Man, it’s been a while since we had a good Would You Rather up in here, so let’s make that a solved problem, why not? After all, these are important! Your brain can’t just subsist on work and important things, like your body it also needs a healthy portion of serious crap. In the same way your doctor will want to be sure you’re getting enough piping hot Yoo-Hoo and Fritos in your diet, your therapist will want to be sure you’re getting enough ethical and emotional challenges from a handcrafted Autopian Would You Rather. So here we go: today’s will focus two bold new business ventures, both of which reward you with cars, but at a price.
Your childhood friend has become a multi-millionaire, thanks to a lot of capital he got of a healthy payout from both Kraft Foods and Prestige Brands, maker of the cleaner known as Comet, because the similarities of their shiny green cylinders caused unfortunate consequences for both dinner and toilet cleaning when he was in middle school. You know, like this:
Anyway, he invested the payout money into a variety of enterprises that paid handsomely over the years, including developing the world’s best-selling brand of ham repellent. I don’t need to say the name, but I bet it’s the kind you have in your closet right now. He’s currently starting a tech startup that has some really incredible breakout technologies and he very much needs to test them.
For extremely complex legal reasons that result in him being on both house arrest and having to wear an alarm that blasts if he gets within 100 feet of an ant farm, he’s not allowed to use currency as we understand it, so he can’t just hire testers. He knows you’re a lifelong gearhead, so he’s got a plan.
He will use his vast company resources to get you any car you want, maintained by a professional staff. If you want the only Skoda 935 Dynamic that exists in the world, it’s yours. They’ll figure out how to get it to you, just don’t ask questions. If you decide next month you want a different car, they can do that, too! You can change cars every month, and they can be literally anything you want.
Of course, there’s a price. In return for this bit of automotive Nirvana, you can pick between two revolutionary new technological developments to test. Here they are:
Option 1
Your friend’s company has developed a neural implant that will allow text to be sent from anywhere on the internet direct to your brain, at which point you will stop whatever you are doing, stare blankly, and speak those words in your own voice, loudly and clearly.
To test this, they need you to get the implant, and be ready to receive the text signals up to two days a week, with a variable number of individual sessions per day. The sources of the text will be from literally anywhere on the internet, from Reddit forums or Facebook or kink-friendly dating apps or Twitch chats or Tweets or wherever. TikTok, too. Anywhere. Most will be in the context of actual people typing in messages to send, but there will be some AI text as well, and text randomly sampled from the internet.
The signals will be unannounced, and the amount of text you’ll be speaking is likely pretty short, but could potentially last up to 47 seconds of speech. You’ll be aware and alert while it happens, but powerless to stop speaking until the signal ends.
Option 2
If the speaking some rando’s words from the internet makes you uneasy, there’s another option. This time you’re not receiving anything: you’re sending something. Specifically, urine. You see, your friend has developed a sort of teleportation system designed specifically to teleport your urine into someone else’s bladder, for getting around drug testing.
To make this happen, you’ll need to wear a special catheter unit in your urethra – there are versions for whatever equipment you’re running down there – and you’ll need to be ready to pee a good quantity of urine with minimal notice.
When your urine is needed, the catheter-teleporter unit will buzz loudly (or, if on silent mode, deliver a series of electrical shocks) and you will need to immediately find a location to urinate. You’ll have a window of about five minutes, and then the unit will activate, and start to teleport the urine flowing through your urethra into the remote bladder.
Due to the power required to run this, you’ll need to keep a lithium-ion battery belt on and charged, and you will feel a good amount of discomfort as the process happens, along with a loud crackling sound and some sparking. Estrogen or testosterone or other compounds may be injected into the flow based on the needs and criteria of the client.
The process can happen at pretty much any time, day or night (it’s global, you see) but it’ll be limited to no more than seven times per 24 hour period.
So, what’s it gonna be? You can have all the incredible cars of your dreams, and all you have to do is test some revolutionary tech! Sure, your life may end up a shambles as a result, but it could be a shambles in a Facel-Vega or Bugatti!
Did comments get shut down or something? I heard somebody whining but i can’t really tell why. Oh well – i was really looking forward to another ‘would you rather’ and the ensuing discussion, but i guess sometimes we just can’t have nice things.
(I’m here for the long haul btw)
Never mind – i think i misunderstood. Sorry.
Anyways, i voted for the internet thing, because i trust anonymous contributors. Don’t want to have to wake up to pee any more often than i already do.
I feel like these get tougher every time.
Oh Torch, you are the Hunter Thompson of our little corner of automobilia. Either that, or I took too much medication this morning… or you did? Not sure.
[Cue “Colonel Bogey March”]
Comet …
It tastes like gasoline!
Comet …
It makes your teeth turn green!
Comet …
It makes you vomit!
So eat some Comet,
And vomit,
Today!
OK, folks, I’m out. Good luck with everything. Disappointing that I can’t delete my account myself, feel free.
Option 2: Big no, no. Cheating during testing.. What could go wrong, right?
Don’t want to be involved to anything with cheating.
Option 1: Well, sometimes it feels like people already started to sign up for much less or no benefits at all. But in case you’re still carrying about public opinion choose car carefully. There is a thin line between respected successful person and downtown madman. Take Rolls-Royce or Maybach and people will think that you earned it and start to find tons of sense in all of the nonsense you could ever utter.
BMW or Jag? Well, nothing that wasn’t expected from a moron.
Pontiac Aztek or Skoda Favorit? Should we just stay away from this lunatic or call emergency?
