6 ms·
The Endless Work of Trying to Win Yourself a New Life
- throayobviousl 5y agoWhy am I not surprised that trying to win sweepstakes is a full time job
- TwelveNights 5y agoThere was a TV show in Japan where a man had to stay in a room until he managed to win $10000 of value in sweepstakes. I wouldn't say you can make a full-time job out of trying to win sweepstakes, since he ended up staying in the room for about a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi#Denpa_Sh%C5%8Dnen_teki_Kensh%C5%8D_Seikatsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi#Denpa_Sh%C5%8Dnen_teki_...
- inostia 5y ago> He started with nothing (including no clothes), was cut off from outside communication and broadcasting, and had nothing to keep him company except the magazines he combed through for sweepstakes entry forms. After spending 335 days to reach his target, he set the Guinness world record for the "longest time survived on competition winnings". Wow, that sounds extreme. But then again I remember there was a contest in San Diego where the participants had to stay 15 hours a day on a roller-coaster and many suffered lasting bodily injuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Dipper_(Belmont_Park)#Events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Dipper_(Belmont_Park)#Ev...
- maxerickson 5y agoA woman died competing in a radio station water drinking contest (for a Nintendo Wii): https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/jury-rules-radio-station-jennifer-strange-water-drinking/story?id=8970712 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/jury-rules-radio-station-jennifer...
- AussieWog93 5y agoIf a naked man locked in a tiny apartment can make 10k/yr doing what is essentially admin work, then it's completely plausible that a disciplined and skilled engineer with web scrapers, computer vision, custom Python scripts and pants could make 100k+ working part time.
- bbarnett 5y agoHey, wait a jiff, I have pants!
- spoonjim 5y agoDon’t be so certain. These sweepers are usually entering every possible sweepstakes they can. While you might be able to automate the entries and do it in 10 minutes instead of 3 hours a day, unless you start doing fraud like multiple identities, there may simply be no more sweepstakes to enter.
- AussieWog93 5y agoIt's not fraud if you use others' identity with their consent.
- spoonjim 5y agoSure. I am talking about calling yourself three John Smiths at three different addresses for example.
- ALittleLight 5y agoIf you could automatically enroll yourself in every sweepstakes legal for your locale, then you could also offer that service to anyone else interested. People could pay you 5 dollars a month to get automatically entered into every sweepstakes. Of course, this scales badly. The more people who take your service the less valuable it will be as the odds of winning will decrease. Perhaps the natural balancing point would be somewhere where you could still profit. Might be best to charge nothing but take a cut of the winnings. That way people wouldn't be discouraged from joining by the diminishing likelihood of winning, and the chances that someone from your pool would win would only increase over time.
- wincy 5y agoI was surprised when one day my stepdad had a fancy gaming mouse. I asked him how he got it and he shrugged and said “I entered a contest and won”. I’m so cynical I didn’t really believe anyone won stuff out of contests, but I guess you’ve got to enter in the first place to win.
- owyn 5y agoYeah one day my dad dropped his business card in a bowl at the local Yamaha dealer and won a brand new GSXR 750. He rode that ninja bike to work daily for at least 10 years.
- nly 5y agoCompetitions generally. It's called "comping"
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoIt is similar with extreme couponing. I worked at a pharmacy chain in the US, and had a few regular customers that did such a thing. Absolutely amazing what folks can get for little money, though sometimes they had to invest start-up money to get going. After a while, it snowballs and you are paying $10 for $175 worth of stuff. But the time invested is not small. One of the regular customers did the stuff until she had a child: A baby takes up a lot of the time and mental energy that she previously used for coupons. I think she had months of supplies stocked up before giving birth, though.
- sunshineforever 5y agoI have a good friend who does extreme couponing to supplement her income. I have actually even seen her get paid to buy things due to retailer miscalculations. Her garage is stocked with such things as laundry detergent, deodorant, various cleaners etc which she sells on Facebook and Craigslist. It does involve a decent amount of time, but she has it organized with folders and does the couponing purchases while shopping normally.
- kowlo 5y agoWould be nice to have fewer distractions on the page! https://ibb.co/QcGH7BQ https://ibb.co/QcGH7BQ
- MattGaiser 5y agoIn Canada at least, sweepstakes can't require a purchase to enter. So I have at times used the no purchase option to enter things. The last time I did this was with McDonalds, where I spent $80 on stamps to win about $40 in gift cards and a few muffins/fries.
- shannifin 5y agoThis is true in the USA too, although you'll often have to search through the tiny legal text to find how to enter without purchase.
