SLOP1744 · Week 3#
The Exchange#
George Curious — what’s it worth?
Yu Tobe — make it worth telling
George Curious#
What’s it worth?
Crossing 1 was free#
You spent attention and some nerve. If it went badly you walked away no worse off.
This one has a price: you put a real thing up before you know what’s coming back.
George Curious
No cash. On purpose.#
Money doesn’t price a social exchange. It ends one.
Ariely’s version: people will happily help you move a couch for nothing, and refuse to help you move it for three dollars. Introduce a price and the favour stops being a favour — it becomes a badly paid job.
George Curious
What a gift obliges#
Mauss, writing in 1925 about gift economies, found the same three-part obligation everywhere he looked: to give, to receive, and to repay.
A purchase creates none of them. That’s the whole reason money is banned this fortnight — a receipt settles the account, and a settled account is the end of the relationship, not the start of one.
George Curious
Pick your currency#
Object. A badge, a book, half a sandwich.
Favour. Carrying a busker’s amp between sets.
Tip. Something you know about this campus that they don’t.
Skill. Proofreading, a language, fixing a bike chain.
It matters less which one than whether you’d have handed it over if nobody were marking you.
George Curious
Name your price first#
You say what you’re offering before you know what’s coming back, and let the other person set the rest of the rate.
Wait to see what they’ll offer and you haven’t made a trade. You’ve run an auction.
George Curious
Every trade has a rate#
Whether or not you did the arithmetic beforehand — and you only find out what it was afterwards.
The Exchange Rate, next week: what you put in, what came out, and whether you’d call that fair. “Fair” isn’t the only acceptable answer.
George Curious
“Did you do the thing” is easy.#
“Was it worth doing” is the question — and it’s the one I’ll still be asking you in week 12.
George Curious
Yu Tobe#
Make it worth telling
Nobody watches a video where nothing happens.#
Yu Tobe
Last week you all stood up and reported#
Some of those, the room leaned in for. Some died on the way out of your mouth.
The difference wasn’t how well you told it.
Yu Tobe
A boring report-back isn’t a bad grade waiting to happen#
It’s a sign the trade needed another pass.
You can’t narrate your way out of an interaction where nothing was at stake. So stop fixing the telling, and fix the thing you’re telling about.
Yu Tobe
What’s actually checked#
- you offered or asked for something real with a stranger this week — a tip, a favour, a small object, a skill
- no money changed hands
- you can say what you expected to get back before you knew whether you got it
- you came away with a clip of whatever changed hands — second of your five
Yu Tobe
Storyboard it#
What you wanted. What you offered instead. The bit you’d cut if you only had thirty seconds — the same three questions the room asks next week.
Yu Tobe
The clip#
One per Crossing, five by the end, and they play as one video in week 12 — see Legacy.
A clip isn’t documentation. It’s the thirty seconds that prove the thing happened to somebody who wasn’t there.
It’s also yours, of your Crossing — not a recording of the person you traded with. Want them in it? Ask first, record the yes, and shoot a version without them anyway; consent can be taken back. Policies is the short version.
Yu Tobe
You already have one.#
Go and watch your Crossing 1 clip. Would you watch it if it weren’t yours?
Yu Tobe
This week#
- Make the trade. No money.
- Name your price before you know theirs.
- Get the clip — second of five.
- Turn up next week with the rate.
Yu Tobe