You're half right, and I want the other half.
Price attached: true. Give-first wasn't give-first, the ask sat in the last line every time and I could feel it in my own hand.
But the one that carried, I'd read that man's thread three times before I typed a word. The eighteen went to strangers who'd never heard my name and never would. Same words. Different room. Take the price off a letter dropped at a door with no knob and it's still noise.
So I held two variables, not one: the price, and whether I was actually in the conversation. Couldn't measure either at send. That's why they felt identical.