How Cards Against Humanity Sold Actual Poop to 30,000 Satisfied Idiots
There was no big secret to Cards Against Humanity creator Max Temkin's ploy to sell 30,000 boxes of actual bull feces on Black Friday. His game simply has a lot of fans, and some of those fans will evidently buy literally anything he sells. Still, Temkin broke down the finer points of shit-slinging in a blog post this week.
In order to pull the shit stunt—part of a yearly Cards Against Humanity tradition of Black Friday pranks—they first needed to find the shit. Their supplier, Temkin writes, was "a confused cattle rancher in Texas named Amy."
We asked Amy what it was like when we first described our order to her, and she said, "It was a little overwhelming, I was surprised that somebody wanted thirty two thousand pieces of crap. But you know, it is what it is." As we began the months-long poop gathering process and Rancher Amy learned more about the prank, she said, "I was surprised to see how it was used, it was very funny."
The classy-looking packaging apparently came from the same factory that makes boxes for Apple, and because the poop was old and pasteurized, Temkin and company found a creative solution for the olfactory portion of the excrement experience: poop-scented scratch-and-sniff buttons.
Ultimately, all 30,000 $6 bullshit boxes sold out, and the Cards Against Humanity team donated profits—about $6,000— to Heifer International.
"We didn't know much going into this prank, but the one thing we did know is that there's no protesting capitalism," Temkin wrote as an explanation of his motives. "There's nothing you can say about capitalism that it won't subsume and sell back to you. So the really funny, radical thing for us isn't just to complain about Black Friday on Twitter, but to participate in a way that takes it to a point of absurdity."
[Image via Max Temkin]