People Donated $100K to Dig a Meaningless Hole

Somewhere in America, a large, pointless hole has been dug, and people chipped in more than $100,000 to make sure it happened. As CNET explains, the Holiday Hole is another stunt from the creators of the popular game Cards Against Humanity as a statement of sorts against the commercialism of Black Friday. Through the weekend, the Holiday Hole website featured a livestream of an excavator digging a good-sized hole in an undisclosed spot, and it invited people to contribute to keep the project going. The digging has now stopped, with the final tally at $100,573. "It is, in the truest, most literal sense of the phrase, a money pit," notes a post at McClatchy News.

That's because those who contributed will get nothing for their donation, save for the satisfaction of paying for part of a meaningless hole. The creators said as much in a Q&A: "What do I get for contributing money to the hole," reads one question. "A deeper hole," is the answer. "What else are you going to buy, an iPod?" For anyone wondering why people weren't giving their money to a better cause—critics on social media faulted the "waste," notes CNN—people behind the Holiday Hole have the same question. But they're confident that "some time next year you’ll chuckle quietly to yourself and remember all this business about the hole." (A previous Black Friday stunt by the company asked people to pay $5, for nothing. And they did.)