Random Generator Parodies Vapid Startup Websites
alphadogg writes: A pair of Georgia Tech computer science students have created a Random Startup Website Generator that spits out a different jargon-laden startup website every time you click on the URL. Mike Bradley and Tiffany Zhang's project "serves as a parody of startups that have websites full of vague praise and little information about their actual business, often because they have little to show in that regard."
Brilliant, that's what!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I suspect they could have saved themselves a lot of coding by simply randomly linking to real startup web sites. It'd look no less ridiculous.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
What has happened to Silicon Valley? As recently as a few decades ago, it was a hotbed for innovation. I'm not talking about innovation like how to force advertisements on more unwilling victims. I'm talking about innovations like the creation of the microprocessor, the invention of computer networking, and real innovation like that. We saw companies that created products that truly revolutionized the world in ways that we couldn't have imagined just a few years earlier. Silicon Valley was a magnificent place, with magnificent people that did magnificent things. Now what is it? It's no longer about real innovation. It's a place that's rife with hipsters pushing hype. It's a place where being trendy matters more than really making the world a better place. It's just so astounding to see how Silicon Valley has gone from a historic center of scientific discovery and real technological innovation into a cesspit of marketing-driven shenanigans masquerading as innovation.
OK, I am in pain from laughing so hard!
Some of my favs include:
* Effortify! "Share your favorite efforts and discover new ones." http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?...
* Sprayit! "Spray like never before." http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?...
and
* Insectify! "The evolution of the insect" http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?...
WELcome... to Zombo Com!
You can do Anything at Zombo Com,
The only limit...is yourself.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Where do I send my check?
My brother knew an immigrant from Russia. When she saw something that she wasn't familiar with, she'd look askance at it and ask (in heavily accented English), "Vat is dees (this) sheet?" That's what investors should do, when they see requests to invest in a startup: ask, "Vat is dees sheet?"
And yet, oddly, in the last 30 years, fuel consumption per passenger mile has dropped 40% in those 30 years. Compare a 737-300 to a 737-900ER or A330-200 to A330NEO or a 747-200 to a 787-9.
Every time you make a bullshit start-scam, it has to have a countdown. You can't expect to get any investors if you don't build up at least a week of hype without giving any information other than "we will make an announcement."
...and shipped it instead of sitting on it in a vacuum, I'd say they are more prepared than ever to start software companies, vapid or otherwise. I won't be surprised if it turns out later that they build some aggressive startups of their own with weird ideas and unclear value propositions, inherent aspects of taking risk, they get traction, raise for growth, and offer up some reflection on the two sides of the coin.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
I first saw something like this with the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator about 15 to 20 years ago. I haven't been able to find it recently, though.
Table-ized A.I.
Undressly
"Undressly is a place for people who enjoy undressing to connect."
I think this could be bigger than LinkedIn!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And they said robots couldn't take programmers' jobs.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
This is the funniest thing since Bullshit Bingo.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
That's the best thing ever. I can't tell some of those sites apart from some of the Web 3.0 hipster places' actual sites.
It does bother me a little though, and I feel old, but I do remember when technology was actually exciting and there was always something totally new coming out. Obviously, the Web was awesome, but lately the focus has primarily been on only a few things:
- Miniaturizing a computer complete with peripherals and a tracking device to fit in every idiot's pocket
- Cheap, large scale x86 virtualization to bring us -- bum bum buuuummm.... the cloud which is powering a lot of these dumb startups and letting them keep burning through VC money longer
- Rehashing of Dotcom Bubble 1.0, this time with the cloud and smartphones, to produce an endless round of me-too startups. "Tinder for X" or "Airbnb for Y"
- Shoving more ads in front of people's faces and tracking their movements/activities -- similar to Dotcom Bubble 1.0's "eyeballs" measure of profitability
- Automation of key white collar jobs and the rise of the "sharing economy"...so when the next big thing comes along, no one will be able to afford to buy it
I wonder what actual innovation is going to happen next. Watching high tech peak and decline is pretty depressing. It's not clear to me what will replace computers as the driving force for new breakthroughs -- as in, what will end up in the minds of the public as the next big thing. The 80s was dominated by personal computers, the 90s by the Internet, the 2000s by...phones? Social Media?
