Startup? Slow down
I’ve got a great idea for a small business. It pushes all the right buttons for a true 21st century start up business. It’s internet based, it builds on-line communities and it’s about mental health. Basically, it’s ‘facebook’ for nutters.
The idea is to help neurotics and obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers. Let’s say you need to turn around sixty times before you leave the house. But you’re already running late and you can’t afford to spend the time spinning and then dizzily crashing about as you try to negotiate yourself out of the front door. No problem.
You leave the house, catch your bus, go to work…and log on to:
Nuroses-swap?
Nutter-exchange
Bonkerspace?
Haven’t quite decided on a name yet but, you log on and list your mania. Spinning around like a loon. That’s matched, by others on the site, to something equally as odd - say disposing of your gum wrapper in a certain way. So, you arrange for the gum guy to spin around and promise that the next time you throw away a gum wrapper, it will be folded to resemble a bird, or a wine glass, or an amusing approximation of a willy.
The positive benefits are obvious. The afflicted can get on with their lives, knowing that somewhere in the world, somebody else with a spare five minutes is hopping around, or compulsively reciting a poem, or buying ‘Catcher in the Rye’ or something.
Downside? Well, previously quite well adjusted people with only minor personality quirks will probably start to behave quite oddly. It all depends on how you perceive mental health issues - is it like a virus, can you actually ‘catch’ neuroses from others or (my theory), are competing examples of eccentricity mutually exclusive: for instance would somebody doing a neuroses swap for a day feel like a complete loon because they have to brush their hair exactly 36 times, feeling that the guy who got their compulsion to only use alternate sheets of toilet paper got the best end of the deal?
So how does it make money? This is a site for obsessive-compulsives right? Can you imagine how many times a day they’ll be logging in? It’s an ad man’s dream!
The idea is to help neurotics and obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers. Let’s say you need to turn around sixty times before you leave the house. But you’re already running late and you can’t afford to spend the time spinning and then dizzily crashing about as you try to negotiate yourself out of the front door. No problem.
You leave the house, catch your bus, go to work…and log on to:
Nuroses-swap?
Nutter-exchange
Bonkerspace?
Haven’t quite decided on a name yet but, you log on and list your mania. Spinning around like a loon. That’s matched, by others on the site, to something equally as odd - say disposing of your gum wrapper in a certain way. So, you arrange for the gum guy to spin around and promise that the next time you throw away a gum wrapper, it will be folded to resemble a bird, or a wine glass, or an amusing approximation of a willy.
The positive benefits are obvious. The afflicted can get on with their lives, knowing that somewhere in the world, somebody else with a spare five minutes is hopping around, or compulsively reciting a poem, or buying ‘Catcher in the Rye’ or something.
Downside? Well, previously quite well adjusted people with only minor personality quirks will probably start to behave quite oddly. It all depends on how you perceive mental health issues - is it like a virus, can you actually ‘catch’ neuroses from others or (my theory), are competing examples of eccentricity mutually exclusive: for instance would somebody doing a neuroses swap for a day feel like a complete loon because they have to brush their hair exactly 36 times, feeling that the guy who got their compulsion to only use alternate sheets of toilet paper got the best end of the deal?
So how does it make money? This is a site for obsessive-compulsives right? Can you imagine how many times a day they’ll be logging in? It’s an ad man’s dream!
1 Comments:
Yes, but how would you live with yourself knowing that you were bankrupting hundreds (thousands?) of neurotic freaks like myself. Besides, I'm such a pro I have my shrink agreeing with my neuroses---he was trying to disprove one of my irrational fears by proving it to be irrational, i suppose. Instead he stupidly used the example that he were more likely to get hit by a meteor in the parking lot than die in a plane crash. I said that because my grandparents had, in fact, died in a plane crash, then it seemed more likely that I, too, would die in some sort of freak accident due to the fact that our family apparently has bad luck, and, due to the bad luck, I would be the one hit by the meteor out in the parking lot. Then he said "no, I walk through this parking every single day whereas you are only here every couple of weeks". Then I simply said "if a meteor were to actually hit us, we would probably both get hit by it, it wouldn't just hit one person"....all he could say was "true. Good point."
I seriously don't think you're prepared to deal with all of this...I can't imagine having to coordinate that many neuroses-swapping...near impossible.
...Although it would be nice if I could have someone check to make sure my toaster oven was unplugged.
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