Mail a note to a stranger from faraway hotels (an experiment)

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I've started an experiment with a friend, consisting of sending a note to a complete stranger whenever I'm in a hotel abroad.
The rules are:
-the note should simply say "Wish you were here"
-it should be written on the hotel's stationary
-the note should always be sent to the same person

Pictures of the note should be posted on this blog: http://wishyouwerehere2006.blogspot.com/
(in order not to flood the selected stranger's mailbox and to preserve his privacy, the adress on the pictured enveloppes will not correspond to the actual person the notes are being sent to)

Anyone interested?

― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Friday, 28 April 2006 08:07 (twenty years ago)

i don't understand the third rule, how many notes are you sending out from one hotel.

And how do you select a stranger?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 28 April 2006 08:16 (twenty years ago)

Only one note from one hotel, but I meant that from one hotel to the next, you should always send it to the same person. Selection of the stranger should be completely random (in my case, I looked up a common name in an online phonebook)

― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Friday, 28 April 2006 08:20 (twenty years ago)

I did this with Valentine cards for a few years - I would buy a fairly innocuous card and send it to a random person from the phone book - until I told my friends and they gave me a hard time about it, so I stopped. Their argument was that I could be seriously messing with someone's head, or with someone's relationships. Unknown post, my friends reckoned, could be kind of... frightening?

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 28 April 2006 10:02 (twenty years ago)

yes i thought of that, but on the other hand this seems fairly innocuous

― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Friday, 28 April 2006 11:20 (twenty years ago)

It seems weird to me. I think it would kind of cause anyone to stop and wonder if they were getting postcards from a stranger. I wouldn't do it.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 28 April 2006 13:54 (twenty years ago)

I actually got a random postcard about ten years ago. Someone vacationing in Europe sent it, writing about the area they were in at the time. It had a sort of "wish you were here, whoever you are" theme. Didn't cause any trouble and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

― patita (patita), Friday, 28 April 2006 15:59 (twenty years ago)

Actually I think it might be better to actually write in the postcard the fact that you selected the person at random and to explain to them your project. That would put people at ease. Just getting a random postcard that says "Wish you were here" might be kind of disconcerting.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 28 April 2006 16:10 (twenty years ago)

send them a postcard with a PGP encrypted message on it:

http://www.shac.net/pgp/images/SendMessage.jpg

― JW (ex machina), Friday, 28 April 2006 16:33 (twenty years ago)

An acquaintance of mine made a film in 96 or so with somewhat the same idea. He took 10 names out of the phone book for a small town in Nebraska, and 10 out of a phone book in a small Rhode Island town. Over the course of a year he sent maybe a dozen postcards to each person. I think the tone was a friendly 'you don't know me but I'm writing to you anyway.' After a year of writing, he announced that he was coming for a visit and would get in touch when he got to town. In Nebraska, he got a crazy-wide range of reactions: everything from a free breakfast to a place to stay to someone so freaked out that a stranger was writing them that they moved. And or course, over and over, he got the question of 'Why?' For that he didn't have much of an answer.

In Rhode Island most of the people had moved. That part was anticlimactic.

― jergins (jergins), Friday, 28 April 2006 16:34 (twenty years ago)

When I was five I put a lot of effort into an amazing letter with drawings and stories, and a threw a stamp on it and dropped it in the mailbox without writing an address thinking the mailman would just give it to whoever needed cheering up. I spent all day imagining how happy some stranger would be to get this wonderful letter. When I told this to my mom, she informed me it would just end up in the dead letter office. Disillusionment ahoy!

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 28 April 2006 18:15 (twenty years ago)

This reminds me of that flashmobby thing some people did with selecting a little local band and giving them the audience of their lives by all turning up, cheering madly, requesting songs etc.

Can anyone point me to the website that described the whole thing?

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 28 April 2006 18:25 (twenty years ago)

Improv Everywhere -- Mission: Best Gig Ever

― xero (xero), Saturday, 29 April 2006 01:13 (twenty years ago)

That's one of the greatest and most uplifting, life-affirming pranks I've ever heard of.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Saturday, 29 April 2006 04:55 (twenty years ago)

(the band thing, I mean, not the notes)

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Saturday, 29 April 2006 04:55 (twenty years ago)

this idea is pretty cuet from this POV, but i think if i actually received random postcards, i'd be kinda freaked out.

― teh_kit has 18 friends (g-kit), Saturday, 29 April 2006 10:55 (twenty years ago)

I would sure love to participate, but I rarely go outside the dix-huitième...

― snowballing (snowballing), Saturday, 29 April 2006 15:02 (twenty years ago)

That Improv Mission crowd seem like a more benevolent version of Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace.

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 29 April 2006 15:05 (twenty years ago)

Hey, I just found six addresses for you all to use:

1.)Bud Muchiando
235 Oakridge Dr.
Daly City, CA 94014, USA

2.) Brian McKeon
1101 County Route 12
Pennellville, NY 13132, USA

3.) Terry Joe Sundwall
269 Park Ave # 1
Rochester, NY 14607, USA

4.)Brett Kerkman
4408 Carter ave Unit2
Cincinnati Ohio 45212, USA

5.)Justin Saldivar
6427 s. Hildreth ave
Tucson, AZ 85746, USA

6.) T. Dunn
722 Hopital Rd.
Dawson Springs, Ky 42408,USA

Courtesy of the How to make a quick buck? Your tips thread.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Saturday, 29 April 2006 18:57 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Hmmm, I stopped doing this when after googling the guy I was writing to, I found his obituary. It appears he was a relatively known sculptor.

― baaderonixx, Friday, 8 June 2007 08:23 (nineteen years ago)

yes fab, I suppose it is always best to google the person's name before attempting this kind of stunt.

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 8 June 2007 08:32 (nineteen years ago)

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