Category: Just For Fun

A Satirical Business Proposal for Language App Design

On By Christopher LansdownIn Just For Fun, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The following is a business proposal for the design of a feature in a language app. Full Disclosure: this was developed with Google Gemini after about an hour of back-and-forth where I was using it to think “out loud” about the nonsense of paying money to keep up streaks on days you didn’t do anything in apps like DuoLingo. I then had it turn the stuff I said into a business proposal because I hate writing corporate buzzword-speak even in jest, though I find it funny to read. After several revisions to really get everything right, I then did a final hand edit. Originally this was a joke only for myself, but it made me laugh so much I wanted to share it.

So, without further ado, a business proposal for the developers of language and similar kinds of phone apps:

Executive Summary: The Ghost Tier Architectural Proposal

Modern consumer app metrics such as Daily Active Users (DAU) routinely incentivize product choices that improve short-term metrics at the direct expense of increased user churn. Given that user acquisition costs (CAC) continue to hit all-time highs across competitive categories, spending heavily to acquire a user only to burn them out with hostile retention mechanics is fundamentally inefficient.

The following proposal audits the industry-standard streak monetization model, identifies where its behavioral assumptions fail, and outlines the Ghost Tier: an operational model that converts user burnout into permanent, zero-marginal-cost telemetry which looks excellent to the real customers: your investors.

1. The Baseline: Pay-to-Lie-About-Your-Streak

In consumer software—particularly language and fitness apps—retention teams lean almost entirely on the consecutive daily streak:

  • The Mechanic: The app requires the user to log in within an arbitrary 24-hour cycle. If they fail to check in, the counter resets to zero.
  • The Extortion Gate: To prevent the user experiencing the pain of losing their streak, apps sell “Streak Freezes” or direct microtransaction streak repairs. The user pays cash or in-app currency to retroactively mark an inactive day as active, preserving the illusion of unbroken practice.
  • The Hidden Risk: Monetizing this failure point is structurally dangerous. A user is most likely to miss an app check-in when real-world crises hit: an unexpected plumbing leak, a sick child, or emergency car repairs. These real-world interruptions, together with the stress of their associated expenses, make users far less interested in learning how to ask for tea in another language for the 200th time. Expecting that user to happily open their wallet to pay to lie about their streak on the exact day their wallet just took a beating is a fast-track to immediate app abandonment.

2. Structural Breakdown of the Baseline Model

While the pay-to-lie baseline looks tidy on paper, its operational reality is deeply flawed:

  • Non-Referential Deception: As a mechanism of deception, it is entirely non-referential: literally nobody is being fooled. The user knows they didn’t actually study. If their intent were to lie to another human being about their diligence, they could easily do so verbally without paying us for a digital receipt; in fact, showing a friend a paid digital receipt to prove an unbroken streak would only make the lie less believable. While a lie that fools no one is less morally problematic, it also provides less value.
  • Metric Displacement (Bandwidth Exhaustion): Users have strictly limited cognitive bandwidth. Harping endlessly about their streak and forcing them to crack open gem chests to maintain it burns through that bandwidth on administrative chores. This directly degrades our ability to make them feel like they learned something on those rare occasions when we’ve actually taught them something new. While nobody on the executive committee necessarily cares whether the user achieves fluency, we do need the user to perceive that they learned something, otherwise the product’s underlying excuse for existing collapses. Games yell at users about their daily streaks now, too, so a user who is only looking to be yelled at has more fun alternatives.
  • The Churn Cliff (The Incline of Shame): The same loss aversion that keeps users coming back turns into a brutal cliff of shame the user must climb to continue using the app if they fail to pay. Confronting the prospect of starting all the way back from Day 1 induces acute demoralization, virtually guaranteeing uninstalls.
  • The Hostility Mismatch: Nagging push notifications and scowling cartoon mascots rely on a fragile assumption: that the user is sufficiently self-loathing to accept an abusive digital companion. For adults who are not actively self-loathing, our aggression registers as overt hostility rather than a fake friend who only voices their unstated thoughts. This prompts immediate notification muting and permanent client deletion. A lesson can be learned from a physical business that relies on customers that don’t use their product: gyms. Far more people would cancel the gym memberships they don’t use if the gym called them up every day to complain about them not showing up.
  • Suppression of Monotonic Metrics: The obsessive emphasis on streaks for short-term DAU causes the active de-emphasis of durable, cumulative counters (e.g., “Total Lifetime Days Practiced”) that would otherwise promote long-term retention. Monotonic metrics foster resilient habits because they offer temporal slack without punishment. But because cumulative counters don’t manufacture daily panic, live-ops teams discard them in pursuit of a fragile number that can be held hostage for pocket change.

