Launching the $10,000 Existential Hope Meme Prize

By elte @ 2025-09-24T14:59 (+21)

Metaphors and short explanations have a large influence on how we think. 

But most of our common reference points lean dystopian: P(doom), the paperclip maximizer, Black Mirror, Brave New World, 1984, the list goes on. Where are the equally compelling ones for positive futures; abundant clean energy, infinite knowledge, no infectious disease, no poverty, solved aging, effective global coordination?

There has been some valuable recent work on this, such as the Better Futures series by Will MacAskill and Fin Moorhouse, which explores how to think more seriously about positive trajectories. Still, there’s a lot of space left for cultural references that can stick as easily as the dystopian ones.

As one small step toward filling this gap, we are launching the Existential Hope Meme Prize offering $10,000 for the best meme that conveys a hopeful vision of the future.

This project was first suggested at Vision Weekend Europe 2024. Much thanks to Ben Cumming and Jan Kulveit for this idea. 

Details and submissions here: existentialhope.com/existential-hope-meme-prize

We’d appreciate your help spreading the word, and of course, if you make memes yourself we’d love to see your submissions!

Ben Stevenson @ 2025-09-24T16:00 (+10)

This is not a good use of money. Maybe $100 for this, and the rest can save children or animals?

Larks @ 2025-09-25T01:02 (+27)

This line of reasoning seems very shortsighted to me. Historically intellectual innovation, popularization and outreach have sometimes yielded extremely high returns; it can be prudent to invest rather than consuming all your seed corn immediately. It could be a bad investment, but the mere counterfactual possibility of donating to AMF doesn't automatically discredit anything upstream.

Timothy Chan @ 2025-09-24T16:23 (+15)

$10,000 seems reasonable.

A base rate of ~(1/number of top entries) for the chance of winning $100 isn't going to motivate high effort tweets.

titotal @ 2025-09-24T17:05 (+2)

One hundred dollars for a single tweet is a huge reward when you compare it to the amount of effort that goes into it, and would have no trouble motivating plenty of people. 

Ten thousand dollars for a tweet is outrageously high, and could end up as another PR disaster. 

Larks @ 2025-09-25T00:58 (+30)

One hundred dollars for a single tweet is a huge reward when you compare it to the amount of effort that goes into it

This seems misleading and false? 

  • It is not $100 in expectation, you have to divide by the number of entrants.
  • The ask is for a meme comparable to P(doom) or 1984, not for a random tweet. Tweets can express memes but the two are very different and the latter is much more valuable.
  • Ideally we should expect the winning entry to take many hours of work.
    • If someone spent an entire year and managed to produce a cultural reference of similar significance to 1984 I would consider this a very well spent year.
  • PR firms are typically paid much more than this.
NickLaing @ 2025-09-27T10:55 (+2)

I agree with this comment in general, and think $100 would be a relatively small amount. For both EV and PR reasons though, I would think $1000ish would be reasonable.

If we were looking for PR firms to compete for a logo or a brand or similar then 10k might make sense, or even more. But the competition is labeled as a "Meme" prize which signals to me at least rougher, lower effort work with less longevity and sticking power than a fun and thought-provoking meme.

I really doubt a competition with any prize pool has more than a 5% chance of producing a meme with close to the strength of p(doom) or 1984, but am happy to be pointed to examples which might show otherwise.

NickLaing @ 2025-09-24T18:28 (+8)

yep potential change of PR disaster was my first thought here. 500 dollars or even 1000 would be safe on the PR front i think, and i doubt there is much to be gained in the quality meme to front between offering 1k or 10k

Patrick Hoang @ 2025-09-24T20:06 (+1)

The format can also be a video or an image or another meme format.


The high $10000 value can bring in non-EA marketing or meme professionals, and I’m not sure how to feel about that if they’re extrinsic motivated.

Patrick Hoang @ 2025-09-25T01:03 (+7)

If you still want to spend the whole $10,000 cash amount to get attention without having fallout you can also restrict the money to be donated to a charity of the winner’s choice. If the winner is an EA, it is more than likely that the money would go to an EA charity.

Yetty @ 2025-09-24T23:00 (+5)

Why not split the prize money over  a range of winners ( like the best 20 memes).

Chiastic Slide @ 2025-09-24T20:43 (+1)

I agree with most folks here that this is a pretty poor allocation of resources. However, ignoring all that and thinking about the task, I would say that the 'indomitable human spirit' trend from a while back is probably the best example of what is being looked for. If you're going to be forcing a meme it's probably best to just rehash that.