Description
BIFFUD Project Application
As described in section 11.11.B of the BIFFUD Corporate Bylaws I (we) hereby invoke my (our) rights as a (a) sentient being(s) who has (have) not uploaded their mind(s) to the cloud for consideration of this project application by the BIFFUD Hive Mind. With this application I (we) submit my (our) interest in becoming a (a) Member(s) of BIFFUD and having this project supported and adored by all who can 🤔.
Project Information
- Project Name: Swipe Stuff
- Project Haiku:
i like to swipe right
and also random garbage
bezos take my cash
- Project Analogy: Tinder, but for buying things on Amazon
Project Description
What is your project? What is the goal?
Amazon and Tinder have four things in common: they each offer 1) an endless supply of 2) things you don't need but 3) will seek out anyway because you believe consumption will make you feel less lonely and yet you inevitably 4) regret your decision the next morning.
Shouldn't they share the same interface?
Why not bring the casual, impulsive dismissiveness/acquisition of people to the realm of objects by making it possible to swipe your way through everything on Amazon? Load our app and be presented with a randomly sorted list of things that are available to buy on Amazon (possibly subject to certain minimum/maximum price restrictions as analogue to age, or categories as analogue to gender). Swipe left for the next object that you didn't know you needed, swipe right to instantly Prime it right to your house.
There are a few prior art inspirations for this project, which has been sitting in an evernote folder I have for bad ideas since September 2014:
- Darius Kazemi's random amazon shopping bot
- Canopy, which bills itself as "Aamzon, curated" (note: THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE WANT)
- dating apps, which, lol
Bylaw Questions
How is this project a bad idea?
Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more money and this will probably give him some. Also probably will have negative environmental externalities.
If this project were a D&D Character, what alignment would it be and why?
Alignment:
Because it is a fount of random garbage.
Where are the lulz?
As Darius' bot proved, there are a lot of weird things on Amazon, and since this app won't (indeed, mustn't) privilege highly-rated or otherwise recommended items, it will increase the likelihood that people stumble across them.
(You can imagine a web-based version that does the same thing too, which is kind of nice).
How does this project make people 🤔 (thinking face emoji)?
You did this to yourself.
[Any arbitrary set list of objects] disrupts being, spilling a heap of unwelcome and incoherent crap at the foot of the reader. In doing so, a tiny part of the expanding universe is revealed through cataloging. Ontographical cataloging hones a virtue: the abandonment of anthropocentric narrative coherence in favor of worldly detail...Such is the ontographical project, to draw attention to the countless things that litter our world unseen.
We must not confuse the values of the design of objects for human use, such as doors, toasters, and computers, with the nature of the world itself. An ontograph is a crowd, not a cellular automaton that might describe its emergent operation. An ontograph is a landfill, not a Japanese garden. It shows how much rather than how little exists simultaneously, suspended in the dense meanwhile of being.
- Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology
Who is Involved?
Sentient Being
- Name: Chris 'Petey' "Peter" "The Petersterater" Peterson
- Twitter: peteyreplies
- Github ID: peteyreplies
- Skillz: none to speak of
- Project role / expectations: unhelpful and low
- Project stake: I had this idea 4 years ago and don't know what else to do with it
Bot Overlord
- Statement of Purpose:
Who will be the project's Comptroller?
I don't know what this means.
Is it realistic to implement through BIFFUD?
I think so?
Next Steps
Please attend the next scheduled BIFFUD plotting session to plead your case.
This issue will be updated with application status and next steps.