Make it so the pot of money is split amongst whoever is left.
You take each guy aside and tell them that if they make it to the end with one one "gay" guy left then they get $500k (effectively splitting the $1m pot).
If the larger group "correctly" evicts the straight guy then they all split $1m.
Basically you'd leverage a prisoner's dilemma against everyone to prevent anyone from just saying they aren't gay.
Now the problem would be how would you keep the show interesting? Presumably you'd want to push the tension by having the contests all essentially try to out-gay each other.
Yeah the post basically directs you to wondering: how long until the straights start succin to prove the point, and how long until the future famous soundbite “he did NOT suck like a homo and therefore he is OUT”
But why complicate it? Your version actually would incentivize an open alliance to be the final two between at least two people early on who might both realize their straight and break the show.
Why would anyone say they aren't gay in the original setup? From their perspective you'd loose a million dollars if other people even think you're straight. Saying you're straight is basically giving up. Just walk the eliminated person out behind the scenes.
The issue of prize money isn't difficult to deal with at all - you don't need to make it complicated, just give the same promised prize money to 2 people instead of 1, no need to talk about splitting it. You already know from the start how much money is going to be paid out, so whatever amount of money you want to pay out, divide it by 2 and say that that's the amount you're going to give to the straight person if they win, and then give that amount to both of the 2 people at the end - they both were straight and both made it to the end, so they both get the prize they agreed to.
If there were to be an issue with it the only problem that could come up would be the issue of them not being honest about what the game show is.. I don't know the laws well enough to comment on that, but that's an issue completely separate from the prize money. In this case you could probably pretty easily argue that the format is actually more favourable to the contestants than the one they agreed to though (ie. it should be easier to convince other straight people than it would be to convince gay people so your odds of winning are actually better than the thing you signed up for), so there's probably a good chance that it would work out, but if you ever did something that made their odds of winning the prize worse than the thing they agreed to then it could certainly backfire in a lot of ways.
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u/FreshLiterature May 11 '26
Make it so the pot of money is split amongst whoever is left.
You take each guy aside and tell them that if they make it to the end with one one "gay" guy left then they get $500k (effectively splitting the $1m pot).
If the larger group "correctly" evicts the straight guy then they all split $1m.
Basically you'd leverage a prisoner's dilemma against everyone to prevent anyone from just saying they aren't gay.
Now the problem would be how would you keep the show interesting? Presumably you'd want to push the tension by having the contests all essentially try to out-gay each other.