Payment-required Memes

HTTP 402 "Payment Required" has been reserved since 1997 but never actually implemented. It's been sitting there for decades like that gym membership you keep meaning to use. Now someone's finally suggesting we dust it off to nickel-and-dime users one cent per download. The cat rolling in cash perfectly captures how every SaaS founder would react to this becoming standard. Forget subscriptions—imagine charging micropayments for every API call, every download, every breath your users take. It's the ultimate monetization fantasy. Fun fact: HTTP 402 was originally intended for digital payment systems but got shelved because nobody could agree on how to implement it. Turns out the real payment required was the standards committee meetings we attended along the way.