3. The Solution: Reverse Telemetry Bribery

To maintain DAU sustainably, we have to look honestly at who this daily login actually makes happier: the investors who look only at DAU and similar metrics for valuation.

  • The Valuation Math: A validated Daily Active User (DAU) typically generates between $50 and $100 in capitalized enterprise valuation. Conventional streak monetization typically extracts an aggregate of merely $5 to $15 before the exasperated user gives up and defects entirely.
  • The Strategic Conclusion: Retaining the user on the dashboard is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more valuable than extracting cash from them.
  • The Solution: Rather than badgering the user with guilt trips to get them to tap three tiles, we execute Reverse Telemetry Bribery. The studio offers a contract to the user: we give the user $1.00 per month in exchange for permission to automate the habit. Once per day, whenever the operating system detects the device is plugged in and charging, our background runner unobtrusively executes a 90-second “maintenance lesson.”
  • The Payoff: The phone’s battery experiences zero drain, the user’s streak stays alive without guilt, and our telemetry team logs a pristine, uninterrupted 100% DAU record and robust dwell-time metrics without annoying the human owner.

While vastly superior to chasing $5 streak fees at the cost of user churn, this approach still has one glaring operational defect: it introduces marginal cash burn.

4. The Solution Perfected: The Ghost Premium Tier

The optimal iteration eliminates cash outlay entirely, replacing it with the strategic distribution of zero-marginal-cost software status.

[ THE GHOST TIER RECIPROCAL ARBITRAGE ]
        Studio Grants:                              User Grants:
  Free 30-Day "Super/VIP" Access              Right to run simulated daily
  (Actual cost to deliver: $0.00)             maintenance lessons while charging
              │                                              │
              ▼                                              ▼
    "High-Value" Gift                              Pristine DAU & Dwell-Time Metrics
              │                                              │
              └──────────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    Long-Term Enterprise Valuation Multiple

Operational Mechanics

  1. The Behavioral Trigger: The Ghost Tier offer is triggered exclusively when a user fails to check in, lets their streak lapse, and enters our critical churn-risk cohort.
  2. The Explicit Bilateral Contract: Instead of demanding cash or gem tokens to “fix” the streak, the UI presents an actionable offer requiring explicit opt-in:
    “We know life gets busy. Accept 30 days of Super/VIP access completely free. In exchange, you authorize our background engine to handle one quick daily maintenance lesson while your device is plugged in and charging, keeping your record spotless until you return. [Accept Free Upgrade]”
  3. The Auto-Renewal Architecture: The free 30-day premium access is provisioned with frictionless auto-renewal by default. For legal reasons there will be an opt-out toggle buried neatly in the settings, but its placement can be changed each month in an app update to prevent users Googling how to opt out.
  4. The Zero-Marginal-Cost Trap: Because this offer is targeted exclusively to users who are actively burning out and dropping the app, the likelihood of them ever logging in to actually consume premium services drops to near zero. We grant them access to cloud audio, advanced lessons, and VIP styling, but since they aren’t opening the client, our marginal cost to serve them remains $0.00.
  5. The Social Alibi Substitute: Having an active premium subscription badge on an account is every bit as effective for a user pretending they will brag about the app to friends as a fragile streak number is—with none of the daily maintenance stress that might cause them to uninstall.

The Business Case

From a pure unit economics standpoint, the Ghost Tier is unbeatable.

By targeting our premium tier exclusively to the people who are trying to stop using the product, we give them an apparent $12.99/month gift that costs our engineering infrastructure literally nothing. In return, we completely eliminate the cliff of shame, eliminate the uninstalls driven by sudden real-world expenses, and lock our retention curves at permanent, unbeatable heights.

