I did some freelancing for a company called WebJuice, the
Kayak.com of car insurance. My objectives were to stick to a topic, include all
the top-rated SEO keywords on that topic and make it interesting.
The
Price of Free-dumb
Okay, admit it: you hate paying for stuff. Hate it. Despise it. It seems like everything has a cost attached to it. In the city you pay for a parking spot no matter how early you arrive. At the gas station you pay to put a little air in your tires (really – they’re charging for air, the most abundant of elements), and so on. Where are the freebies, you must be asking? Here’s the bad news: there aren’t any. Now here’s the good news…okay there isn’t any good news. But before you spend the next week wallowing in your own cheapness, here are a few examples of when “free” wasn’t such a good thing. Maybe there is some good news: you’re not one of these people.
Amanda Clayton was 24 and unemployed when she won $1 million in a Michigan lottery. And no, that wasn’t the “free” part, as she had to purchase the lottery ticket to win. Young Amanda must’ve felt really lucky when she continued to receive unemployment benefits (in the form of food stamps) after she became a millionaire. And by “really lucky” we mean “fully justified.”
"I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn't, I thought maybe it was OK because I'm not working ... I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay," is what she said.
See? Cut her some slack. She had those pesky bills and not one, but two houses to take care of. Yes, you read that right. A woman who owned two houses and won the lottery felt getting taxpayer-funded assistance was just fine. After the word got out, Clayton was put on probation for fraud, ordered to pay back the $5,500 she collected since winning the lottery, and generally became nationwide villain/laughingstock. All because she thought she was getting free government cash.
According to her friends, Clayton couldn’t handle her newfound notoriety and her life spiraled out of control. She was found dead of an apparent drug overdose just over a year later.
Tiger Woods is someone you may have heard of. He’s the young golf legend who earned, yes – earned, nearly a billion dollars in winnings and endorsements, had a beautiful wife and kids and a seemingly even bigger future ahead of him. The genius turned all that upside down by convincing himself that his accomplishments entitled him to free sex. Lots of it. Lots and lots of it.
Okay, admit it: you hate paying for stuff. Hate it. Despise it. It seems like everything has a cost attached to it. In the city you pay for a parking spot no matter how early you arrive. At the gas station you pay to put a little air in your tires (really – they’re charging for air, the most abundant of elements), and so on. Where are the freebies, you must be asking? Here’s the bad news: there aren’t any. Now here’s the good news…okay there isn’t any good news. But before you spend the next week wallowing in your own cheapness, here are a few examples of when “free” wasn’t such a good thing. Maybe there is some good news: you’re not one of these people.
Amanda Clayton was 24 and unemployed when she won $1 million in a Michigan lottery. And no, that wasn’t the “free” part, as she had to purchase the lottery ticket to win. Young Amanda must’ve felt really lucky when she continued to receive unemployment benefits (in the form of food stamps) after she became a millionaire. And by “really lucky” we mean “fully justified.”
"I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn't, I thought maybe it was OK because I'm not working ... I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay," is what she said.
See? Cut her some slack. She had those pesky bills and not one, but two houses to take care of. Yes, you read that right. A woman who owned two houses and won the lottery felt getting taxpayer-funded assistance was just fine. After the word got out, Clayton was put on probation for fraud, ordered to pay back the $5,500 she collected since winning the lottery, and generally became nationwide villain/laughingstock. All because she thought she was getting free government cash.
According to her friends, Clayton couldn’t handle her newfound notoriety and her life spiraled out of control. She was found dead of an apparent drug overdose just over a year later.
Tiger Woods is someone you may have heard of. He’s the young golf legend who earned, yes – earned, nearly a billion dollars in winnings and endorsements, had a beautiful wife and kids and a seemingly even bigger future ahead of him. The genius turned all that upside down by convincing himself that his accomplishments entitled him to free sex. Lots of it. Lots and lots of it.
