Cheat Neutral Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Nov 19 2009

Location: 

Online

Cheat Neutral satirizes the carbon offset model by offering people the opportunity to pay someone else not to cheat on their partner in order to neutralize their own infidelity. Cheatneutral allows you to pay £2.50 to carry on cheating while funding “monogamy-boosting offset projects”.

As the (now apparently defunct) website explained: "When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheat Neutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and not cheat. This neutralizes the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience."

For those who are single, monogamous or celibate, they can still “get paid for not getting laid” if they register to become a Cheatneutral offset project. “All you have to do is agree to stay monogamous or single - and if we match you with a suitable cheater, you’ll get paid to neutralise their cheating.”

The project aimed to draw attention as well to the way companies may use the carbon offset model to greenwash their own images. Christian Hunt and Alex Randall, the creators of the action, filmed interactions with passersby on the street who usually agreed that it was a ridiculous idea. The two appeared on a few talk shows and radio shows defending the idea, and generated a good deal of interest in the press.

Posted by Molly on

Staff rating: 

6
As author notes, it's unclear (and perhaps unknowable) whether it resulted in change, but the practitioners chose a very effective analogy to ridicule the idea of carbon offsetting, and received a great deal of of publicity for it. It's only "raising awareness," but it was a LOT of awareness.

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Notes

The project generated a lot of attention and press, although whether there was any concrete impact on changing the offset model is unclear.