Flyers in the rain
They printed 80 tracked QR flyers and went out at 6:30pm to hand them out and find users, into a cold Chía drizzle that had emptied the park. It was rough. Julia felt rejected; on the street you're on the other side of the coin from the pamphleteers you usually wave off, and the interaction lives in the milliseconds, so her accent, a beat's hesitation in how to say it, and the person is already gone. Juan expected 80% of people to be interested in learning a language and got the opposite: only about 20% didn't say no. Two things kept him going. The 'é pra teu bem' meme (it's for your own good): a language is a huge life advantage, so anchor to the value you're offering and the fear of bothering people shrinks. And the TrackNYC analogy: a man who literally gives away gold and cash on the street still gets ignored by roughly 80% of passersby, so if even free money is ignored, a stranger with a flyer can't take rejection personally.
// trace: where this idea came from
- ↳ video diary @ 10:41 (rechazada; en la calle estás del otro lado de la moneda, del panfletero)
- ↳ video diary @ 13:21 (esperaba 80% interesados en idiomas, fue lo contrario, solo 20%)
- ↳ video diary @ 18:36 (TrackNYC regala oro en la calle y aun así el 80% lo ignora)
- ↳ Entry 260-1: Eighty thousand views on Reddit (la misma cacería de usuarios que en Reddit sí funcionó)
They printed eighty tracked QR flyers and went out at 6:30pm to hand them out and hunt for users, into a cold Chía drizzle that had emptied the park. It was rough. Julia felt rejected, and the honest read is that it’s hard to grab a stranger’s attention on the street, where you’re suddenly on the other side of the coin from the pamphleteers you yourself wave off, “no, no, gracias” ▸ 10:41. The interaction lives in milliseconds: her accent, a beat’s hesitation in how to phrase it, the right tone missed, and the person is already three kilometers ahead. Juan expected 80% of the people they approached to be interested in learning a language and got the opposite, only about 20% didn’t flatly say no ▸ 13:21.
si al que regala oro en la calle lo ignora el 80%, ¿qué nos queda? →
Two things kept him going. One is the Brazilian meme “é pra teu bem”, it’s for your own good, the mother hitting the kid “so you don’t become a monster”: a language is a huge advantage in life, English above all, so if you anchor to the value you’re actually offering, the fear of bothering people shrinks, because nobody else will do it for you. The other is a jeweler he’d been watching, TrackNYC, who literally walks the streets giving away gold and cash, thousands of dollars, watches, and still gets ignored by roughly 80% of passersby ▸ 18:36. If even a man handing out free money is ignored, a stranger with a flyer can’t take the rejection personally, and the channel that actually converted was Reddit anyway, where the algorithm finds the interested ones for you…
// continued in
no entry has continued this idea yet: the arc is still open