Poverty isn’t just a game

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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/poverty-isnt-just-a-game-2011-09-23

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — You’ve lost your job. You’ve lost your house. You’re down to your last $1,000.

Can you make it through the month?

Jenny Nicholson is tired of hearing how the poor are poor because they make poor choices. Let’s see what kind of choices you make when it’s your turn to be flattened by the economy.

That’s the idea behind Spent, an online game Nicholson created to challenge popular misconceptions about poverty. Play it at www.playspent.org. So far, it’s been played more than a million times by people in 196 countries. And Nicholson is challenging every member of Congress to play it, too. ( She’s got a petition going at www.petition2congress.com/5008 ).

Nicholson, 32, is a copywriter for McKinney, a national advertising firm in Durham, N.C., whose clients include Nationwide Insurance, Sherwin-Williams, Gold’s Gym, Coldwell Banker and phone company, CenturyLink. Another client is Urban Ministries of Durham, which advertises “food, clothing and a future.”

[OneGrassRoot]

1. Haven't shared that link in a while. Thanks for the reminder to do so.

:hi:

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2. ...

:thumbsup:

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3. Kick

[sofa king]

4. Pfft. I haven't had $1000 in four years.

Hell, one of those years, I only made four times that much total.

For those of you not there yet, let me tell you about the real game you're going to play: every day, you will balance risk of your life itself against the chances that success will allow you to survive another week, another day. You'll pare down your luxuries to nothing, your clothes and shoes will wear to rags around you, you'll only be able to afford cheap shit that breaks, and you'll always be cold, wet, sick, and desperate. A home, a car, a vacation, and any real comfort will all be distant memories. Your wealthy friends will desert you. Your life expectancy will drop into the mid-40s, and the cold hand of death will always be on your shoulder.

And those who haven't yet gone where you're all going will mock you, remind you of their superior status, rationalize away the absurd risks you take just to live, and present you with five thousand dollars' worth of helpful suggestions to improve your life every day, when you can't spend five dollars on a cup of coffee, ever. Today I was made fun of because thanks to Rick Astley, it's no longer cool to wear a raincoat in the rain, even if it's the last winter gear I have left.

But, if you're really lucky and manage to survive for awhile, you'll be in an excellent position to show all those who mocked you the compassion and understanding impoverished people need, but rarely get. For they are only a short way behind you on the road to peasantry and an early grave.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. +1,000,000 (and a *hug*)

[Newest Reality]

7. That has been and is

similar to my experience, as well.

One thing it has given me is a freedom from wanting or having much stuff. When t gets down to need, simple things can take on great value to you.

It is life on the edge in a society made of loose-knit strangers where hollow eyes stare without much concern.

Problems with your health and teeth go untreated until it is an emergency. After the emergency, medication and follow-up are often unaffordable or impractical.

Meanwhile, its learning to try to stay motivated without much to look forward to and to continue a stoic trek singing a song of loss. Less and less is your fortune. Aging becomes not only a burden as your strength and faculties wane, but a ominous catacomb of potential misfortunes without joy or anticipation of a resolution to a nonstop descent into poverty, especially when you are old enough to be the only survivor of your family and some friends.

When you know that you are living in a world where there is no place that you belong or can afford, ideas of death become more prevalent and you begin to rethink what leaving this life means to you. Almost nothing or absolutely nothing seems like a moot point and pain is not something to endure for too long. Yet, you trudge onward though you find no compelling reason to do so.

Many people are joining our ranks. I see new ones everyday.

[renate]

5. great article, excellent idea for a game

Thank you for the link. I think most members of Congress, who spend their days in marble halls, must honestly be unaware that real people have to make this horrible choices every single day. I don't blame them for not having a visceral understanding of what it's like to be poor (except for the ones who deliberately decide to not even think about poor people) because if you don't even see poor neighborhoods or poor people on your way to work, and if you spend your days talking to important people in suits, poverty can easily become just a concept. (Obviously there are exceptions, like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.) This game, and the endless painful choices, really do make it real... you find your heart beating a little faster as you watch your bank balance drop. Highly recommended.