Anonymous Extortion

June 28, 2005 9:25 PM

How much do you suppose Mathowie makes in extortion from the people who post anonymous AskMe posts? Think about it: HE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE!
posted by Doohickie to MetaFilter-related at 9:25 PM (63 comments total)

Probably millions.


Or maybe he scans questions to see if they're ok and approves or disapproves them without paying very much attention to who the poster is, or caring that much (unless the poster is asking for advice about suicide).
posted by kenko at 9:28 PM on June 28, 2005

what? huh? I'm sorry, I can't hear you THROUGH MY GIANT PILES OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS.
posted by mathowie at 9:33 PM on June 28, 2005

AskMe is green like cold hard US-dolla cash for a very good reason, friends.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:35 PM on June 28, 2005

Five bucks?
posted by rebirtha at 9:42 PM on June 28, 2005

He reaps all the STDs and monetary problems.
posted by interrobang at 9:56 PM on June 28, 2005

you totally should've posted this anonymously, dude.

STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER SIR.
posted by fishfucker at 9:57 PM on June 28, 2005

Holy shit and I put my real name in my account. J00 BEEN HAX0RED BY NINJA.
posted by shepd at 10:03 PM on June 28, 2005

This would explain the emails asking why I wanted my perceived trivial questions posted anonymously. You just want the juicy bits you thieving oaf. :(((((((((((((
posted by angry modem at 10:10 PM on June 28, 2005

GIANT PILES OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS.

I somehow read this as "GLASS PENIS OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS."

Maybe it was on my mind.
posted by Snyder at 10:11 PM on June 28, 2005

I can't hear you THROUGH MY GIANT PILES OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS.

Alas, having consider'd and weigh'd all Available Evidence, it appears as though It -- "It" in this case conforming to the Most Essential Specifics of our Belov'd Institution MetaFilter -- most assur'dly IS all about The Benjamins.

Forsooth.
posted by gramschmidt at 10:26 PM on June 28, 2005

I thought they were anonymous for him too: people had to use their usernames to be able to access the anonymity form, but the form got emailed to him anonymously for him to check it.
posted by bitpart at 10:37 PM on June 28, 2005

and they say that mathowie has no sense of humour.
posted by dg at 10:40 PM on June 28, 2005

Not as I understood it. If so, that means I wasted that giant pile of hundred dollar bills I mailed matt to get him to tell me who some of you anonymous sexy question types actually are. He told me most of them were actually y2karl, which kind of killed the mood for me.
posted by jonson at 10:41 PM on June 28, 2005

Remember, it's wrong if an individual violates your privacy; but when a business does it, it's entrepreneurial.
posted by orthogonality at 11:00 PM on June 28, 2005

Rebecca Blood interview: "Blogging pays for all my hosting (several boxes running hundreds of dollars a month) and covers my house mortgage.......................PVRblog makes ok money, but I guess most comes from MetaFilter actually."
posted by peacay at 11:10 PM on June 28, 2005

Heh, my anonymous question was so hawt he paid me to post it.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:14 PM on June 28, 2005

As long as those $9,999 payments keep rolling in every month Matt has assured me that he will never reveal the location of the body.
posted by caddis at 11:15 PM on June 28, 2005

anon posts are anon in the database. I only catch wind of who asked what when I'm first notified that a new anon question was asked. For example, I wake up in the morning and mixed in with my 50 new emails are say, three emails, with the user that asked each in the subject line and a URL to a page listing all unapproved questions. I don't carry the exact question id in the emails and when more than one comes I can barely keep track. Nothing in the database tracks a user to an anon question.

I did this just for those emergency types of situations where someone asks about a real crime they commited or if they're considering suicide, but generally speaking I barely have any connection between who asked what and what they asked. It takes effort to match up who asked what and I generally don't pay much attention to it.
posted by mathowie at 11:23 PM on June 28, 2005

Protesteth too much!
posted by interrobang at 11:24 PM on June 28, 2005

Yeah, dude, now you TOTALLY look guilty.
posted by jonson at 11:39 PM on June 28, 2005

I'm just clearing stuff up. Everyone keeps repeating incorrect info about the anon stuff.

And to be clear, my bed no longer has a mattress, as I'm now sleeping on exactly $84,600 worth of $100 bills. You haven't slept until you've slept on the sweet, sweet feel of money.
posted by mathowie at 11:47 PM on June 28, 2005

Seems like it would stick to your back.
posted by interrobang at 11:58 PM on June 28, 2005

Gross. Money is filthy. Sleeping in a pile of it would be ick.