Tiger began Thanksgiving Day, 2009 began like any other
day: enjoying life as a sports icon and hiding his numerous affairs from his
blissfully or willfully naïve wife. He ended it with his Escalade wrapped
around a tree, a sand wedge wrapped around his head and every stripper,
socialite, porn star and silicone-fueled street urchin within 400 miles
claiming to have bagged him. As the months went on, the stories got more
outrageous – one being that Tiger, who’s probably as shocked as we are that a
dorky nasally-voiced golfer could get that much poontang, continued to text one
of his mistresses while in a violent
argument with his wife Elin about…his mistresses.
His explanation? "I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to." Sound to you like someone who thought he could get a free lunch (a well-used, herpes-infected lunch)? Of course, none of his sexcapades ended up being free. He lost lucrative endorsement deals with Gatorade, General Motors, Tag Heuer and more. Not to mention his divorce settlement that cost him $100 million plus $20,000 a month to his ex-wife.
Oprah Winfrey became internationally famous for giving away free stuff. Okay, she may have done other things, but no one remembers those. As Oprah’s daytime talk show became a ratings behemoth, the gifts she hid under the seats of her studio audience became more extravagant. Best-selling books and concert tickets evolved into expensive jewelry, vacations, speedboats with rocket launchers mounted on them like G.I. Joe, etc. Fans traveled from around the country to be a part of the audience, and viewers tuned in by the millions to see what the media queen would give away next.
Of course, it didn’t take long for some enterprising con artists to take advantage of Oprah watchers’ lust for freebies. In 2009, The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show email scam was launched. In short, a very official-looking email was spammed to thousands of people claiming to be from Oprah’s company, Harpo Productions, Inc. The email asked for some personal information from the recipient in order to be entered for a chance to appear on “The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show” held later that year. The “electronically chosen” winners would have to answer some trivial questions from Oprah for a shot at the million bucks. But there were two catches. First, the winners had to pay for the airfare and cab fare provided by “Harpo Production, Inc,” presumably by credit card. And slightly more importantly, The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show didn’t exist. There isn’t any number of exactly how much money was collected by this scam, but we’re guessing A LOT of winners were “electronically chosen” that year. Fans who thought they could ride Oprah’s free-stuff tidal wave found themselves freed from hundreds or more of their own dollars, and part of Internet history.
His explanation? "I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to." Sound to you like someone who thought he could get a free lunch (a well-used, herpes-infected lunch)? Of course, none of his sexcapades ended up being free. He lost lucrative endorsement deals with Gatorade, General Motors, Tag Heuer and more. Not to mention his divorce settlement that cost him $100 million plus $20,000 a month to his ex-wife.
Oprah Winfrey became internationally famous for giving away free stuff. Okay, she may have done other things, but no one remembers those. As Oprah’s daytime talk show became a ratings behemoth, the gifts she hid under the seats of her studio audience became more extravagant. Best-selling books and concert tickets evolved into expensive jewelry, vacations, speedboats with rocket launchers mounted on them like G.I. Joe, etc. Fans traveled from around the country to be a part of the audience, and viewers tuned in by the millions to see what the media queen would give away next.
Of course, it didn’t take long for some enterprising con artists to take advantage of Oprah watchers’ lust for freebies. In 2009, The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show email scam was launched. In short, a very official-looking email was spammed to thousands of people claiming to be from Oprah’s company, Harpo Productions, Inc. The email asked for some personal information from the recipient in order to be entered for a chance to appear on “The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show” held later that year. The “electronically chosen” winners would have to answer some trivial questions from Oprah for a shot at the million bucks. But there were two catches. First, the winners had to pay for the airfare and cab fare provided by “Harpo Production, Inc,” presumably by credit card. And slightly more importantly, The Oprah Millionaire Contest Show didn’t exist. There isn’t any number of exactly how much money was collected by this scam, but we’re guessing A LOT of winners were “electronically chosen” that year. Fans who thought they could ride Oprah’s free-stuff tidal wave found themselves freed from hundreds or more of their own dollars, and part of Internet history.
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