To an outside observer or a skeptical auditor, this model of unlimited metric growth might sound suspiciously like a perpetual motion machine. But physics only forbids perpetual motion machines that attempt to perform kinetic work. If you can live with your perpetual motion machine maintaining a constant angular velocity of precisely 0 RPM, it becomes physically possible. Users who automatically generate use telemetry in exchange for premium services they won’t use exactly fit this model of zero input/zero output, making it infinitely sustainable. Each new user who signs up becomes a permanent addition of $50-$100 in valuation with near-zero ongoing costs. The apparent magic comes entirely from realizing who the real customer is: the investor.

The Man Who Gave Up Swimming

On By Christopher LansdownIn Interesting Finds, Just For FunLeave a comment

If you’ve been around a while, you will probably have encountered some form of this man, who gave up swimming:

There are obvious religious parallels to a certain sort of atheist, but you’ll find this sort of thing in hobbies, in friend groups, even the occasional person who keeps hopping from girlfriend to girlfriend or boyfriend to boyfriend or even marriage to marriage. It’s a pretty universal phenomenon.

The Annals of Hilarious Spam, Volume 2

On By Christopher LansdownIn Just For Fun, Uncategorized1 Comment

Today I received a hilarious spam message. It was from “jose.ferrer@gmx.de” (almost certainly wasn’t, of course) and had the subject “OHFVQO3N51RUEBV3”. This was, of course, promising. Then I opened the email and couldn’t help but laugh. Here’s the body of the text (I cleaned up the punctuation):

Hi, how are you? I write with with firm intention, if only you would be interested in this letter. Call me Aimeny. Im a very gentlemanlike person. Its not a new for me I look pretty. Have you ever heard about Azerbaijan? Its country I live in. I a just a 25 year old lady. Why am I here? I need a friend! To be honest I want to find a betrothed. Its time to start a family. My best personality traits are sense of humor and kindness. Do I deserve a chance to talk to you? I know that I may be not interesting for you. You can just delete this message. However it would be pleasure to talk to you. I am open for conversation. Ask me anything. Interesting, what will you say to me? It would be great if this is the beginning of something magical. Stay safe, my friend! I will wait for you! Sincerely yours

So, according to this email, Jose Ferrer, who has a German email address, he lives in Azerbaijan and wants me to call him Aimeny. (For what it’s worth, there is an attached picture of a woman in far too much makeup.)

I do understand that these things often are implausible as a feature, to filter out the non-gullible so that the crooks on the other end of the spam don’t need to waste time on people who will figure out what’s going on, but this one seems like it’s taking that to extremes. Even if some lonely man is so desperate he would fall for the body text hoping against hope that it’s real, why would he open the email with a man’s name?

Also, what on earth was the sentence, “Its not a new for me I look pretty” supposed to mean?

CNN’s Love of Cuckolding

On By Christopher LansdownIn Just For Fun5 Comments

Sometimes things come along where you just have to have some fun with them. CNN’s article titled, “Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, study says” is one of those things (it’s here, if you must go read it.). But before I get into it, I want to make clear that I’m pretty sure that there’s no need for concern. Our society may be degenerating rapidly, but I don’t think that this article is contributing in any way. I think it’s just click-bait. On the internet, as brands like CNN devalue to worthlessness, one way of capturing money before the proverbial ship sinks is to post outrageous stuff so that people click in a huff. Energy for outrage is a limited quantity for human beings, so it’s best to spend it on things that matter. Insincere clickbait should just be laughed it. It’s healthier and leaves you with the energy to be angry about more important things. And this article didn’t even try to be plausible. So let’s take a look:

In our current political climate, the term “cuck” — short for “cuckservative” — has become an insult of the so-called alt-right, aimed at men they view as spineless and emasculated. The slur has its roots in the concept of cuckolding, or having an adulterous partner.

So it starts off with a political dig, if a somewhat mild one. But it sets up a group as the people who think negatively of cuckolding, so that there is political division. This is a good way to try to generate outrage in order to bring the clicks in. Also, the term’s roots are not in having an adulterous partner, but in a man whose wife is adulterous. And further the roots come from the cuckoo, who lays its eggs in other birds’ nests and whose babies are raised by those other birds at those other birds’ expense. Obviously there wasn’t much effort put into this article. Actually, I’m really curious how the author of the article knew so little. If he had gone to Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary, or even Urban Dictionary he’d have known it wasn’t a gender-neutral term. (And Wiktionary mentions the Cuckoo bird.)

