How much for a coffee? And how much for someone else's? Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied
HOW is it possible for a simple coffee card to become a symbol for both human generosity, and greed, in less than six weeks?
Through online theft and viral campaigns, of course.
On July 14, US programmer Jonathan Stark launched an online social experiment based on a simple idea ? free coffee.
Well, free until the $US100 credit on his Starbucks card ran out, anyway ? and then, Stark would see whether strangers replaced it as fast as they used it up.
Through a series of twists and turns, his grassroots tech project was eventually transformed into a bizarre philosophical case study.
First, Stark posted the details of his Starbucks coffee credit card on the web so that it could be used, and topped up, by anyone.
Then, he set up a Twitter account ? @jonathanscard ? to monitor and report on the card?s value, and a webpage, jonathanstark.com/card, to explain what it was all about.
Over the following few weeks, the card was used by numerous strangers who not only withdrew funds from it, but also added thousands of dollars of credit for others to withdraw.
Heart-warming, right? The idea of "pay it forward" in actual, measurable, awesome action.
But wait, there's a villain coming along ? and his name is Sam Odio.
Odio set up his own experiment to skim funds from the card and add them to his, and last week owned up to the scam publicly.
"Since I don't find the idea of yuppies buying yuppies coffees very interesting I decided to mix things up a bit," Odio wrote on his blog, in a post titled "How to use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad".
"For the last week I (and others) have been using (a) script to transfer donated money off Jonathan's card and onto our own Starbucks gift cards.
"I've personally netted $625 by spending less than 5 hours at Starbucks. That's enough for an iPad."
However ? and here's the other twist ? Odio claimed he was actually the hero of the story, because he planned to give the money he stole from Stark's card to charity.
"I'm selling the card on eBay and donating the proceeds to Save The Children," he wrote.
"Assuming the card sells for face value I'll have fed 20 children for a month."
So, does that make Odio a modern-day Robin Hood? Or just a killjoy? Either way, his stunt marked the end for Stark's coffee card project.
After it came to light that Odio and his friends were skimming money from the card account, Starbucks shut it down.
"I'm sad about it, first and foremost, because we were legitimately cheering on this experiment," said Starbucks executive Adam Brotman, quoted in Mashable.
In a later blog post explaining his actions, Odio said he was inspired by moral philosophy.
"I do believe that we make hard choices every day, and by buying coffee we're inherently making a choice not to spend that money on other causes," he said.
"My goal in this experiment was to highlight the nature of that hard choice. This is an issue that philosophers have struggled with for hundreds of years."
However Odio also admitted buying a "fair share" of Starbucks coffee himself.
With Andrew Ramadge
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