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The social experiment

I saw this scene on Friday night in Sydney. I was standing at an intersection, a really busy intersection near China Town, waiting to meet some friends,...but they were late. So I had lots of time to stand around and wait for a break in the stream of pedestrians to take this picture.
It still came out a little blurry, but I can describe it.

On the left, a table of water bottles with a metal tin and a sign saying that the water bottles are $1, and then another sign saying it is unattended and that you should be honest and pay if you take a bottle.

On the right of the picture is a guy kneeling on the pavement, possibly homeless, with a sign asking for money.

Almost immediately this struck me as some sort of strange social experiment. Embrace your inner philanthropist by giving money to a homeless guy, buy yourself water for $1 and give no money to the homeless guy, steal a bottle of water, steal a bottle of water and give it to the homeless guy, or even buy a bottle for $1 and also give $1 to the homeless guy. Or something else. Maybe it was being filmed and the homeless guy was an actor.
Alternatively, you could just do nothing and be skeptical about the whole thing, which was what I did and 100 or so others who walked past. Most of them were curious about the unmanned table of water bottles.
I saw one person give money to the homeless guy.
About 4 people bought a bottle of water and ignored the beggar.

It is possible that this was all just a coincidence though.

When my friends arrived, I suggested my idea of this possible social experiment. One responded with an almost sarcastic level of enthusiasm and another responded with a "mmmm maybe".
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Comments

  1. Chris B2 September 2013 at 18:13

    Could be an experiment or perhaps the beggar moved to that spot for that very reason!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kris2 September 2013 at 20:42

      Possibly. It's a chicken or egg situation really. Beggar or water bottle table.

      Delete

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