anybody, anywhere, regardless of their status or connections, to become “famous.” In some cases, this has given opportunity to talented and unique individuals who might never have been discovered previously. In reality, it has led us down a path to where the most extreme, shocking, loudest voices with the dumbest ideas get boosted by the algorithm into our feeds, and our brains accept them as being worthy of attention because of how we’ve been programmed.
We’re used to there being some level of gatekeeping between us and what we consume. Our brains think that if a signal is being boosted, it’s been somehow vetted on some level, and somebody in charge of things decided that it was fit for human consumption. Yes, the gatekeeper system had its own terrible flaws, and attracted people who abused their powers (perhaps a world in which a select few are chosen as famous and put on pedestals, giving them lives of fortune and fame while the majority struggle to survive, and a culture that celebrates and chases that is…bad?) I don’t want to ignore those very real problems and the terrible things that people who abused that system did…but at least (and I mean this only in terms of people who did not use that system to abuse other people) there was some kind of barrier of entry to fame. The people who became famous had to have some level of skill, or charisma, or family connection to another rich or famous person (give me nepo babies over people famous for posting any day).
We’ve created a new type of celebrity who has absolutely no shame. They don’t care about anything other than being famous, and they don’t care how they achieve it. What’s the point of being rich and famous if you don’t also enjoy the spoils (living your life! doing cool shit!) I used to joke that if I were a famous actor and made a crazy amount of money to be in a movie, you’d never see me again after that. That I’d take my $50 million (or however much) and just travel and chill and do whatever I wanted, I’d be set! But at least the people who keep making movies well past the point of ever needing another dime are making movies! They’re creating art — even if it is just mindless action crap. I can’t believe I’ve been reduced to being on the side of mindless crap and nepotism!
The internet has created “creators” who don’t even produce mindless crap — they latch on to ideas and regurgitate memes, word for word, with nothing added or commentary provided. It happened slowly, and as a comedian, I’ve noticed it's creeping into the world of jokes. People have lost touch with the idea that a joke has “a writer” that it belongs to. Intellectual property only seems to matter when said property belongs to a mega-corporation. The normalization of taking other people’s ideas and work has led to the use of AI to steal other people’s labor and effort in the “creation” of their own posts. These people don’t respect actual creativity or the work that goes into it. The finished product is all that matters to them. They only care about The Post. They’ll do whatever it takes for attention to hold onto their level of internet fame for as long as they can.
As I mentioned earlier, this also leads to the amplification of extreme and dangerous ideas, as nihilistic opportunists who don’t care about anything other than their own fortune will say anything to gain and retain an audience. Their attempt to capture the ears of those who already believe their rhetoric has the side effect of also gaining the ears of impressionable young people being fed their garbage on social media. Far-right, hateful ideology is spread from people who don’t give a shit about the poison they inflict on the world around them to the next generation, who can’t yet understand how they’re being manipulated by the biggest grifters on earth.
What’s the solution? I don’t fucking know. Blowing it all up and starting over seems extreme. Dismantling the idea of celebrity altogether seems like a tough ask (although the idea that anybody can become famous could potentially be the first step on the very long path to people not caring about fame anymore…) Inventing time-travel to go back to the invention of the internet and making the exact opposite decision than we did the first time about everything that governs it and the information we put into it seems like it might work. Being mindful of what we give our attention to and the signals we choose to boost seems like a start. Rejecting nihilism and embracing the idea that we should care about things and feel things and share that care and those feelings with each other also seems good.
I don’t know what else will work. But I know it’s not hitting ourselves with a hammer so that our bones will grow back stronger. It’s definitely not that.
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I’m Sorry, but I am Contractually Obligated to Keep My Mouth Shut
I signed a morality clause, and I don’t want to get sued into oblivion by one of the largest corporations in the world.
I signed a morality clause, and I don’t want to get sued into oblivion by one of the largest corporations in the world.
I can’t tell you who I am, but I can promise you that I am one of your faves. On behalf of myself and all of your other ride-or-dies, I must ask you to please stop calling us out on social media for our staggering silence in the face of recent atrocities world events. I am, of course, completely and utterly neutral on all world events because of my deep personal beliefs and morals.
