Gold fingers

A couple of months back, I came across (and wrote about) MSCHF, an internet collective that specializes in what they call "drops" in which they promote or sell or ideate or do something clever. The drop that got me to drop in was their cutting up a Damien Hirst print of dots, and selling the individual dots off one at a time. MSCHF is plenty imaginative, plenty clever, and plenty funny.

For their latest drop - I keep wanting to say "hack" here, because they remind me of the pranks (called hacks) that MIT students have been famous for for decades - is in partnership with Jimmy Donaldson, a young (he's 22) YouTuber with tens of millions of subscribers, who specializes in stunts. In 2017, his breakout stunt was a video of himself counting to 100,000. (And I thought getting through the entirety of 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall was tedious enough...)

Anyway, the Donaldson brainchild that just finished up is:

“Finger on the App,” a one-time multiplayer game with a very simple premise: the last person to take their finger off their phone screen wins up to $25,000. The twist is that “Finger on the App” has a fluctuating prize pool. Other players decide the final cash prize amount, meaning the prize can be anywhere from $1 to $25,000. The game kick[ed] off on June 30th at 3PM ET. (Source: The Verge - 06.22.20)

And it kicked off with 1 million players. Sounds like a ton to me, but Donaldson had been anticipating that there would have been more:

Finger on the App can handle “millions of concurrent players,” Donaldson told The Verge, and that comes with some concerns. Donaldson, his team, and MSCHF were especially interested in “making sure

someone couldn’t just duct tape their hand to the phone,” so they require you to occasionally move your finger in specific ways, he said. With millions of players signing up to try to win money, Donaldson knows that much of it is out of his control, but it’s that chaotic element that he’s most excited by.

“I think the beauty of the game is that we don’t really have control,” Donaldson said. “It’s really up to the people playing and seeing who lasts the longest, and I think our main thing was just keeping the game fair.” 

You might have been tempted to believe that all the young folk were either occupied with protests - Oh, those wonderful kids who are going to make the world a place - or running COVID parties in which mask-less party-goers throw money into a pot which goes to the first attendee to come down with COVID - Oh, those feckless little a-holes. 

Turns out there a ton of young folks willing to see if they can turn their obsessions with their smartphones and gaming, and their ability to stay awake around the clock by no doubt fueling on Jolt or Mountain Dew, into some pretty big bucks. Nice to know that there's gold in them there fingers. 

Me? Even if my fingers were athletic and game enough to participate, a minute or two staring at the day-glo screen would have blinded me. Over and out.

But that's just me. At 70 hours, Donaldson called the whole thing off, and handed the four winners who were still letting their fingers do the apping $20K each. Not bad for 70 hours work, even though it might take them quite a while to unkink their finger and unblear their eyeballs. 

The Final Four were a bit confused when Donaldson blew the final whistle. One thought it was a trick trying to sucker three of the contestants to give it up. But, no, Donaldson was on the up and up. 

“DEAR THE FOUR REMAINING CONTESTANTS WITH YOUR FINGER STILL ON THE APP, I’M ENDING IT HERE.” (Source: The Verge 07.03.20)

Donaldson is just "Glad a robot didn’t win."

Other than the Fab Four, there were a handful of others (actually a handful with four fingers but no thumb) who walked away with a few bucks when, "over the last day, Donaldson started offering some of the remaining players thousands of dollars to take their finger off the app."

Remember, at that point, the winners wasn't 100% guaranteed to get a big payday. They could've ended up with as little as a buck. Plus there was no guarantee you were going to be the last finger standing. So two players settled for $5K each and, the following day, another two for $10K a piece. 

In any case, even with the possibility of a permanently kinked finger, Finger on the App is a lot better for everyone's health than the hot-dog eating contest that was held on the Fourth of July. Plus Finger on the App has bigger prize.  (In case you're interested, coronavirus or not, the Coney Island Nathan's contest went on as usual, with perennial champeen Joey Chestnut gulping down a record-breaking 75 hot dogs and buns. He won $10K.)

By the way, Donaldson is more than a YouTube prankster. He uses the money raised by his stunts to do nice things for friends, family, and strangers. And he's helped raise nearly $30 million for the Arbor Day Foundation, which will be put towards planting 30 million trees. Plus he's worth an estimated $8 million. 

Not bad for a 22 year old kid. And big props that he's no an influencer, getting paid to pout his lips and shill for some product. However weird and somewhat useless the stuff Donaldson comes up with is, he's creative, interesting, and do-gooding. 

Finger App on!