The Ideas Book

People only ever post success stories on LinkedIn it can make it feel like you’re the only one in the world not succeeding, so you post every little success you have, and thus the circle turns. I’m sure everyone on there feels like they’re not-as-successful-as-the-next-guy/gal.

This combined with this horrible story that a girl posted a poll on social media whether she should do herself in and the faceless internet citizens say “yes” and she did. Fuck you internet.

So this brought me to two ideas.

Vulnerable. This is a social media site dedicated to those who are feeling vulnerable and it is ruthlessly moderated for those who harbour ill will. The idea is that people come and sign up and get some support and stick around to support others that are going through that. It’s extreme in it’s policies, not even “hey look at my before and after, I’ve lost heaps of weight” is allowed because it makes others feel so shit.

Duality. This is a take on facebook where essentially each sign up has two “selves”. You’ve got your sunny side, and your dark side. You can choose to switch modes between the two, but the two sides don’t cross. No dark material is on the sunny side, and vice versa. I don’t know. It’s a kernel of an idea. Perhaps add the Vulnerable mode into that, so that Vulnerable people can’t see the dark side or the light side.

Like specific walled gardens for specific emotional states, but with a mental health sort of focus.

Kids these days. They don’t appreciate the need to work to get things. You plug a TV in and you can just turn it on. You turn the tap on, water comes out. It’s all free.

Kids also love TV. They can’t get enough. And so I’d like to propose that we develop a set of small exercise bikes that can be connected to a TV. If the kids want to watch TV, they can bloody power the thing.

The idea here is to give them a feeling for what it means to work for your reward. They want to watch TV? Well they have to put the effort in. And then if one of them is slacking off, the others will get cranky. They’ll have to be a team, or work out their differences, or nobody gets to watch TV.

As a side benefit they’ll get fit, and they won’t be able to sit there and watch TV for hours and hours because they’ll get too tired.

Are you embarrassed by your flatulence? The fart silencer can help!

There are several products in our range:

• Sound deadening foam you sit between your butt cheeks which stops them from flopping together (which is what is making that brrrrrt noise). The noise is trapped in the open cell foam, and the smell seeps out over time instead of being jettisoned directly into the atmosphere.
• A phone app that is always listening. It’s in your pocket, it hears a ripper fart, and it just takes the sound, replays it, and fades it into a song so that it sounds like it’s the start of your ring tone.

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This is inspired by an article about (terminally ill?) people getting put in an MRI machine after taking LSD (in scientific conditions/dosages) and listening to guided meditation.

Essentially they a bunch of them listed this study as one of the most profound experiences of their life.

While trying to find this article I found mention of underground lsd guides.

My idea is to essentially create these VR experiences such that someone at home can take a guided, deeply spiritual trip. Perhaps the surreal nature of VR can invoke the same mechanics as LSD. Or at least make it so that lower doses can be used.

Like how much of it can you placebo? Lets say you play a game, and it’s a first person adventure game, and then someone in the game gives you a mushroom, and you eat it. The game starts to take on that surreal visual quality. Is that enough to sort of trick your brain into thinking you’re tripping? Perhaps if you’ve tripped before it can induce that state again.

Essentially this is built around trip planning, and who of your ol’ pals is going to be where. You meet some people in a caravan park in Bowen, they friend you, and now when they plan their next trip it can use their location and/or plans to help you meet up.

Like Corn Flakes, but intentionally u shaped such that when you’re pouring milk onto your cereal it redirects the milk up, out, and onto the table next to your bowl. Pretty much coming up with the perfect shape that will give the highest probability of making sure as little milk makes it into your bowl as possible.

Sell as a novelty 🙂

I was at a doctors surgery and noticed the bulk of the walking frame of one of the elderly patrons, and the difficulty navigating around with it. Can we make a single pole with a single wheel at the bottom, that does it’s darndest to stay upright when you lean on it. Perhaps it has to be two wheels, similar to a segway, but the point is that we’re trying to use technology to make the walking frame less bulky.

In saying this, there are two additional benefits of walking frames: One, the elderly can sitdown anywhere they like. Two, they can sit down in a waiting room and put their Sudoku on the seat of the frame.