u/mikaeltheimer

Ok, I know exactly how this sounds, but hear me out.

Remember, back in 2005, when a student created the milliondollarhomepage and became a millionaire un a few months?

This wasn't about him being greedy. He had a brilliant idea, simple to implement, so he tested it out, and it worked wonders. That was him demonstrating an accurate understanding of how the internet worked at that specific moment in time.

Well, I think I may have had an idea of that essence. That, or I'm beautifully naïve and this will have been but a cute experiment in whishfull thinking.

My starting observation: there are tons of influencers out there these days, making indecent amounts of money thanks to the doom scrolling addiction of entire generations. The influencer economy has built a culture where visibility equals value. So what if you could just... buy your place directly? No algorithm. No content treadmill. No performance required.

The idea: paytoexist.com

A simple, yet beautiful website, where one simply pays to exist. And the more you pay, the bigger you exist on it.

No follows, no likes, no algorithms. Just a universe of people's bubbles, open for anyone to explore.

Part social experiment, part digital artifact, part shameless grab at financial freedom. I won't pretend otherwise, and honestly I have mixed feelings about that last part.

But also, existing on Earth is getting freaking expensive. So I'm crossing my fingers.

Do you see the potential here, or is it just wishful thinking?

Try it out! The first 100 bubbles are free. Existing for free, wouldn't that be something.

I kept thinking about how much we write and how little we actually say.

So I built Dear Someone. You write a letter — a thought, a question, something you've never told anyone — and send it out to sea. Someone finds it. They can reply, or let it drift on to someone else. If they choose to correspond, it becomes a private exchange between just the two of you.

Letters can be translated automatically, so your words can reach someone who doesn't speak your language at all. A person in Quebec writing in French might end up in a correspondence with someone in Japan. No algorithm decided that. Just chance, and intention.

No profile to curate, no performance. The rules are slow by design: one letter a day, one new correspondence a week. It's meant to feel like receiving mail, not using an app.

It's free. No ads, no data sold. I built it because I wanted it to exist.

👉 dearsomeone.co

This is Black Mirror meets milliondollarhomepage.

There are sooo many "influencers" out there, making big bucks and spending them on the shallowest of things, I thought "let me try and funnel some of those spendings towards my account".

And this is what I came up with: http://paytoexist.com

The concept is dead simple: you pay, you get a bubble. Pay more, get a bigger bubble.

No algorithms, no likes, no followers, no feed to feed. Wanna be seen? Spend the $. Back to basics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I am convinced this can work if it becomes popular. Now, it's a chicken or the egg problem... Influencers will buy in if there's an audience, and an audience will get there if influencers buy in.

You can try it out: the first 100 bubbles can be created for free.

So what do you think? Completely stupid, or actually genius?

I figure, our late stage capitalist society is just about ready to turn an idea this shallow into a success story.

So here's Pay to Exist: a digital universe on which one exists as a bubble. No algorithm, no likes, no followers, just people and their ego, floating in the void.

I tried to make this beautiful and entertaining to explore, and it really was when I filled it up with testing accounts.

Now, will it work? I'm convinced there are plenty of people out there who would buy in if this were to become a viral skit. Though in truth, I only need one dude with an ego as big as his bank account to pick up on this and use it to flex hiw wealth, and it'll already have been a win ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The inspiration for the idea is the famous milliondollarhomepage.

It's entirely free for now, make what you want of it...

https://paytoexist.com

Is it art? Satire? Dumb? Genius? All of the above? Let me know your thoughts!

I figure, our late stage capitalist society is just about ready to turn an idea this shallow into a success story.

So here's Pay to Exist: a digital universe on which one exists as a bubble. No algorithm, no likes, no followers, just people and their ego, floating in the void.

I tried to make this beautiful and entertaining to explore, and it really was when I filled it up with testing accounts.

Now, will it work? I'm convinced there are plenty of people out there who would buy in if this were to become a viral skit. Though in truth, I only need one dude with an ego as big as his bank account to pick up on this and use it to flex hiw wealth, and it'll already have been a win ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The inspiration for the idea is the famous milliondollarhomepage.

It's entirely free for now, make what you want of it...

https://paytoexist.com

Is it art? Satire? Dumb? Genius? All of the above? Let me know your thoughts!