Last week, David Armano VP of Experience Design for Critical Mass and one of of the few bloggers I really look up to, brought the case of Daniela, a mother of three kids, forth in his blog and his 8,600+ followers strong twitter network.

Daniela’s family, at that time, was living in David’s house after years of domestic abuse prompted her to take her kids and divorce her husband.

The appeal was pretty straightforward: Using ChipIn.com, David intended to raise $5,000 for Daniela and her family to get a decent roof over their heads without worrying about deposit or rent for a while.

To say that the community response was significant would be an insulting understatement. In fact, a mere 24 hours after the appeal was posted, David was able to raise over $15,000 for Daniela and her family.

One only needs to look at the deluge of twitter responses and media coverage (most notably from Business Week and The Vancouver Sun) to see how quickly and phenomenally the virus spread.

After everything settled down, I realized a couple of things: First, the #daniela campaign has got to be one of the most noble ways I’ve seen anybody put their social authority to use in recent memory and second, the campaign is a gleaming example of how a community’s altruism and willingness to extend a helping hand does not get watered down even if its members are connected only by mere wires and fiber optics.

Also, after the proof of concept on how authority can be leveraged to raise funds for a good cause was laid out, I got to thinking about my own authority in the local blogosphere and how I could leverage it, being one of the country’s most prominent bloggers, to pull off my own #daniela.

And so here we are with a little experiment…

Ready?

Wait for it…

And here it goes…

I think you should totally give me money

No, don’t go just yet and hear me out. I know I’m being a douche and you’ve probably decided in your narrow minds that I am, indeed, a douche but that’s not what’s important.

What’s important, bro, is that I’ve written an assload of posts in this blog (and here) since June of 2005 and while you’ve consistently consumed the high art that are my blog posts, I have never really asked you for anything in return. Until now.

To put things into perspective, I am going to run some numbers by you:

• I have written over 400 posts between this blog and my old one
• The average length of a Mike “Fucking” Villar blog post is 800 words.
• Now, using the magic of math, I can safely estimate that I have, in my career as a blogger, written well over 320,000 words
• On the average, a book is about 70,000 words long (I totally made this up. Sorry.)
• Again using the voodoo that is math, assuming that you’ve read every single blog post I churned out, you’ve read the equivalent of 4 books! Written by me!
• A cursory look at Amazon tells me that a new book costs around 7-8 USD but since I am only a “semi-published” writer, I am willing to slash the prices of the 4 “books” you’ve read to $5 each.
• Now do you know why you owe me $20 ?

(Wait, even if you didn’t read all of my posts, you still owe me a little money.)

Let it go on record that I do NOT earn anything from advertising through this site and I am, in fact, hemorrhaging thousands of Pesos yearly because of web hosting bills and my being obdurate.

For those of you who haven’t yet realized the gravity of this, just think of it this way: The thousands of Pesos I blow annually on Web Hosting is money better spent on alcohol–specifically those swanky cocktails I’ve been addicted to lately or on generously helping the local prostitution industry prosper.

If you’re one of those people who like really love this blog and consider yourself affluent, we can make it more “interesting” depending on the amount you are willing to donate:

• For $500 I will give you total access to my hamper and keep 1 (one) article of clothing I recently wore (No underwear. Come on, that’s just creepy)
• For $1,000 I will have an hour’s worth of phone sex with you
• For $5,000 I will buy a Macbook Pro and print a thank you card to be sent to you using it (could be worth a lot of money after I die 3 years from now)
• And for $20,000 Me and my entire family can be your slaves. Forever.

And there we have it my humble plea for a little money. Your donation would be a clear sign that you care for me and appreciate the entertainment I’ve been providing you for four years now.

Remember: Your appreciation makes me all warm and fuzzy inside and your cash, it keeps me drunk. Which is awesome.

Thank you for your time, and below is the ChipIn widget you could use to give me monies!

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