Plus it's well known that benjamins are laced with copious amounts of cocaine.
posted by loquacious at 12:11 AM on June 29, 2005

so you're saying he's not really sleeping at all?
posted by hototogisu at 12:45 AM on June 29, 2005

Well, he's just sleeping with glass penises. /Richard Pryor
posted by loquacious at 1:27 AM on June 29, 2005

Matt sleeps with the phishes.
posted by Dagobert at 1:55 AM on June 29, 2005

It really pays the mortgage? Wow....
posted by fixedgear at 2:52 AM on June 29, 2005

I don't live in the bay area or anything...
posted by mathowie at 3:15 AM on June 29, 2005

Sweet Cthulhu! Don't you sleep? Stop licking that money!
posted by loquacious at 3:26 AM on June 29, 2005

It's the baby's fault. She eats money and shits jrun errors, keeping me up half the night.
posted by mathowie at 4:28 AM on June 29, 2005

In the shop: "Hey, this hundred dollar bill looks like someone's been sleeping on it! And - sniff sniff- it smells like ... ugh."
posted by Termite at 5:08 AM on June 29, 2005

What exactly does a jrun error smell like?
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:51 AM on June 29, 2005

Victory!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:52 AM on June 29, 2005

mathowie writes "It's the baby's fault. She eats money and shits jrun errors, keeping me up half the night."

I almost snorted a bagel through my nose.
posted by terrapin at 6:00 AM on June 29, 2005

I bet someone is wishing they still had that baby sock puppet right about now.
posted by Mid at 6:10 AM on June 29, 2005

as I'm now sleeping on exactly $84,600 worth of $100 bills. You haven't slept until you've slept on the sweet, sweet feel of money.

what, no monster pile of pink Peruvian cocaine?
posted by matteo at 6:47 AM on June 29, 2005

Dear AskMefi,
sleeping on a mattress full of cash and snorting too much coke off of the perfect post-coital-sweaty naked bodies of Brazilian fashion models caused the most unpleasant back ache I have ever experienced. Any suggestions to make it go away without qutting my money-grabbing, cocaine-snorting, model-fucking habits? [more inside]
posted by anonymous to health & drugs at 6:43 AM PST - 0 comments
posted by matteo at 6:50 AM on June 29, 2005

I think this is time for a little shameless self-promoting. Matt's currently to illustration 6.
posted by crunchland at 7:32 AM on June 29, 2005

I'm just clearing stuff up. Everyone keeps repeating incorrect info about the anon stuff.

And to be clear, my bed no longer has a mattress, as I'm now sleeping on exactly $84,600 worth of $100 bills. You haven't slept until you've slept on the sweet, sweet feel of money.

Yeah, protesting too much... then admitting. I started this thread as a lark and would completely trust Mathowie... but these passive-aggressive tendencies are starting to give me pause...

Just kiddin, Matt; we all luv ya, really....
*nervously adjusts collar*
posted by Doohickie at 7:43 AM on June 29, 2005

Actually, $84,600 worth of $100 bills is only 846 bills. If you were to lay them out in a rectangle the size of a single matress, my guess is that your money bed would only be a couple of bills thick. I guess you could wad them up and stuff them into sheets or something, but even then I think that might only get you a couple of pillows.
posted by alidarbac at 8:29 AM on June 29, 2005

Can someone go and get 846 single bills and experiment please?
posted by biffa at 8:49 AM on June 29, 2005

He didn't say the "sweet, sweet feel of hundred dollar bills," though; he said the "sweet, sweet feel of money," so one presumes that the hundred dollar bills are merely the top layer, laid out flat to provide smoothness and to make sure that he doesn't come in contact with any of the icky lesser denominations below. One further presumes that the singles have been shredded to provide additional loft and softness and that the whole mass is set atop a pit of coins, to provide additional support. Probably dimes.
posted by anapestic at 8:49 AM on June 29, 2005

I was just thinking that as I read down the post. Only 846 bills.

A single mattress is about 6 bills wide and 30 bills long (assuming you laid them in a grid). That's 180 bills per layer. 846/180 = 4.7, so roughly 70% would be 5 layers thick and the other 30% only 4. I'm going to continue using length=head-to-toe direction and width=side-to-side.

What if you decided to make the mattress 1 layer and put the rest as a pillow? well, that leaves 666 bills for the pillow...how evil! Divide by the 6 bills for width and we have 111 bills left for length and thickness. Let's make it a thin pillow, length only 5, leaving 22.2 bills for thickness. I assume that the odd bill would be placed near the middle to give the pillow a rounded look, but it's still roughly 1/4 inch thick with 22-23 bills.

I don't know about you, but I'll stick with a posture-pedic.
posted by mystyk at 9:00 AM on June 29, 2005

It's the baby's fault. She eats money and shits jrun errors, keeping me up half the night.

