Airbnb has decided to shower 100,000 of its users with ten bucks each, as part of a campaign to rid the world of both strangers and the social awkwardness that comes from not knowing all people. They’re asking only that recipients blow it all on making someone else’s day better (and, pretty please, tag it on social media with #OneLessStranger.)
This is one of those chicken-and-egg things where you want to say it’s just an advertising ploy driven by a string of bad PR (like how the company pretty much got a law written to benefit itself at the expense of its competitors, the occasional prison-camp guest bedroom, or the fact that they literally think they’re Mother Theresa), but then you inevitably soften and realize this gesture is actually very sweet.
Scrolling through the pics, the cheerful intentions are apparent even when the context is a little trickier to grasp. For instance, one picture has an Inner Richmond woman with a little bird perched on her arm while an older man looks on. (Presumably they just met. Very quirky, very Instagrammable, very SF.) But often, the picture is clearer, as when a guy in Brooklyn gave his guests petit-fours after New Year’s dinner, or when someone highlighted the work of a French non-profit for homeless LGBT youth.
Who can quibble with these examples? Is there anything truly altruistic in this world? We need more “random acts of hospitality,” as Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said — even if by making somebody smile you’re also doing someone else’s marketing. The only other problem is that #OneLessStranger is actually grammatically incorrect. (It should be “OneFewerStranger.”) But if somebody paid me $10 to STFU and not be such a joyless pedant about quantity vs. amount, I’d totally take it and the world would be happier still.
[Via Airbnb]
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