PayPal’s “Do Stuff For Money” Could Be Strangest Web Service of All Time

As a major print and online publication, we get a lot of PR pitches every day, which range from the highly relevant (mobile tech) to the mostly relevant (technology in general, new Web sites) to the completely off-topic. For some reason, I’m the one on staff who keeps getting the most strange stuff. A few weeks ago it was “interview opportunity: man drinks snake venom to experience the hereafter” and, on a regular basis, it’s country music pitches like “Oak Ridge Boys Announce New Tour Dates” or “Ronnie Milsap Reveals Personal Journey.”

Today, I got a pitch that was relevant, but strange. PayPal, everyone’s favorite way of making payments online, has launched a new site called Do Stuff for Money.  The site lets users send their friends e-mail or Facebook requests to “do stuff” in exchange for cash. If your friend accepts a request, you get e-mailed back a link to pay her directly via PayPal.

In a blog post introducing the service, PayPal Marketing Director Heinz Waelchli writes:

For those that just want to have a little fun with friends, you can also send “prank” offers  that will post on Facebook. What’s the most outrageous thing you can get people to do? Challenge your friend Phil to grow a month-long mustache or convince your colleague Cindy to profess her undying love to the boss. The possibilities are endless.

Heinz, are we supposed to be laughing with or at you? The Do Stuff for Money home page has a real-time list of actual user requests. It’s like a twitter feed of immature schoolyard dares. Here are some of our favorites:

Kat offered Willy $18.00 to “Be a back up singer in my Boyz to Men cover band”

Joe offered Bob $50.00 to “Spill your coffee on Dave in our next meeting”

lex offered jean $1.00 to “in exchange for love”

CHAD offered BERNIE $80.00 to “LEAVE THAT LOSER AND COME BACK TO ME”

Keith offered QQ $5.00 to “PIck up wild cat terds and keep Spuddy’s pool emptied every night”

Great, just what we need – Jackass for the social networking crowd! Of course, the next logical feature PayPal should add is allowing anyone on the Internet to accept these wild dares, not just the friend you send it to. Soon, we’ll be sending five dollars to a grandmother in Detroit or a teenager in Switzerland who claims to have picked up wild cat turds in response to our request.

Better still is the potential for criminal activity. The next Pamela Smart can use Do Stuff for Money to cajole her students into murdering her husband and then claim she wasn’t serious by saying  “oh, I thought the whole site was a joke.”