The pee teleporting thing sounds like great idea.
I can think of a few places that I’d like to send my pee to,
Elon Musk’s desk drawer springs to mind.
Heh. “Springs”
Well, lots of Interesting comments, the voting totals still aren’t showing up, however it tells me that I have already voted!
I’ll call it progress!
Hey i get up 4-5 times a night to pee anyhow. Might as well get a car out of it.
“What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
So the question is “implant in the big head or the little head?”
I guess I go little head and sabotage the whole thing by doing lots of drugs and making my urine unusable.
When I read “Rent Your Mouth to the Internet,” speaking words is not what I envisioned.
I guess I’d rather be catheterized than scream the worst slurs imaginable all day two days a week because somehow, random or not, that’s what would happen if the internet controlled your speech. Probably hurts less than being beaten by strangers or arrested for hate speech.
Anyway if there’s a teleporter in my urethra why do I need to find a location to urinate? At that point the world being your toilet is one of the few upsides. Nothing to hide, nothing to get rid of. Damn near Harry Potter levels of waste disposal efficiency.
I was thinking Facel Vega myself. Pretty sure Camus died in one making it the most existential car in existence. Pretty too.
The trick is to just commit yourself those two days to become an online content streamer (or semi-censored video producer) and just treat this as supplementary income. People will FLOCK.
I had an entirely different idea of what renting my mouth to the internet would be, thank you for not going that direction. I’ve had a catheter, I’ll take option one every day and twice on Sunday.
Since I’ve said many silly things in my life, I would go with Option 1. Anyone who would choose Option 2 has never experienced a catheter. Oh my dear sweet lord mother mercy kill me.
When I was halfway through the article, I thought it would be an easy choice for the pee thing. I don’t mind peein’ or having my pee sent through the mail or teleported or whatever, how hard could it be? I just didn’t want some dickweeds sending racist rants through my mouth hole.
But then I saw there was a catheter involved and fuck no, I guess I’ll be driving my existing cars for the rest of my life.
I was put under for a few hours for an endoscopy a couple years back and the catheter was left in for probably a couple hours longer than it should have been, and from the time I woke up, through the time waiting to get it taken out, through the eternal few seconds of having it taken out, through the hellish urinations of the next four days, I experienced the absolute worst discomfort of my entire life, and I won’t voluntarily go through that ever again.
I’ll be seeing a doctor next year about whether I need a procedure to correct my concave chest. I could be totally fine, or my whole sternum could need to be re-shaped. I can cope with pain, I’ve had two surgeries in my groin and have numerous tattoos. If I have to have my chest fixed, I would be most concerned about having a catheter since some of those procedures involve multiple days in the hospital. Pain? Fine. Something up my urethra? Noooooooooooo.
I’ll take word vomit any day.
I’m a straight white guy so there’s only a handful of phrases I can’t say. What are the odds those end up being on the internet?
I look forward to these automotive “would you rather “ articles.
They remind me of my favorite pop culture writer, Chuck Klosterman’s “23 questions”.
Most of them make me think that in some subtle way I’m making the wrong decision after I’ve already chosen.
What did I miss? What does this answer vs the other say about me as a human? Am I a narcissist for choosing the box of shit or am I a narcissist for opting out of that grossness? Why did I kidnap that lobster genie on that road trip?
Point is it makes me think and question my beliefs, place in the world and or sanity.
This one required no active brain cells to answer.
Get some rest man. This is some fever dream nonsense you wrote down in a time crunch.
The obvious answer is neither.
Nobody gets carte blanche on my brain or privates for personal gain, no matter what car they park in my driveway.
Id say no to that childhood friend, kindly escort them off my property and hopefully never hear from them again.
Then, annoyed and intrigued by their offer I put on my warmest, greasiest hoodie and walk across my muddy driveway in chilling rain. I pop the hood of my Chevy Prism and start fiddling with wires in search of a short somewhere. Hands freezing, mag light in my maw.
Fuck your free cars for inhumane circus acts.
Cars can be given, but a won vehicle will never equal an earned one. Especially if you’ve bleed on wrenches for it. Fuck this rich guy, he’s clearly missing out.
Painless words vs a tube shoved up my dick??? No contest.
I’m not able to see the current vote total after voting. Glitch or just me?
Me too. I voted-and there are 9 comments-but the results were 0/0.
Anytime you revamp the system there’ll be ghosties flitting around, I guess
The pee teleporter experience sounds remarkably like being an older guy.
Will be 53 in a couple of weeks. Can confirm. Still on the fence about vibrating / shocking things going on down there, though.
And finding a place to pee is no problem. With the catheter, nothing needs to come out. I can do it anywhere.
That said, I picked the “say anything” one since i pretty much do that anyway without significant urethral discomfort.
So technical Tourette syndrome.
I’ve done worse.
I literally peed myself as an adult this week after passing out at the doctor’s office having stitches removed. I have no more qualms about urination, and am overly hydrated. Sign me up for an exciting vibrating catheter.
And I replied to a comment instead of the article… I guess I belong here officially now.
OK then, since I randomly babble anyway, let’s go with that!
Ain’t no way I want batteries hooked up to my funbits!
Nope, nope, nope, … mama warned me about you!
“So how will you pay for your dream car?”
I think “with cash” is the clear answer on this one. Usually I can find a palatable choice, but here they both sound awful.
Option 1 is less bad, but there isn’t a car in the world I’d make the trade for.