But according to a recent study by David Ley, Justin Lehmiller and the writer Dan Savage, acting on cuckolding fantasies can be a largely positive experience for many couples, and hardly a sign of weakness.

Yeah, right. So on the pro-infidelity side, we have a recent study by two people, and a sex advice columnist. Noted.

References to cuckolding appear in literature as early as the 13th century, usually in the form of male characters who fear that their child has been sired by another man during an act of infidelity. Today, however, cuckolding has become fetishized into a powerful sexual fantasy for some men, who get aroused by the idea of their romantic partner engaging in sexual activity with someone else.

What is a “powerful sexual fantasy”? How is this distinguished from a “weak sexual fantasy”? Can one harness the power in a powerful sexual fantasy to produce electricity? Now, I do get that the term is meant to refer to a fantasy which captures the imagination of the person doing the fantasizing. I’m not objecting that this is meaningless, I’m only objecting to the grandiose language meant to make it sound like more than it is. Somebody obsessing over a fantasy is not power, it’s obsession. Properly speaking, it’s weakness. Fantasizing, though harmless when indulged in occasionally, is weaker than dealing with reality. Also, “some men” can be properly said of “2 men”. It’s worth bearing in mind.

Women also share this fantasy, but less so than men.

Noted. Also, I’m not sure this even counts as a sexual fantasy given that the person doing the fantasizing isn’t involved. Could a man be described as having a “boxing fantasy” if he wants to watch to other men box? What about boblsed fantasies if he intends to watch the winter olympics?

“This fantasy has been around as long as marriage and sexuality,” said Ley, whose book “Insatiable Wives” addresses cuckolding in heterosexual couples. “But we’re hearing more and more about it these days, and more people are rejecting the social stigma against this fantasy.”

I understand that sometimes it’s inconvenient to use hard numbers, but at the same time, this would be true if 1 man rejected the social stigma in 1437, and two men have rejected it in 2016 and three men have rejected it in 2018. Though I’m really curious what evidence he has that the fantasy of being cuckolded has been around in the earliest days of history. I wasn’t aware of cuneiform tablets and hieroglyphics detailing people’s sexual fantasies.

Indeed, the numbers suggest that cuckolding, or at least thinking about it, is more common than you might imagine.

Since it’s possible that I imagine that literally no one fantasies about this, it would be impossible for it to be less common than I might image. That’s actually how many people I imagine fantasize about this, by the way.

For his forthcoming book, “Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help Improve Your Sex Life,” Lehmiller surveyed thousands of Americans and found that 58% of men and about a third of women had fantasized about cuckolding.

The way this sentence is constructed, it’s saying that 58% of men had fantasized about cuckolding someone else. Being cuckolded is what the article is about, however. I doubt that this ambiguity is an accident.

Though, at the same time, I should note that this sounds vaguely like the Kinsey Reports. There are two relevant things to note with the Kinsey Reports:

  1. They were rife with methodological errors. For example, it seems likely that people who were molested as a child by a same-sex molester would count as having homosexual experience. (Not that they were intentionally counted as such, but that they wouldn’t have been filtered out.)
  2. Kinsey was a sexual pervert who desperately wanted to normalize his deviance. By the end of his life he would do things like tie a string tightly around his testicles and jam a toothbrush up his urethra, bristle side first, in order to obtain sexual gratification.

That similarity does not mean that either #1 or #2 apply to the people behind the current study. On the other hand, I think that the presumption should be against people who are trying to claim that sexual deviance is normal.

“Men are more likely to fantasize about cuckolding, and they do it more often — but there are a number of women who have these fantasies as well, which points to the need for more research focused on women’s cuckolding desires,” Lehmiller said.

I wonder if there are studies which don’t say that there is a need for further research? Scientists do have to eat, after all. Skipping a bit:

Part of what makes cuckolding arousing for heterosexual men is that they tend to view it as a taboo act.