- iamthepieman 5y agoWhile in college, a friend used my home address in Vermont during summer break as the return address for these no purchase sweepstakes entries. Vermont was one of the few (maybe only) states where it was illegal to require return postage so his postage costs were half of what they would have been somewhere else. I opened all the envelopes from McDonald's and brought the scratch offs back to him when school started in the fall. He got a few thousand dollars worth of stuff and I got a really nice new stereo out of it just for opening some envelopes.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI've won the lottery on many an occasion by now. Sadly, the prices are like 1/3 or 1/2 the cost of the lottery ticket itself. One can dream, lol.
- jazzabeanie 5y agoImagine how many marketing emails these guys get.
- elliekelly 5y agoIf they’re going to go through all the trouble of submitting so many entries they should use a unique email for each contest and collect data about which companies sold their email addresses to which companies and post it to GitHub.
- girvo 5y ago> unique email for each contest The article at least suggests that some of them do; would be interesting to see what information they can glean from their side, yeah
- Clewza313 5y agoThere's an (in)famous Japanese game show where they put a naked guy in an empty apartment for a year and made him survive off what he could win from sweepstakes in magazines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi The entire thing was livestreamed 24/7, including having an editor digitally add an eggplant emoji over his privates. It was such a hit that they made him do it again, but in Korea, a language he didn't speak.
- irjustin 5y agoIncredible, thanks for sharing. I felt sorry for him just reading the synopsis alone. I hope he's rich somehow given what the studio put him through. Seems heart breaking. > In April 2020, Nasuga tried to persuade people to cooperate with the self-disciplined stay home during the COVID-19 by citing his own experience. This makes me believe he's a really good guy and that there is still hope for humanity.
- sosborn 5y agoNasubi is awesome and he really seemed to enjoy his time on the show.
- ALittleLight 5y agoWhat did he win for this? The wikipedia page doesn't make it seem like very much.
- Taylor_OD 5y agoThe history of this show is insane. If I remember correctly the show regularly had 10 million viewers. That is a truly absurd number at the time and even now. You can find the show online. It's an incredible watch and so so sad.
- asiachick 5y agolots of Japanese friends told me the entire thing (and most similar shows) was staged.
- 5y ago
- bredren 5y agoBeing good at this sounds like an interesting example of a life hack to put on your YC application.
- gcheong 5y agoBeing good at it seems largely to be a numbers game and having the time to do it, better would be finding a loophole that allowed you to game a contest.
- msie 5y agoHeh, i thought this was about the struggle to find happiness in your life and career.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoAs the article notes, for some people this is sort of a variation of gig work and appeals to a lot of the same people: Homemakers, disabled people, etc. People who need more resources and can't really make a full-time job work for them for some reason. Increasingly, that includes the fact that full-time jobs are in short supply. Gig work is becoming more common because employers don't want to pay benefits. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se but in the US we tend to tie essentials like health care to your job and that ends up being a thorny issue for many people.
- 01100011 5y agoMy sister was disabled with cerebral palsy and lived on a meager SSI allowance in the US. She spent a good portion of her time doing surveys, entering sweepstakes, and whatever offers she could find on the internet. It was a great way to supplement her fixed income.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoYes. In that case, one of the benefits is likely to be that this is a legal means to supplement her income whereas actually "working" for pay may jeopardize your disability income. Being disabled sucks for so many reasons and rules that actively make it unnecessarily hard to make your life suck less is one of the suckiest things about it.
- ur-whale 5y agohttps://archive.is/XPlPw https://archive.is/XPlPw
- smeej 5y agoI think I inadvertently just discovered I missed my calling! I've won drawings for dozens of random things since I was 5, not because I sought them out, but because a disproportionate number of the times I've thrown my name in a hat just for fun, my name's been picked! The first thing I ever won was a Frisbee at the California state fair after a pig race, but by the time I finished school, it included a TV, coveted tickets to my school's away game at our rivals, and even my undergrad and grad school tuition! I've always figured, in a random universe, there are bound to be outliers who win things a disproportionate amount of the time, and I just happened to be one of them, but now I'm curious what would happen if I put that luck to the test!
- capableweb 5y agoOn the other hand, I've had the same mindset my entire life ("thrown my name in a hat just for fun" when possible) but never ever won anything in 30+ years. But when it comes to the rest of my life, I've been very lucky when it comes to everything from work, personal life, relationships, health and more. Do try it out and see if your luck replicates to other things, worst case scenario you tried and got experience :)
- rvba 5y agoSoemone made a bot to try luck winning on twitter: https://qz.com/476914/i-built-a-twitter-bot-that-entered-and-won-1000-online-contests-for-me/ https://qz.com/476914/i-built-a-twitter-bot-that-entered-and... Won over 1000 contests from 165 000 tries. Btw. I think this is very sad - legit 1000 people could not have fun winning some stuff that actually interets them (e.g. some niche fanbase).
- valprop1 5y agoI do understand that winning something can definitely lead to happiness but is it just momentary or long lasting is the bigger question.