The Five Dollar Friendship Stimulus

Picking $5 winners is EXHAUSTING Y’ALL!

Just kidding!  It’s awesome.  But we’re gonna take a week off to enjoy the holidays with family and friends.

Hope you enjoy the holidays!

No no, Louis C.K. himself didn’t win, but he came up as a topic more than once in the past week or so after releasing his “Live At The Beacon Theatre” video online DRM-free for only five bucks.  Now that’s something we can support!

Anyway, a few people hit us up saying they’d spend the money supporting Louis C.K., but Brandon was the first:

I would buy my buddy Mike access to watch Louie C.K.’s new release “Live at the Beacon Theatre”. It’s a new experimental release where Louie gets all of the profits. I’d rather not torrent the guy.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/louis-ck-reddit-ama/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

Josh’s wife needs a little pick-me-up this Christmas, so he has planned a perfect date night:

My wife is originally from Colombia. This is the first Christmas she won’t be back in Colombia with her whole family. Although she’s excited to spend Christmas with just my family this year, she’s still a little bummed. With $5 I would take her to Chipotle, her favorite restaurant, and buy her a big carnitas filled burrito to fill the empty space she’s feeling. And as a show of good faith, I’ll match your $5 donation so she can get guacamole and we can eat together while watching a RedBox DVD. (I’ll even let her pick the movie)

A little piece of wisdom, Josh… it always helps if you let her pick the movie.  Always.

drinkyourjuice:

Nickel Party 2k11 Recap

For those who don’t know, Phil is doing a project called 5 Dollar Friendship Stimulus where he’ll send five American dollars to people who tweet him their ideas re: how they’d spend the money with their friends.

Lindsey thought of a penny party (500 pennies, 5 friends, no two pennies spent the same way), and it got approved — but we quickly realized pennies might not be logistically friendly in terms of finding 500 different uses. So we switched it to a nickel party and then spent Saturday going nuts in lower Manhattan.

Some things nickels were spent on:

• copies from a Xerox machine
• Shaq Fu da Return
• two (2) apple pies
• five (5) of those twisting drum things
• a coffee
• random donations (inside of cups at a flatware display, next to some dog poop, on the ledge of a public chalk board, on someone’s motorcycle seat, Ronald McDonald House, etc.)

Things we tried to spend nickels on and have on video:

• a psychic reading

I’m sure there are things that I’m missing, but the point is that it took up an entire afternoon and I had more fun than I ever should have had just walking around in the cold trying to spend nickels.

So if you are the kind of person who likes to set arbitrary limits for yourself and then try to operate within them out of a sense of fun and adventure, A+, would recommend 5 Dollar Friendship Stimulus, etc. etc.

Also don’t do a nickel party; it’s hard and there are junkies in a lot of the places where you can spend nickels (one talked to me while I played Bop It at the flea market and now we’re dating).

When we put the $5 Friendship Stimulus together, this is exactly what we were trying to make happen.  These guys are the BEST!

Tyler not only has a great entry, but he has some wise words about friendship:

I would take a friend to McDonalds for a McRib, they are here for a limited time only but my time with friends is unlimited. #fivedollars

Well said, Tyler.  Congrats!

Marie sent in a fun idea that we think is likely to spread some holiday cheer:

We would give it to a toll taker and tell them to use it to pay for as many cars as it can.  This would reduce stress and maybe cheer a few people up.  There’s nothing like an unexpected kindness, no matter how small, to make someone’s day better.

Who wouldn’t love to have their tolls paid for when you pull up at the tollbooth?  We like this idea!  Congrats Marie!

WARNING: CUTENESS OVERLOAD

Last week, one of our winners Justin submitted the idea that he would buy a package of Misfits temporary tattoos for $5 and give his one-year-old daughter a full sleeve of Misfits tattoos.  Today he sent us this picture and we’re DYING.  Now if that’s not worth five dollars, I don’t know what is.

Submit your $5 idea: http://fivedollarstimulus.com

Our Winner #19 is Mike from New Jersey who wrote us with a great idea for a prank to play on his family:

While dining in a restaurant with friends or family I’d make an excuse to leave the table. While away from the table, I would approach a friendly-looking stranger dining in the establishment and offer them the five dollars towards coffee or dessert if he/she would approach my table and pretend to know who I am.    

 

I would ask that they address me by name (Mike Grant) and say what a great privilege it is to meet me. They could ask for my autograph, shake my hand or ask to take my picture with their cellphone. They would then return to their table leaving my dining companions perplexed and dumbfounded. I would act like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

I only hear rad things about the people in Marfa, Texas.  So it makes sense that the offer we heard from Terry:

Good evening, Gentlemen—

A friend shared your link with me, and I just issued this challenge to my Marfa, Texas Facebook friends. Already I’ve gotten several public pledges, and a few private pledges via facebook messages. I only posted this a few minutes ago, and we’re multiplying the potential $5 stimulus you offer like topsy (whatever the Hell topsy is….). So, whether or not my entry is clever or captivating enough to win, it nevertheless inspired me, and served as a catalyst to do some positive good here in our tiny community during this Christmas Season of Giving, so kudos and shout outs to you, for getting this little project rolling! My own $5 will serve as the stimulus if we don’t win, as will EVERYONE in Marfa who contributes.

So Terry basically took our idea and ran with it - asking for $5 matching pledges from his friends in Marfa with the intention of giving the cash to charity.

Terry, we love that our giveaway has inspired you - we hope selecting you as a winner will inspire you even further!  Congrats!

Sometimes all you need is a little encouragement… and it’s usually your friends who can help the most.  Gina wants to help her friend get out of a rut with a walk around the city taking pictures.  Sounds like a fun way to spend $5 to us!

i’d take the $5 and buy a roll of film for my friend Kate to shoot with. she’s been stuck in a rut and i think it would be a really great reason to take out the camera and walk around the city with a new roll of film.

Good stuff.  Let us know how the pictures turn out!