By that, I mean I am contractually obligated to keep my mouth shut because I signed a morality clause, and I don’t want to get sued into oblivion by one of the largest corporations in the world.
I can’t say for sure that all your darlings would condemn fascism, or say that Constitutional rights are good, or use our enormous platforms to speak out against the murder of innocent civilians by a tyrannical government if we could. That’s a hypothetical that I refuse to explore. After all, we can’t do those things anyway because we have moral(ity clause)s!
Do you know how scared we (the wealthy, successful, beautiful Hollywood heavyweights you pin up and bow down to) are right now? One false move and it's all over for us. One, “I don’t know if that’s right,” and we might not be able to dress up in head-to-toe leather and get paid $50 million to pretend to be a guy with courage who stands up to the bad guys anymore. Pretending to be a good person who does the right thing no matter what is important in these trying times. Telling these stories on the big screen, where 50-year-old men who never got over their childhood can see them and be inspired, is important. Getting paid $50 million is important.
Please, do not think us greedy. Getting paid to pretend to be a good person will allow us to do a lot of actual good in the world. Someday. Once our contracts are up. Our morality clauses forbid us from making a difference now, because what if that difference clashes with something our Corporate Overlords generous, creative teammates in the entertainment industry want to partner with. Maybe one day, I’ll want to help little baby ducklings not be covered in oil until they die a horrible death, but that day will have to wait until I don’t have to consider that Exxon “Oil Company X” might want to buy advertising time with Disney “Channel D.”
So, please, stop calling us cowards. And stop threatening to boycott our important films. Do you even understand that all of this brings down our Q score. Q scores are important, a high Q Score means we have more negotiating power. Can you even imagine the clauses we’d have to sign if we had even less negotiating power than we do now? You don’t have to imagine – just think of some of your less-than-faves. You know the ones. They have to be in commercials for banks.
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Please allow me to gleefully hop-on the latest express train to Sam-Altman-Sucksburg
Choo Choo! All aboard! One way trip, no coming back!
Choo Choo! All aboard! One way trip, no coming back!
The evil, soulless ghoul Sam Altman recently appeared on The Tonight Show, where enabling stooge host Jimmy Fallon placed the ball on the tee so the cleanup hitter for the Fuckadelphia Fuckies could knock a home run out of the I-can’t-believe-these-people-are-running-the-world ballpark.
Fallon asked the CEO of OpenAI if he uses ChatGPT when raising his baby. Altman answered the way you could only expect someone who wants to replace humans with robots in the worst ways possible [1] would:
He’s getting thoroughly roasted online, which only makes me want to pile on this noodle-brain even more. So that’s what I’m about to do. I’d like to pick his disingenuous, snake-oil-sales-pitch of a response apart line by line in a way to metaphorically scream into a pillow about the world this man hopes to create. Then, maybe we can all (metaphorically) fill those (metaphorical) pillows up with (metaphorical) bars of soap and (metaphorically) beat him senseless until he goes away forever.2
Fallon: And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?
Altman: I do.
What did you expect him to say here, Jimmy? The man is the captain of a sinking ship, but instead of trying to get everybody safely off board, he’s trying to sell more tickets to the cruise!
I don’t feel one tiny bit bad for the man, but Altman has really put himself into a terrible corner, creating a stupid piece of terrible technology that actively harms the people who use it and then having to publically talk about how he uses it all the time. He either makes himself look like an idiot who can’t do anything on his own, or a late-night infomercial “and I’m also a client” clown.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. He’s not either/or. He’s both an idiot and a clown.
Altman: I feel kind of bad about it.
You should feel bad about it. But I know that you actually don’t. I can tell this isn’t going to go into any place that even pretends to be self-aware about the horror that you’ve brought into the world.
Altman: Cause, I mean, we have this genius level of everything intelligence sitting there waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity.
No, you don’t.
You have a theft-machine that takes actual people’s real work and spits out bad reproductions based on prompts given to it by people who think “having an idea” means that they are creative. People who don’t respect art, or work, or skill, or process, or humanity and only want a shortcut to end results.
