Inspired by this recent development. (Although it’s tempting to diss the people involved, I’m hoping it doesn’t happen in this thread.)
If a poster offered you $500 to refrain from posting for two years, would you take it?
What would be the minimum amount of money you’d settle for?
It would be a dilemma for me, regardless of the size of the pot, since I’d feel like a whoring sell-out. I could find another message board, but it would be hard to not visit this one occassionally. And I’m the type of person who can’t lurk when I see a topic of interest. I’d have to ask the moderators to disable my account, because I lack the self-control.
Well there you are. I thought of starting a thread like this but thought it might be counter the rules. I’ll wait a bit to see what the longer-term posters have to say. This should be interesting.
$500 would probably do it for me. I lapse occasionally from here anyway, because I discover new forums sometimes to become active in, and I have one-forum-at-a-time-itis, where I seem to be unable to keep up with two or more messageboards at once.
That, and I’m going to be gone for two months here in a little bit, anyways.
Call me a sellout if you will, but I would take the money. I don’t know what the proper amount would be, because it would be based on what prompted the offer. I have sold out my principals in the past, the biggest one being initially joining the Army. (I enlisted for a big cash bonus, but my perception has changed a lot in the last seven years.)
I also see this board as a form of entertainment. If it shut down, if I was banned, or I was paid fairly not to post in the future, I would have to find some other form of entertainment.
I like to tell someone, who doesn’t think that there is such a thing, a story:
Paul Newman comes to your door one evening, and explains to you that his mother, who happens to live in your city, wishes to buy your house. You of course don’t want to sell your house, because you have lived there for xxx years and you love it–it’s the place of your dreams. So you say, “no, it’s not for sale.”
He insists, and tells you to name a figure. You, again, say, “no, it’s not for sale.” But he then offers you a million dollars, because it’s his mom. And she wants your house. (let’s assume that you don’t live in metro NY or LA or any such, where a million might be chump change.)
He then says, “I’ll give you 10 million for your house.” Since it’s Paul Newman, he has the money and he wants to make his mom happy, you accept that he will give you that money.
Is there anyone here that would NOT accept 10 million dollars for their house? For real?
I occasionally get asked if I’d shave off my beard (which I’ve worn for 30 years) for varying amounts of money. I say, “Never, not for any amount!” Truth is, I just haven’t been offered enough yet.
I’d say material possessions are something different than principles, though.
I’d sell my heart for 10 million dollars. In a heartbeat!
But what about my love for my family? What if someone told me they’d give me $10 million dollars if I estranged myself from them permanently? Or what about morality? What if someone told me they’d give me a 10 million dollars if I killed someone? I hope I don’t have a “sell out” price for these things. I pray that I don’t.
SDMB posting priviledges are certainly more of a “thing” than a principle. But if the person offering me the deal was an ideological opponent and he was paying me off to shut my pie hole, whether or not to accept the offer would be an ethical dilemma, not a financial one as would be the case if Paul Newman simply wanted my house.
My parents turned down Brad Pitt from being able to rent their summer house during the filming of Troy, since my mom doesn’t like people sleeping in their bed.
I doubt he was offering 10M for renting for two months, but there is also the star factor.
And what good would the 10 million dollars do you then?
I don’t know how much money it would take to get me to stay away from the board. Part of me thinks I could be happy reading, without posting, and part of me disagrees. I should spend less time reading the board than I do at present, but I’m not sure that I want finances to be the deciding factor.
I’m with Qadgop on this one. I get too much pleasure and education out of this place to leave for less than a metric buttload of money just because somebody wanted me gone. Besides, there are other benefits, to wit:
“If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” - Kingley Amis.
He was probably offering enough that they could buy a new bed, though. Hell, they could sell the current one on eBay with the info that Brad Pitt had slept in it and make mucho dinero.
Anyway, to leave here – way more than $500. Look at that post count! Is that the post count of a lurker?
Interesting. This is what I was curious about; what makes something like SDMB valuable to someone to the extent that they’d not leave easily. For you it’s much pleasure and education. Is it that you figure there’s no other place to find the same things? Or no better?