Oh sure, blame the baby now that she can't defend herself.
posted by timeistight at 9:08 AM on June 29, 2005

Damn, I hate when my comments take so long that several others crop up while I'm writing...

Anyway, anapestic, he made it clear that it's exactly $84,600 in $100s, which suggests no smaller denominations, including coins.

Actually, I would hope that he has a sufficiently protective layer of coins to form a bed-frame, which he never mentioned about. This would be enough to protect him from the little JRun monster, scouring the floor at night sucking away at his livelihood, in much the same way as a Roomba.

If he doesn't have the bed-frame of coins, perhaps someone can find the post about making complex structures from stacked pennies so he can learn.
posted by mystyk at 9:09 AM on June 29, 2005

Some might call it extortion. Matt calls it the Fiona Haughey Harvard Scholarship.
posted by orange swan at 9:26 AM on June 29, 2005

Interesting, I always pictured Matt as Uncle Scrooge, swimming in the cash, which of course is located in a huge vault with the letters "MF" on the outside, representing one more step toward MetaFilter world domination. Then again, there are too many commies and pacifists here to complete the revolution.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:09 AM on June 29, 2005

But what do you do about the smell? Money smells, and badly.
/former cash office worker
posted by graventy at 11:54 AM on June 29, 2005

Money smells, and badly.

It only smells bad if it's somebody else's, graventy. When it's yours it's sweet, especially those crisp new hundreds. (You don't think Matt accepts smelly, wrinkled, disease-ridden old bills, do you?)
posted by languagehat at 12:05 PM on June 29, 2005

no, he has quonsar, his butler, delicately iron the bills first so that they're all crisp and toasty
posted by matteo at 12:13 PM on June 29, 2005

Er, so I recall reading an anecdote about someone in the Roman Empire (someone in a position to do something about it) objecting to a tax/fee for public toilets--didn't want to make money that way or something? And a fellow of his showed him a denarius or some such and asked him to smell it, and when he said it didn't smell like anything in particular the other replied, "and yet it comes from shit". Or something like that.

Oh here we go:

[ 577 ] Vespasianus reprehendenti filio Tito, quod etiam urinae vectigal commentus esset, Pecuniam ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, sciscitans num odore offenderetur, et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est. Hinc illud, Bonus odor lucri ex re qualibet.

[Translation:]

[ 577 ] When his son Titus was taking him to task over having devised a tax even on the latrines, Vespasian waved money from the first payment under his nose, asking him whether he found the smell offensive. When he said he didn't, Vespasian replied, "And yet it comes from urine." Hence the saying, "The smell of profit is good no matter what the source."

posted by kenko at 12:23 PM on June 29, 2005

ChatFilter.
posted by i_cola at 12:27 PM on June 29, 2005

I think of quonsar as living in a metal tool shed behind the Haughey mansion, doing yard work and being told to keep out of sight when there is company.
posted by LarryC at 1:01 PM on June 29, 2005

"quonsar, that elephant better not be doing what I think he's doing in the flowerbed..."
posted by languagehat at 2:14 PM on June 29, 2005

like the opposite of Jeeves
posted by matteo at 2:25 PM on June 29, 2005

Seveej?
posted by i_cola at 2:30 PM on June 29, 2005

846 bills are certainly enough to stitch into some sort of makeshift hammock. And everybody knows that summertime is hammock time.
posted by .kobayashi. at 2:34 PM on June 29, 2005

you guys are fat
posted by angry modem at 3:34 PM on June 29, 2005

...and sassy!
posted by loquacious at 4:43 PM on June 29, 2005

While I was in Laos I made the mistake of exchanging $20us into kip. The exchange rate was about 10,000 kip per dollar. The cashier paid me in bills of 2,000 kip. Furtively is not how I'd describe the way I crammed that wad of bills into my pocket as I hurried back to my hut.

Once I got there I couldn't resist taking a picture of the money spread out on my bed. 210 bills there (the last two cols are 10 bill stacks), which is a quarter of what Matt's bed has got. Now the ferry to Shelbyville cost a nickel at the time, and nickels had pictures of bumble-bees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter" I'd say...
posted by furtive at 5:37 PM on June 29, 2005

They've all been by me. My sock puppet account is "anonymous".
posted by spock at 8:07 PM on June 29, 2005

Some might call it extortion. Matt calls it the Fiona Haughey Harvard Scholarship.

By the time she gets to college, that will pay for, what, a year's worth of Hahvahd?
posted by oaf at 10:47 PM on June 29, 2005

(See, look what everyone has come up with now that mathowie's baby sockpuppet is out of the picture?)
posted by nobody at 1:20 PM on June 30, 2005