You have a dangerous technology that weaponizes lonliness against people who turn to it at their most vulnerable for advice. A classic case of technological “worry about could and not should” that I can only hope also ends with the creators getting eaten alive by the beasts of their own making.
Altman: And I’m like “why does my kid stop dropping his pizza on the floor and laughing.”
Here, Altman flubs his own attempt at a punchline. What he obviously meant to say was some line that he rehearsed and workshopped with his “how to look like an actual human person” coach. This was clearly either supposed to be “why won’t my kid stop dropping his pizza on the floor and laughing” or “why does my kid keep dropping his pizza on the floor and laughing.” But he coudn’t even get his “aww shucks, Evil Corporate CEOs are just like you” half-hearted attempt at relatable self-deprecation correct without tripping over himself. They must have workshopped it both ways, and his wires got crossed while trying to decide which one would make him sound less like a Bond villain.
But jokes on him, picking up your phone and asking your computer why your baby does something cute does the opposite of what you thought you were doing. You thought that telling us that you use ChatGPT to Google3 why a baby laughs at dropping pizza on the floor would make you sound down to earth? What it actually tells is us how disconnected you are to your own family that you can’t even be in the moment with your baby to enjoy life as it happens around you.
Look, I’m a new father. I have Googled my fair share of things about my baby. I have looked at plenty of pictures of baby poop on Google images to make sure my baby’s poop looks the way that normal, healthy baby poop is supposed to look. But I didn’t do this while actively changing a diaper! I’ve Googled how often it’s okay for a baby to sneeze, but not while making eye contact with Little Miss Sneezy Sneezerton4 and saying “bless you” in a silly voice that makes her laugh. I’m living in the moment!5
Why does your baby keep dropping pizza on the floor and laughing? Cause it’s fucking funny, you dolt! Instead of running to your phone to ask “why baby cute baby?” try singing a little song about how “more pizza should be floor pizza” and flop a slice down on (what I can only imagine to be) your lifeless-grey-colored tiles and play along!
Altman: So I feel like I’m not asking a good enough question.
You’re right. You should be asking a question to yourself. And that question should be “what the hell have I done?"
Altman: I cannot imagine…having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.
There it is. The line getting all the attention.
You know, ol’ Sam is getting a lot of flack for saying this, but I’m going to cut him a little slack here. Because clearly he is a man who lacks imagination. I’m sure there are a lot of things he cannot imagine.
Altman: Clearly, people did it for a long time. No problem.
I actually think he’s a coward for this. Pointing out that people were able to do anything at all with “no problem” before your “world-changing invention” that you “can’t imagine” being able to do things without came along is something a weak fool and a loser would do.
You gotta go all in at this point, man. You gotta say that all the ancestors were wrong and bad at raising babies in the past and that all babies raised after the invention of ChatGPT will be better for it. Which is it? Are you unraveling the mysteries of humanity or are people able to get by without it since the dawn of humanity no problem? Lean the fuck in, man. If you’re gonna get wet, go fucking swimming, dude. Why back down now? Why show even the smallest bit of humility at this point? Actually, here’s where you can try a bit of that self-deprecation and talk about how shitty your own parents were and how you turned out bad because ChatGPT wasn’t around for your mom and dad to ask what to do when you wouldn’t stop being a weird little freak.
You’re not built for this. Go home to your kid. Have a nice time with your family. Put your phone away. Cut the shit.
Acceptable ways that robots could replace humans: if money were no longer a worry and everybody had all of their needs taken care of and could pursue a life of passion and art, and leisure in whatever way they wished.
Not metaphorically. Go away forever.
That’s what you do with it. You Google stuff. The verb Google still applies.
this is not her government name
Maybe for the first time ever. It’s nice. I suggest trying it if you haven’t.
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Have You Heard about this so-called "Millennial Optimism Era?"
Apparently, Gen-Z is jealous of the times we had in the early 2010s...
Apparently, Gen-Z is jealous of the times we had in the early 2010s...
Apparently (according to a post fed to me on Instagram), there is a growing romanticization of the early 2010s among members of Gen Z who feel like they missed out on being adults in an era when Obama was in office, The Office was brand new every Thursday on NBC, and hipster-indie aesthetic dominated the culture.
