2895: Treasure Chests

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Treasure Chests

Title text: [earlier] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan."

Explanation

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This comic features Black Hat planning, and successfully implenting, a way to create significant business for "our lawn care company" (although who is included remains unclear), albeit in an extremely unethical and likely illegal manner which is very much congruent with Black Hat's character of being a 'classhole'. The first step of the plan that is laid out is to create the conditions for a large number of lawns all over a certain town to be dug out, via a combination of a large potential reward for digging up a lawn (in this case, a chest with $1000 in the form of small silver and gold coins), the large element of chance when digging up lawns requiring many lawns to be dug up by burying only 3 chests aroud unindentified lawns around town, and inticing significant participation in Black Hat's scheme by filming the burial of the chests and posting the videos. Interesting, in the next paragraph of Black Hat's plan, he stated that he would post said videos next year. This is a particularly interesting caveat given the fact that this comic was only posted on Feb 16, 2024, which is quite early into 2024. The most likely explanation is that this comic takes place in a much different time that the date of publishing, hence making the time Black Hat would need to wait to post the videos much earlier/later (although later would create more questions than answers) than the date of the comic would suggest. Another is that Black Hat, is in fact, intentionally delaying the posting of the videos to create a situation where some of the chests could have been secretly taken by someone before the posting of the videos, resulting in a non-stop search (by digging up lawns, obviously) for unaccounted chests that are no longer there. The third paragraph reveals how Black Hat plans to create demand for "our lawn care company" via his scheme: With children, of course! Black Hat intends for children that live in the town where his scheme will take place in to see the videos that he posted, be lured by the vast treasures promised (given that Black Hat is targeting children, after all) and proceed to start inflitrating the lawns of homeowners all over the town with the goal of digging up the lawns for the treasure. The many homeowners who later soon find themselves with ruined lawns, would then proceed to contact Black Hat's lawn care company in order to fix the broken lawns, thus making Black Hat's business lots of money. In the comic's last paragraph, the proposal set out by Black Hat turned out to be VERY profitable. The title text shows how Black Hat, before sharing his proposal in this comic, saw a struggling business that made vintage-style handmade chests and found it to be very useful addition to his plan and presumably sought out their cooperation, likely with the promise of profits that would be made in Black Hat's scheme.

Transcript

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Discussion

Why would Black Hat want to wait a year to post the videos? --172.70.131.24 06:05, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

To let the grass grow and hide the disturbed soil. No idea what the explanation is talking about. 172.64.236.12 06:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, I don't know what this means: "This is a particularly interesting caveat given the fact that this comic was only posted on February 16, 2024, which is quite early into 2024. The most likely explanation is that this comic takes place at a much different time than the date of publishing, hence making the time Black Hat would need to wait to post the videos much earlier/later (although later would create more questions than answers) than the date of the comic would suggest." Since the caption says that Black Hat's plan was "extremely effective", presumably Black Hat announced his plan to his co-workers some time ago, then arranged to plant the treasure chests, then posted the videos, and after that the lawn care company started getting lots of customers. This plan could have taken place at any time since online videos became common; YouTube started in 2005, for example. Nothing here implies that Black Hat is only announcing his plan now; the opposite is true, since the caption indicates that his plan was indeed very successful. --172.69.7.177 06:23, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

It reminds me of the fuss created by On the Trail of the Golden Owl, and other puzzles of its ilk. Though spread across much more time and space than "a town, for as long as it takes for everyone in the town to get fed up with the whole thing (and discourage outsiders from coming along with their own spades)". Personally, I'd like to see what the next business is that Black Hat talks to (after the Chest company, then the Lawn company) to further monetise the resulting chaos. It could be a property security company, who would benefit from increased demands for patrolling guards alongside open-air security camera systems and other related equipment... 172.71.178.77 15:53, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

so many business opportunities: sell them shovels, "100% treasure chest-free lawn" certifications, lawn security cameras, security camera disabling equipment, useless dowsing rods, cheap metal detectors, barbed wire, stepladders... 172.69.91.125 19:05, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Added my interpretation that this is never going to be "OLCCo presents: the Treasure Hunt!". If everyone realises that the prankster(s) who set all this up had caused their troubles (forcing them to get lawn-care, or do more of it than they already would have done), then OLCCo itself would have problems. Actual customers would leave, potential customers would seek other contractors, many of these would consider going to the courts to claw back costs, other current lawn-carers would absorb all the created work, and further potential lawn-carers might even start offering their services, all off the back of the back-firing campaign. ... But if it's a guerilla 'campaign', dressed up as some random "troublesome and obscure philanthropist" then it drives demand for LC-services (for wwhich OLCCo may be 'coincidentally' well positioned to service, perhaps, happening to corner the market in some vital element or other insofar as manpower, tools or supplies). Handled well (and not being revealed), it'd be well worth 'treasure price'.
...which is not to say that Black Hat doesn't have any intention of spoiling all that, and profitting (financially or just 'for the lulz') from letting the cat out of the bag at some point. Or threatening to. But then there's possible layers and other possible layers to this scheme. 172.69.79.182 21:57, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

What makes anyone think that the chests stayed in the ground after the camera was turned off? I would immediately dig my treasure back up. SDSpivey (talk) 01:09, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

That'd be 'acceptable' BH behaviour, certainly. Prolong the hunt (for the ultimately unfindable). And not risk a trio of households saying "Hey, I was doing a little bit of digging work on my garden, thinking of putting in a rosebush, and... <clunk>" to the news cameras, ruining the whole scheme six months before the scheduled posting of the videos. But, mostly, the first. 172.71.178.184 16:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

My interpretation of the title text was rather different. Black Hat doesn't work for the lawn-care company. He's bringing this or a similar proposal to many different companies in order to sell lots of chests.162.158.159.133 01:47, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Same here. Black Hat seems to be selling a plan to the lawn-care company, but it turns out his plot to boost lawn care business is just part of a larger plot to boost vintage-style chest sales. And who knows what plot is behind the plot behind the plot? Black Hat certainly wouldn't care about chest producers' grievances if it weren't for some ulterior motive. Transgalactic (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems very obvious to me that if BH is actually saying "our" (as opposed to the narrator, describing the effect of BH's plan), it's only under a contractually-tied relationship. He's a marketeering/advertising consultant (or pertains to be!) who has approached at least two separate business concerns with an 'idea'. And I'm not sure the Explanation is saying otherwise (or wasn't, last time I checked). 172.71.178.184 16:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Black Hat thinks too small, tut tut Randall... Needs the Pigs In A Supermarket approach: videos of FOUR chests being buried, but dig up one right away off-camera. That way if the three chests are found too quickly (not damaging enough lawns), people will keep looking (probably more fervently) because they KNOW one chest is still out there. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:42, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Golden Tickety, indeed. It's as the existence is proven (at least one is revealed to be the real thing) but before the hope is over (the last example is known to be found) that the hype will be greatest, and thus the effectiveness of the more covert ploy to send people the way of the business that can paper over the resulting mess. 172.71.178.184 16:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue with the quantity of coins can be explained by considering the face value. 10000 pre-1965 dimes would take up a substantial amount of space. 162.158.158.232 (talk) 11:52, 19 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Regarding the use of pre-1965 dimes - these may have a £1000 total face value, but the silver content means they actually are worth about $1.70 each , so 10,000 of them would be a tasty $17,000. 172.70.85.127 (talk) 21:31, 22 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)