Freeloading

Remember awhile back when I wrote about that winner who voluntarily moved into a dumpster for some reason? Just pulled up stakes and started sleeping in a receptacle meant for trash to prove some point about sustainability or whatever?

Well, the raging midlife crisis/psychotic break continues. Now he’s involved in a project that necessitates him sleeping on 99 couches on 99 different nights. The goal, based on this person’s website, is getting closer look at how the various diverse groups of people in Austin live, so he’ll be spending a night in their company with a photographer to document the experience. He calls it “a social experiment packaged as an overnight home tour.”

So for all the people who are down on their luck and need to stay with friends for a period of time, maybe you could adopt that euphemism: “a social experiment packaged as an overnight home tour.” It certainly sounds better than the usual terminology for people who crash on other’s couches: “homeless.” At first this guy asked for sponsors for his fainting couch test drive but deleted that request, perhaps realizing that the regular old people with nowhere to go don’t have financial sponsorship or get book deals, so why should he.

This seems like overkill in that if you want to document the many different ways in which city denizens live, it’s not really necessary to live with those people. You can just take some photos and publish them like photographers and writers have always done. It also seems like overkill in that it is freeloading.

But hey, maybe this guy is onto something. Here’s an idea for a social experiment that I can parlay into free goods and services and a book deal. I will eat at 99 restaurants in 99 days for free. Regular people and corporate sponsors will pay for my meals. This is part of a grand social experiment so I can write a thinkpiece about how Americans eat. I will also post photos of the food on Instagram because that’s a thing nobody is doing: Posting pictures of food online.

Don’t you want to participate? This is just one example. I’m sure I will come up with many more freeloading opportunities. America was made for go-getters like me.