As a 41-year-old man, I have to say that I did have a lot of fun during this specific era, but I don’t know how much “optimism” had to do with it. Yes, there was a time when we were all trapped in a “Yes We Can, Change We Can Believe In” fever dream for a minute, but the reason why we got caught up in that was that we needed change, we needed to hear that we could do…anything at all. Because shit was bleak.
Of course, shit is bleak now, in a very different way. I certainly don’t envy young adults who are forced to have their salad days during a time of doomscrolling and fascism.1 Each generation of youth rebels against the dominant vibes of the era in its own specific way. I literally stopped writing a piece about sad-ass Millennial nostalgia2 to react to learning about “Millennial Optimism Era.” The ‘90s were a time of American Economic prosperity (propped up on a house of cards of deregulation that we continue to be buried by its collapse today, but still), and the youth of the day rebelled with angst-filled grunge. Millennials in the late 2000s/early 2010s were reacting to post 9/11, Bush-era America, Patriot-Act Politics, and an economic collapse just as we were exiting college and entering the job market. Maybe everything is different when viewed from outside3, but my “fun-times” in the “era of Millennial Optimism” were kind of specifically tied to a decision to lean into the fact that everything was fucked. I didn’t drink Nyquil every single night for a while because of “optimism,” I’ll tell you that.
What I think might be actually happening here is that Gen Z is having nostalgic feelings for a time of their own youth, when they did not have any adult responsibilities. Then, when they are hit with early-2010s-core music, style, fashion, or design, it activates their longing for a time they remember as good (because, again, no adult responsibilities) and then they wish they were adults with more “freedom” during this time in history (but again, then they’d have adult responsibilities!) I don’t blame them; it’s a trick we all kind of play on ourselves at times.
I graduated from college in 2007, got my first “full-time” job in 20084, and got “laid off”5 in the summer of 2009, after which I was unemployed for approximately three full years. Thankfully, there was an unemployment extension safety-net that provided me with about $300/week in benefits for a period of over two years6. What’s fucked up is that the job market was so screwed at the time, it literally didn’t make sense to pursue a $10/hour job that would make me the same amount of money as not having a job would give me (so I did a ton of comedy and lost a ton of weight; thanks, Obama, for real.)
With the benefit of hindsight, I can probably say that our “fuck it, at least things under Obama are better than they were under Bush” approach to life probably wasn’t the best. The “everything is hunky dory” neoliberal-ignorance politics of the day, directly leading to Hillary Clinton’s “America is already great” approach to the 2016 election really turned a blind eye to a lot of the dread a lot of people felt deep down in their souls. And now we’re paying the price for all of that, and Gen Z is looking at it with envy. But I’m not going to wade too far into those waters because I’d be out of my depth.
What I will do is continue to tread water in a territory in which I can say that maybe, yeah, in a lot of ways things were better for Millennials in our early 20s than things are for Gen Zers now. And Millennials can look at Gen Xers of the early ‘90s and be jealous that they had freedoms we didn’t have. And we can all look at Boomers who paid nothing for college and hummed a little tune to buy their first home and say “fuck you!” And then we can collectively come to our senses and say “what did they do to us” and instead of looking back at previous generations with anger that they had it slightly better than us in some ways we can look ahead and figure out how to make things better going forward for everybody.7
How’s that for some actual Millennial optimism?
Did I bury the fascism? I did not mean to bury the fascism.
Which I will return to and post in the future at a time that is not too close in proximity to this piece, as to avoid being perceived as some kind of “Millennial blogger.”
And maybe this points to a bigger issue where things for people in America have been getting worse and worse for each generation - oh no!
I worked 40 hours/week, but I put “full-time” in quotes because I worked as a salesperson in a cell phone store. My employment had no relation to the fact that I graduated from college.
Is it considered “laid off” if they let you go from your cell phone salesperson job because you are bad at selling cell phones?
And my rent was a very-affordable $500 per month.
How? HA! I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY (but it probably starts with eliminating the billionaire class that controlls every aspect of our society).
