basically, here's what happened:
i started with zero coins. because of my rolename, i thought i couldnt bid, aka i didnt think id have any coins, and thought i was an outlier. so i was expecting to have no coins. i asked tim for my coin balance, got confirmation i had zero. this further made me think i was an outlier, as it seemed like tim forgot to tell my balance because i had none unlike everyone else.
notty was asking me to share whether my coin balance was above or below average (which i mean, was an impossible question for anybody who didnt know what the average coin balance was. i was assuming that i was an outlier at 0, and that everyone else had more, so nottys questioning made me think they probably were a role that checked my coin balance, saw i had zero, made the same assumption that i did that this would be an outlier (since this is a bidding game, so surely most/some town would start with coins), and believed i made this assumption, and therefore believed that from my pov i knew i had less than average, and so wanted to trap me into possibly lying about that as scum and catching me out.
however, i didnt want to give any indication for how many coins i might have, because i didnt want mafia to know i had barely any coins (which wouldve been clear if i said i had less than average because the only way id know i had less than average is if i had zero, assuming other town had coins, which i assumed).
then, stranger and notty said this:
Well, I've got nothing to lose. Let's spice things up.
I am town-aligned.
I have exactly zero coins right now.
Essentially proves why Inf dodging the question is suspicious to all fellow town
this told me that notty knew town had zero coins, and believed other town knew that too. because otherwise her post here doesnt make sense (unless it was a prank, in which case, i fell for it). which made me think that maybe all town got told 'all town has zero coins' except for me since i already thought maybe tim messed up my role pm by forgetting to give me a coin balance earlier, so i didnt feel it was unlikely i was out of the loop, so i decided to claim zero.
in doing so, i claimed less than average, just thinking zero = less than average, then remembered 'oh wait if all town has zero im not less, im exactly average', so corrected myself.
then notty comes on and is like 'how could you have less than 0 when the average is 0??!?!?', alisha is like '^^ yeah!!!' and stranger says something similar, so im like ok oh dear all town got told that town have zero coins, tim messed my role pm up by accident, ive gotta claim my story to clear it up a bit
so then i did
the end