Support for an underserved community
Published 4:17 pm, Tuesday, August 5, 2014
So media guru Jim Romenesko reprinted this Craigslist ad in his blog at www.jimromenesko.com. If it's a hoax, it's a funny one; if it's true, it's even better:
"Emotional Writer Needed For Support Community for Affluent People
"Compensation: $30 per post.
"Special community for those who've earned a lot of money or been born into a wealthy family needs a blog ghostwriter. The focus of the community is providing psychological support for the problems money brings - family tensions, unfulfillable expectations, boredom, etc. To do this you must be intimately familiar with the problems faced by wealthy people. If you grew up wealthy or through some other means can write detailed blog posts on this topic, please get in touch.
"The posts need to be highly personal, emotional, and have a strong editorial voice. These are anything but generic lectures. We are looking at 3 posts a week and each post pays $30. If you're interested, please send a brief cover letter with some suggested topics so that we can see if you really can come up with specific topics which touch the hearts of people from affluent families along with some writing samples of your personal, emotionally charged writing. It should all be pasted into the text of the letter. We can't open attachments. Thanks!"
It's unclear why an unidentified cabal can pay only $90 a week for blog posts designed to tell rich people's side of the story. Perhaps that's how they got rich. Plus, actual rich people wouldn't be interested in the money. The glory, maybe.
Maybe the disgraced son of a billionaire family, now stripped of his inheritance, might give it a try, but he's unlikely to have an emotionally satisfying view. On the other hand, novelists are forever inventing the lives of imaginary rich people, and they have done so with an open heart and sympathetic eye.
I'm not a novelist, but I could give it a try. Ninety dollars buys you dinner for one at a fancy restaurant without wine or tip and limited to one course. Let's see what happens:
Aug. 6: Boredom! Everywhere is ennui. I walk from room to room; no one is in any of them. There's probably no one in the house, although I haven't looked everywhere. All those stairs! I have to walk half a mile to get breakfast. And that marble is cold on my stocking feet.
If there are people here, they are probably bored too. Our money is working feverishly, but we have nothing to do. I tried beekeeping once, but those hives are so difficult to put together. I talked to our assistant gardener, Ramon, and he did it for me quite quickly. But by then the thrill had gone out of it.
My sister Nancy says we should do more for the poor. I already send the Foundation for the Maintenance of the Poor $5,000 a month, but we could do more. We could volunteer at a soup kitchen. Nancy and I went to a soup kitchen once. Dreadful.
Ramon is pruning the hedges. Maybe I can help.
Aug. 7: It's family reunion day. Finally we will have a crowd. There's my Aunt Sally, who slept with half the Cabinet - the Bush Cabinet, not the current one. She claims she added Dick Cheney to the list, but we all doubt it. She's outrageous and great fun. She has an embroidered pillow: "But enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?"
Cousin Jack will be there. Great boat guy - or at least he used to be. He spent a lot of time in bars around the marina, and he met a guy who offered to get him in on the ground floor of a liquid hamburger business. He thought it was a good idea. There went half a billion bucks.
But it breaks my heart to think about all the scam artists and con men who prey on the rich. Rich booty in sunken ships just waiting to be plundered. A car that runs on water. An airplane that becomes a submarine. Oh, I've heard them all. I have learned not to trust.
If I meet a girl, I can't tell whether she loves me or just loves my money. I become suspicious and withdrawn; the relationship dwindles.
I too want to be loved. I want to be needed. I am a human being; if you prick me, do I not bleed? And yet everything is money, money, money all the time. It's not that big a deal. It can't buy happiness.
Aug: 8: There's a portrait of Grandfather over the fireplace, the one in the living room. He's the guy who made the fortune. I'm named for him. People expect me to care about agricultural machines, but I don't. Perhaps I was born to be a writer. Perhaps this is my awakening, my brave new world.
Please send check directly to my trust.
All around me are hedges, huge and well groomed. I feel trapped.
"It turned into a pig," Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way. "I thought it would," said firstname.lastname@example.org.