It's not just the terrorists.

fixed. also: new tag!

Did you "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"?

Naw.. I had friends to help me out and give me a place to stay. I was there for them when they were homeless and vice versa, but it took a while for me to find something that I liked and was profitable that I wouldn't be fired from immediately, like so many call-center/canvassing jobs..

WHAT IF..... YOU MET A FAMILY.... WHO NEEDED A COUCH TO CRASH ON..... EVEN MORE...... THAN YOU DID?

(turns out, there are two couches)

I think if someone picked me or however you get on this show, I'd use the money to buy about a thousand quality briefcases and send them back to CBS.

Ghost stars for That guy.

Or better, use the cash to buy a bunch of illegal drugs you then hand out to homeless kids. ONE TO GROW ON

If they picked me I'd buy a thousand identical marionettes and mail them to the TV executive's children every day for two years along with post cards depicting walruses wearing different types of fancy hats. Also I may need to use some of the money to pay a private investigator to keep track of said children. So ok, 900 marionettes, the cards, and some volcanic rocks with the rune for "fear" carved into them.

Yeah, there was a time, not too long ago, when I literally could not afford to buy Chinese takeout. Now I'm sitting on five figures and I have no idea what to do with it all, except maybe buy an Oculus when that comes out.

If I got the briefcase, I'd probably invest it, half to a medical marijuana dispensary my crustie friend is planning on opening, half to the 3D-printed artificial-heart-valves-and-dental-implants company my VA chemist friend is starting. I might save a couple thousand to help a few local authors finally publish their books.

If any of these ventures return a profit, then the other briefcase family is free to take a cut.

Evil Homer, it is my secret (now shared with the internet) dream to have enough money to form my own small press some day and publish whatever the hell I want. I think that would be an amazing thing to do, if you ever do it, let me know!

I forgot to add that some 1 in 10 of those 1000 briefcases would be filled with bees. The rest of the money would go to research into how to save the dwindling bee population.

Right wingers are always talking about the pulling of bootstraps, yet they do everything in their power to make bootstrap pulling impossible. Things like a higher minimum wage and free community college would do amazing things for bootstrap pullers. Its like the Right doesn't even want us to have bootstraps to pull.

I only have bootstraps to pull because my ex worked at a shoe store and hooked me up with a sweet pair of Fryes.

For a little over minimum wage

I like the idea of this beecase.

I need some money. SEND ME SOME MONEY

You might get the moneys or you might geet the beecase! In the future a scientist may discover a link to the bee population going down and briefcases because bees can't breathe in briefcases. I'm just writing this from the future to stop myself from doing it. You don't think it's a big deal now, IZ, and I know you hate getting stung, but you do not want to do what you're thinking about doing.

It is my dream, Oh Internet, to one day have enough money to afford my own place again. I'm tired of living with family for the past ten years.

I did a mercifully brief stint in insurance, so I can think of a few.

Oh, if only it would. Sadly our society is too complacent.

It does kinda have that "Magic Christian" vibe to it.

A millionaire tosses down cash, a billionaire has supercars filled with gold bars dropped onto the rabble from helicopters and has his lawyers pay off the next of kin.

Feels more like Deal Or No Deal meets Wife Swap

I think if they had made it a different way it could have been more acceptable, morally speaking. Like, if the family in question knew in advance that the money wasn't theirs to keep, and that they had to use it for someone else, and then giving them a choice of families to give it to, but the catch is they have to meet all of the families, who don't know they are going to get any money and think the reality series is going to be about something else. For the family that doesn't get chosen by the family, they get something else they need from the network, so everyone is happy.

See that would have been better than having people crying hysterically over the moral dilemma of keeping or giving away money they actually sorely need.

I think it's offensive because it's TV. It doesn't matter what the message is or what the artistic value may or may not be; reality TV is something we have been conditioned to be offended by, and frankly that's a good thing, because fuck CBS and everyone who works there.

Yeah, I sort of agree with Homer. If this was some kind of psychological study it wouldn't be that bad, but putting it on TV as packaged entertainment is horrible. Its like showing films of the Milgram experiment about obedience to authority, and every time the test subject thinks he's giving someone a shock, adding a laugh track.

Wasn't one of the major networks in the early stages of producing a show that more or less duplicated the Stanford prison experiment about a decade ago, before finding about about the ACTUAL Stanford prison experiment and, in a move that seems quaintly tasteful by today's reality TV standards, halting production?

I remember a "real" version of "The Beverly Hillbillies" that was scrapped due to outrage.

Seriously, they were going to take some poor rural family, stick them in a mansion and let "hilarity" ensue.

Wow...Binro, that's...horrible. All of these ideas for reality shows are incredibly dystopian. When I was a kid I read Fahrenheit 451 and it was one of the most seminal things I ever read, but I always remembered the wife being completely unable to do anything but interact with fake virtual people with these television screens. I used to obsess over that scene and how brutally horrific it would be if people couldn't stop interacting with a false reality while the world fell apart around them.

Capitalism is working as intended.

I have to admit, getting gladitorial combat legal again has taken longer than I thought after the advent of reality TV.

Maybe GoT will give network executives some ideas.

We're getting there...remember that in the 80s a UFC-style fight was something that you had to go watch illegally or to Thailand.

This is one of those trailers that is shown within the universe of a dystopian black comedy. I'd buy that for a dollar.

the dog should also have bees in its mouth and when it barks, bees should fly out.