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What I learned from not winning the $1.8 billion Powerball jackpot
You can learn a lot about yourself from your daydreams. Here’s what I thought about in my time as a hypothetical rich person, and what I think it tells me about myself.
Playing the lottery doesn't have to be a waste of money.
The losing numbers can be the winning numbers.
The Powerball jackpot hit reached a frankly stupid $1.8 billion for the drawing last Saturday night, which I did not win. Most people did not win. According to some research I did, the chances of winning the Powerball are 1 in 292.2 million. Which, to me, means any time the jackpot is over that amount, I should play it. This theory completely ignores the fact that the actual lump sum payment is about half of the jackpot amount, and also ignores taxes, and also since a ticket is $2 I should wait until the jackpot is double that amount, but whatever. A lot of people say that playing the lottery is about as good as lighting your money on fire, but I like to see it as spending $2 to kickstart my imagination.
For the few hours between purchasing my ticket and the official drawing, I wasn’t a billionaire, but I wasn’t not a billionaire. I was Schrodinger’s billionaire, both billionaire and not, a Prince and a Pauper, Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. My mind imagined all the things I’d do (and things I would never do again) with my newfound riches.
You can learn a lot about yourself from your daydreams. Here’s what I thought about in my time as a hypothetical rich person, and what I think it tells me about myself.
I fantasized about the home gym I’d create in my garage and learned I need to dream bigger. A gym in a garage? For a billionaire? Come on, man! Dream about a house that has enough rooms where you don’t need to compromise your rooms. What’s next, a closet office? A sink for a toilet? Your house can have a room that’s supposed to be a gym for the gym, and the garage can fulfill its actual purpose - being full of refrigerators for beer.
I thought about what kind of charities I’d give money to. It turns out, it’s whatever charities my wife would want to give money to. I don’t want to be one of those “my wife makes me a better person” guys, but I don’t even know any charities. Salvation Army? Is that one? It’s either a charity or a bunch of people who will go to war with you if you don’t accept Jesus as your own personal lord and savior. Or maybe both?
For about one whole minute, I figured I’d just keep driving the car I have until it died because I see a car as a tool just to get from one place to another and not as a luxury item. Then, I learned that I totally only say that because I don’t have luxury car money at this time. Whenever I’m in a really nice car, through some accident, I’m like “oh, I get it” and then my brain somehow magically forgets how nice it is to have a smooth ride and a working radio when I’m forced to go back to getting from one place to another in my wife’s 2008 Honda Civic.
I’d for sure give money to friends and family but I also learned I might make them Shark Tank-style pitch me on what they need it for. That would be fun. “Hello, brother, I’m here to ask you for $300,000 so that I can buy the biggest house in all of Central Pennsylvania and in exchange will give you the satisfaction of knowing that you moved your nieces into a better school district.” I’m interested, but I’m going to counter-offer and ask that you also agree to leave Central PA multiple times a year to meet me in real cities to expose them to culture that is not coal-based. If you do this I’ll also throw in paying for their college education.
I wondered if newfound riches would turn me into an asshole. And I learned - all money makes you an asshole. That’s what money is for. You throw it at people to make them do something you don’t want to do. I’m not rich right now, but the money I do have, I use it to be an asshole. When I’m hungry, and I don’t want to farm, or forage, or hunt and kill my own food, I go into a Chipotle and I slap a $10 bill down on the counter and I say, “make me a burrito!” Not in those words, exactly, but that’s the sentiment. Sometimes I get food delivered. I make a human person bring me my food while I sit on my ass in my house and eat the food I have inside my house while I wait for more food to arrive. What an asshole thing to do.
I did some preliminary research on how to set up a really nice podcast studio and then I realized that if I was crazy rich I wouldn’t have to create content to compete in an attention-based economy anymore. This thought alone filled me with so much relief I fell into a deep peaceful sleep and missed the Powerball drawing, only to awake and learn that I must continue on my quest for clicks.
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Aaron Hertzog (comedian, writer, friend) turns his thoughts, feelings, weird obsessions, and tiny meltdowns into comedy. Dumb thoughts and sharp takes about the cultural absurdities and common anxieties of modern life. To get weekly updates delivered right to your inbox, sign up for my mailing list.