However, you treat your servants and promotional agents with a considerable amount of disrespect/disdain and many have grown to resent you.
One day you are confronted by a promotional agent of yours called Fred. Fred shows to you that he has somehow acquired copies of a tape (that you didn’t even know existed); the tape visually shows the following incident:
5 years ago you walked up to a powerful film exec and “offered yourself up” to get a major movie role. The film exec said Deal. The tape that Fred has only shows you talking to the exec and shamelessly offering this deal. In real life you never followed through with it (later on you backed out) but the tape gives a different impression. In the tape, you aggressively pursue/push for the deal while he looks hesitant.
Fred tells you that he’s pretty sure that if the tape is released, your reputation would be destroyed. You silently agree with his assessment.
Fred then tries to blackmail you. The tape can stay a secret but only if you agree to his terms. His terms are as follows:
1. Fire all other promotional agents, he’s the only one now (an exclusive contract for you is worth a small fortune)
2. You have to sign a contract with him in which you give him 75 percent of all of your wealth and 75 percent of all of your future earnings from absolutely all sources of income (he has a copy of this contract right here with him)
Assume that in this scenario, the contract is 100 percent enforceable, permanent, and cannot be undone ever.
You protest and threaten to call the police but a smug Fred says “it’s your funeral.” He’s made arrangements so that if anything happens to him, his shadow network will release the tape all over the internet.
He turns to leave and says the tapes are coming out right now unless you make the deal, agree to his terms, and sign the Contract on the table. Assume that the existence of the contract can be kept from the public eye while remaining enforced.
You panic. If you sign, you will be milked and ruined financially (and massively humiliated on a personal level).
But if you don’t, the tape would be released, your reputation, career, and respect would go out of the window. Your film roles would get cancelled and you’d be damaged goods. No one would believe you never actually carried through with the deal and the memes of you being a “whore” would spread.
What do you do? Do you sign or not sign? Why?
Assume that your only two options in this scenario are to either agree to Fred’s terms or say no and roll the dice. However, assume there is literally no time to stop Fred or to “get ahead” of the release. You must choose for this dilemma, whether it’s more important to keep your destructive secret or to not “lose” to Fred.
Also, assume Fred cannot/will not be convicted of anything in this scenario because strange laws privilege/promote the release of truthful information as an absolute defense in this setting.
Also, the hypothetical is set in a world where, while the laws may seem strange, the public is for the most part content/apathetic with the status quo. As such, it isn’t practical to start, expect, or plan for a revolution (this is a clarification to maintain the spirit of the dilemma).
The scenario also assumes that the government, public opinion (global), and the studio exec/media system all have very conservative, anti-sex, anti-whore points of view. As such, the net effect of the release of the tape is overwhelmingly detrimental.
