> Yeah I can just log out and scroll HN, but there's a enough friction to that, that it doesn't really happen very often.
You can make sure the friction is high by having your password be something difficult to remember, written down on a note, and keeping that note somewhere "out of reach".
Doesn't really matter if you talk shit online, it's just passive aggressive pressure relief. What matters is you not being able to effectively protest or do anything about it.
Honestly this feels like a psyop. Like it's just meant to discourage people from wanting to do outdoors stuff together or going out into nature in general.
I've seen a lot of sensationalist articles lately about getting abandoned on hikes. A tiktok got shared to me about it, just some woman ranting in a touristy outdoors area about how she got ditched. Whose to say that even really happened? Almost certainly just pure engagement bait that's being spun into a "trend".
Basically arbitraging human imagination. People love coming up with fantastical concepts because they get attention, but the more exciting a market is, the less likely it is to actually happen. Reality is usually boring.
Everyone is saying how awful and terrible this is, but I thought it was quite fascinating.
I showed it some pictures of when I was in a bad headspace and it successfully associated me with introversion, procrastination, isolation, one picture it said an interest of mine was stealing, which was accurate at that time in my youth.
The tech exists and has existed forever, as creepy as it is, I'd rather it be public and accessible than not.
The software scales just fine, the initial user acquisition doesn't. That's literally the premise of the PG essay I quoted.
But thanks for the pedantic dictionary check on what a VC will fund. Super helpful contribution to a conversation about whether an idea is actually useful to human beings. Not all of us are building just to beg for angel money.
I look for a "social friction" moat. If an idea can be executed entirely from behind a keyboard, the competition is infinite. But if it requires me to sweat, do meatspace socializing, and actually walk into a physical building to hand people a solution, competition drops to near zero.
The literal application of "do things that don't scale."
Beyond that, I look for ROI besides wealth. Even if it doesn't blow up in popularity will it still improve my life if just a few adopt it/appreciate it?
All it takes is one person to go "I did this" and then the others have a good troll/joke to use. Doesn't take a lot of effort and people were more outgoing back then.