Too afraid to talk to the girl you like? New York-based mobile marketing startup founder Eric Matzner has a brilliant solution: Pay a stranger $5 on Fiverr to film himself shouting a compliment about your crush on a public bus. Swoon.
Back in May, Mr. Matzner published a post to his blog about how he’d decided to outsource typical human displays of affection–like telling someone you like them, or wishing a parent a happy birthday–to random Internet strangers using crowdsourcing platforms like Fiverr and oDesk.
Mr. Matzner paid someone in London $5, for example, to shout, “Hailey MacArthur is the most beautiful girl in the world and men would do much more than yell loudly on a bus to even have a slight chance at getting with her,” which is actually pretty creepy. It apparently worked, though, so there’s really no accounting for taste. (UPDATE: Mr. Matzner called Betabeat to clarify that he had been friends with Ms. MacArthur for some time, and the video was actually a gift to her during the “courting process,” which does make it less creepy.)
Of the experience, Mr. Matzner concluded, “If I can outsource something as intangible as courage and seduction, then there is little else that can’t be outsourced.”
In related news: romance is dead, probably.
