Hey y'all, I've been thinking about this a lot for the past few hours. Specifically part two. (If you don't have much time, just read the second part of it, which is linked separately at the bottom.)

I like Musk, and I like Tesla, and I like Tesla, and I like the idea of a Tesla museum. That said, the more I think about it, the more this seems like a massive dick move on Oatmeal's part... or at the very least, outrageously manipulative.

But I wanna hash that out with someone. Anybody interested is talking this out with me?

The thing I keep coming back to is the inclusion of Musk's Bond car. Why was that included? It seems like the only reason for Oatmeal to include that is to pre-empt any ability for Musk to turn this down. Suppose he did. "Oh, I get it, so he'll buy a movie prop but he won't [insert rest of argument here]." Which... isn't that shitty, on Oatmeal's part? It's kind of blackmail-ish, he's clearly trying to force Musk's hand by pre-shaming him.

More or less any human being could play that exact same trick on Musk for the rest of his life, on behalf of any worthwhile cause. Anybody could do that. It is in no way related to Oatmeal's Tesla museum. It's just a tactic. And it'd be shitty every time. But wouldn't it be less shitty, so long as we're trying to manipulate billionaires, to donate eight million bucks to... like, malaria? Or research and development for narrow-spectrum antibiotics? Or mining asteroids? Or something?

It seems especially shitty to me because The Oatmeal is really, really popular. There was never a chance this wasn't going to become a thing on Musk's desk. It's a sure thing. Whereas if it were, like, us doing this, and it could only get to Musk's desk because it genuinely struck a chord with people and went viral, that'd be a bunch of people asking for eight million bucks. Right now it's just one guy. For his thing. Because "Tesla."

I don't know. I'm still workin' it out. Thoughts?

EDIT: I've come up with a term for this: "loudsourcing."

Late release. Sorry folks.