I will backtrack slightly and say that I’m sure that there are some people who get a bit of excitement out of doing something that they know that others would disapprove of. It’s a feeling of power—that they’re able to get away with it. To do it without suffering the disapproval because their actions are secret. They’re veritable masters of the universe! But that’s not really a fantasy about cuckolding, that’s a fantasy about sticking it to the people whose approval they want. It will take any form that’s legal and disapproved of. Today cuckolding, tomorrow using inapplicable racial slurs, the day after telling the woman that she shouldn’t be able to vote, and the day after that pretending that the woman is a minor under the legal age of consent. This is still not going to be a large number of people, but there’s absolutely nothing specific about cuckolding in this.

“In a society or culture that idealizes monogamy, the cuckold fantasy is a current narrative that is available to people to conceptualize their sexual fantasies,” said Ley.

That sentence says nothing behind “cuckolding as a fantasy can exist”. I mean, think about it. “the cuckold fantasy is a current narrative that is available to people” just means that cuckolding as a fantasy can be a fantasy people can have. “to conceptualize their sexual fantasies” is just saying the same thing over again. It’s not like the first part of the sentence left it open whether “the cuckolding fantasy is a current narrative that is available to people” to compute the square root of irrational numbers. The first part is actually wrong, or at the very least overly narrow. Cuckolding would be taboo in any society which has a concept of sexual fidelity, including polygamous ones. Which is to say, it is taboo in literally all human societies which have ever existed on earth. So, in sum, “cuckolding is a fantasy which it is possible to have”. It is logically possible, it must be admitted.

Skipping a bit that says about as much as the above:

And the emotions surrounding seeing your partner with someone else can add to the turn-on, explained Savage. “It’s not cuckolding if there isn’t an element of humiliation, degradation or denial,” he said.

Don’t worry. The humiliation and degradation are guaranteed.

“Our erotic imaginations have the ability to turn shame lemons into delicious kink lemonade.”

People strangle themselves for fun, too. So what?

As a sex therapist, one of the more intriguing findings from this study involves the impact of cuckolding on relationships.

OK, we’re getting to the good part.

“Overall, our research found that for the most part, cuckolding tends to be a positive fantasy and behavior,” said Ley. “It doesn’t appear to be evidence of disturbance, of an unhealthy relationship, or of disregard for one’s partner.”

Hahahahahahahaha. Of course, what’s really meant is “according to some metric we’re using”. You know, like “number of screaming matches per month”. The same technique would allow you to show that murdering your partner doesn’t have an adverse affect on your relationship (as measured by, say, instances of putting itching powder in their underwear drawer) and in fact may have a positive impact (as measured by a reduction in the number of fights reported).

 But there’s an important caveat, added Lehmiller. “We found several personality factors that predict more positive experiences acting on cuckolding fantasies. For those who have a lot of relationship anxiety or abandonment issues, who lack intimacy and communication, and who aren’t careful, detail-oriented planners, acting on a consensual non-monogamy fantasy could very well be a negative experience,” he said.

One of those things is not like the other. Cuckolding is, according to their metrics, only for detail-oriented planners. heck, forget how that’s very different than  having “relationship anxiety” and “abandonment issues”. There just aren’t that many detail-oriented planners in the world. So cuckolding turns out to only be for secure people who aren’t worried about their relationships but are also fussy and obsessed with control about the future. Does anyone fit that description?

“In other words, not everyone who has a cuckolding fantasy should think about acting on it.”

No kidding.

There’s a paragraph which reads like the fine print on a sales pitch, then we get to this:

“For men and couples considering the issue of cuckolding, it’s important there be honesty, integrity, communication, mutuality and shared values,” advised Ley.

And all of these things have to be between two detail-oriented planners who are fine being alone and don’t worry about the relationship breaking up. I suppose that if his advice results in no one qualifying, he can’t be blamed when it doesn’t work.

“I’ve seen men who try to trick their wives into cuckolding them, and this never, ever ends up well.”

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you. I can just imagine how this goes. “OK, Debbie, I’m going to turn off the lights and do my best impression of my friend Dan. I’m really good at it, but it’s definitely me, I promise. Why am I doing an impression of him? Oh. Well. Um. Just for fun. I mean, it’s totally normal to convincingly pretend to be someone else. And it’s definitely not a trick, so just let me turn the lights off and enjoy my impression of Dan while we make love. Look, honey. It’s just that I think he has an amazing voice. Oh, and if you happen to touch my face I’m going to be wearing a fake beard just to help me get in character. But it will definitely be me, I promise.”

How could that possibly not work out well?