I've never lived in a city where busking was a normal thing, and I've only barely ever seen anyone doing it when I've visited cities where it might happen. I don't like places where large crowds are thronging through. I avoid them fairly strongly. I can only think of a couple of times that I've ever seen anyone really busking, and they were so bad that if I'd thrown anything, it would have been a tomato, not money. I think that if I regularly passed by people playing for tips on street corners, and I had the spare money in my pocket, I'd hand a little out to the ones who stood out as brightening my day.
I think I would feel a little social pressure in one way: if I felt that my enjoyment of the performance was worthy of a quarter, but not a dollar, I might not actually throw in the quarter. I wouldn't be noticed at all if I just walked on, but if I threw in a quarter, I might be hurting the performer's feelings or looking like a cheapskate. Walking past is totally safe, but as soon as I do something more, I worry if I'm doing it right.
When it comes to the on-line piece, I again get hung up on my odd little foibles. If it's on a site where I'm already logged in, I'll often comment, but if I have to go through the rigamarole of signing up, I'll have to be really deeply moved. As for leaving a tip, if there were a site where I had the option of just pressing one button and leaving a quarter, I'd probably do so fairly freely. If it were a dollar, I'd do it if I liked the piece. But entering a credit card number is, to me, a big hassle. Instead of reaching into my pocket as I listen and tossing a coin in the guitar case, it turns into going home and getting my wallet as a psychological barrier.
I believe that what we need (where "we" is both the community of content consumers who'd like to be paying, and the community of content providers that I have some faint aspirations of joining) is an infrastructure that makes it very quick and easy mechanically and also fully socially acceptable and economically useful to make small, but still non-zero, donations in response to stuff we like. The problem is that I have enough motivation to bounce some ideas around in my head or over a beer with someone else but not nearly enough to write up a business case or actually crank out software.
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I think I would feel a little social pressure in one way: if I felt that my enjoyment of the performance was worthy of a quarter, but not a dollar, I might not actually throw in the quarter. I wouldn't be noticed at all if I just walked on, but if I threw in a quarter, I might be hurting the performer's feelings or looking like a cheapskate. Walking past is totally safe, but as soon as I do something more, I worry if I'm doing it right.
When it comes to the on-line piece, I again get hung up on my odd little foibles. If it's on a site where I'm already logged in, I'll often comment, but if I have to go through the rigamarole of signing up, I'll have to be really deeply moved. As for leaving a tip, if there were a site where I had the option of just pressing one button and leaving a quarter, I'd probably do so fairly freely. If it were a dollar, I'd do it if I liked the piece. But entering a credit card number is, to me, a big hassle. Instead of reaching into my pocket as I listen and tossing a coin in the guitar case, it turns into going home and getting my wallet as a psychological barrier.
I believe that what we need (where "we" is both the community of content consumers who'd like to be paying, and the community of content providers that I have some faint aspirations of joining) is an infrastructure that makes it very quick and easy mechanically and also fully socially acceptable and economically useful to make small, but still non-zero, donations in response to stuff we like. The problem is that I have enough motivation to bounce some ideas around in my head or over a beer with someone else but not nearly enough to write up a business case or actually crank out software.