What’s your price?

[mithriltabby]

So I saw a story on Slashdot today about a British television show called Space Cadets, which (if the premise is to be believed) involves people being selected for gullibility and complete lack of understanding of physics and told that they’re in a reality TV show on a Russian space station. (They explain the lack of weightlessness to the contestants: “The Cadets have been told that they will be in "near space" where gravity is still experienced, as opposed to "outer space".”) The contestants are supposedly being paid £5,000 a day for each day they spend “in space”. And the selection process involves “asking the candidates to nominate a friend or relative they trusted implicitly, to make a vital and important decision for them. These friends or relatives were contacted, and fully let in on the hoax, and given the final say of whether or not the Cadet should be included.”

So I got to thinking: if I were someone’s nominee to make such a decision, what would I say? (Not that I think any of you would fall for such obvious fakery, but the principle extends to more thorough and subtle hoaxes.) Normally, I’d say “no”, but it occurs to me that some people might consider the pay a reasonable bargain for being on a TV show like that.

[Poll #633467] I gotta admit: if I were looking at an opportunity to pay off a big chunk of my mortgage for a few days’ effort, I think I could take a pretty big joke.

Comments

[grandmoffdavid.livejournal.com]

For me, it wouldn't be so much a the joke aspect of it as being revealed to a nationwide audience that I wasn't terribly bright. For a million bucks, at least I could say, "I may not be very bright, but at least I'm rich."

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

It depends entirely on whether I was in on the joke to begin with. I mean, if I know I'm going to be made fun of on national TV, it better be really good, like a million dollars. And most of the reason for that is because it's the people who enjoy public humiliation who, in my guess, are most likely to come up to you afterward on the street, with no sense of decorum, and say, "Hey, you're that idiot who..."!

However, the danger I see in this model is the shock of finding out that not only have you been publicly humiliated, on TV, but everyone knew it but you, and they were laughing at you. You don't understand the scope and, by definition, can't give informed consent. I could see some people committing suicide over this, especially if the show is a huge hit.

[mithriltabby]

I think not being in on the joke is a prerequisite for the big payoff. I could do just fine as the token person with a science degree who’s in on the joke and can calmly make false assertions about the science of the situation (I once delivered a deadpan lecture on how to build a nuclear weapon in your garage to my 9th grade English class, and everyone thought I was serious, except for the teacher who was quietly falling out of her chair in the back of the room trying not to laugh out loud), but that wouldn’t pay nearly as well.

The depths of that humiliation is exactly why my default answer would be “no” for anyone who named me as their trusted decision-maker.