Bookmarking this site for social broadcasting mischief come next April 1st.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These randomly generated sites are in the design style that seems to be popular today, with ridiculous vertical scrolling, and very little content per pixel.
Anyone involved with coming up with that design, popularizing it, or using it, should meet a sudden and violent end and their families forbidden from the internet.
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
For those who suck.
SuckTrust was founded by people who love sucking just like you! Enter your favorite ways to suck and we'll help you fit it all in. Since we're using fair technologies, you can count on us next time you suck.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
The Tinder of websites for startups that are the Tinder of randomly created nonsense.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
They load from three different Google domains (ajax, fonts and analytics) and one CDN, and if you don't let them load third party content, you only get a blank page. 100% on the mark. Only stupid people make their web site absolutely depend on third party content.
These are hilarious. The only thing missing is the declaration that it's in beta and asking you to provide your email.
Large electronics company branching out into mental healthcare.
Good hook, but it kinda goes off of the rails after that.
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
They may be onto something there.
I think the crosshairs graphic makes this one work:
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
This is so fucking stupid, but I can't stop:
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
Here's a particularly fine example - a start-up for Death:-
The death you've been waiting for.
Satisfy your niche in the death ecosystem with online branding that’s built by active people for right consumers.
Quote: "Death was prompt, current, and current. Ten out of ten!" - Alexandra Sanders, San Gabriel, California
All your ghosts are just false positives.
Are they trying to rip off a particular web CMS platform that churns out all these hipster sites, or is it just coincidence that they all look the same?
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Laughing so hard here right now, they really nailed this.
suckify - "I've been sucking for 15 years and I've never seen anything like Suckify. They're really something else." http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
screwable - Commit. Perform. Screw. "As a professional in the screwing industry, I tell all my new clients to start out with an account on Screwable." http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
I'm not sure this one is entirely legal, though:
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?...
Girlfriendable. The Evolution of the Girlfriend.
'Girlfriendable is a peerless girlfriend service that makes it easy to turn your girlfriends into cash.'
The randomly generated web pages look so much like real kickstarter project web sites. How long before the usual suspects use this as an "idea generator" for even more TTMAR kickstarter campaigns than we've already been subjected to?
(TTMAR - Take The Money And Run)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Oh dear...
http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html?s=679093822241
Suck something targeted.
Suckify was founded by people who love sucking just like you! Enter your favorite ways to suck and we'll help you fit it all in. Since we're using fair technologies, you can count on us next time you suck.
Let's party like it's 1999!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
After that it starts to feel kind of disturbing.
Remember that old random headline generator? This appears to be a webified version of that.
Back in the last generation, when the Web was just taking off, we had a guy at a company I worked for who wrote a vision/mission statement generator based on spew. Most of the work appered to be populating the input data table with vision-y/mission-y type vocabulary. It was scary how well it worked to generate the same sort of nonsense that program management was in the habit of creating.
Have gnu, will travel.
I used to do some web development for a company that primarily resold other peoples' software, and offered training on it. I got in some pretty epic arguments with this one sales guy that always said the website didn't "look like a startup website." I could see myself just sending him one of these and asking if that was what he was looking for.
Slack is the king of these parodies... Oh wait, that's REAL? Seriously?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That is AWESOME. They've managed to take the piss out of every annoying Web fad invented in the last 5 years.
Incidentally, it does demonstrate the herd mentality of web designers in general... and how when one person used Bootstrap or material design in a website, then a billion other web hipsters will do the same. Result, an Internet where a third of the websites look identical.
I propose an even funnier idea, just take a random div element from each startup's site and mash them together.