Creativity Wasted

Idea: An edible flavorless tape that you wrap around messy food (such as a chili dog) and eat with the food so that you don't make a mess. Also: maybe also adding flavors, so you can wrap gross vegetables to make them taste like bacon or enjoy holiday-themed flavors such as candy cane or Santa (?!?); using the tape to make other things edible and delicious, such as food packaging and hair removal...

Idea: An app to be used by amateur performers (primarily open mic comedians, but also maybe musicians, improv actors, etc.) to sign up to perform and to share info about the venue, including whether performers get a free drink (or have to buy drink(s)), whether it's safe for women, whether the bathrooms are clean, whether performers openly use drugs (and which drugs), etc. Also: how weird it is th...

Idea: A mind-erasing device to make you forget a TV show or movie so you can experience it again as if it was your first time seeing it. Also: using a Black Mirror-esque device while watching Black Mirror; the risk of people using it to forget stuff from their real life; if you have to wear it on your head the whole time it's making you forget stuff, and it's big and nerdy, this would dissuade peo...

Idea: To create eco-friendly, solar-powered floating cities on water reservoirs such as Lake Powell or Lake Mead, to shade the water to reduce evaporation and algae growth and also to reduce or eliminate house heating and cooling costs. Also: putting some houses on docks and floating other houses on the water, and what to do about pipes; the risk of jerks dumping trash and sewage into the drinking...

Idea: A dating app like Pokemon Go where you have to walk around and/or perform a fitness-oriented scavenger hunt to find and meet up with your date. Also: questioning the morality of dating apps allowing you to filter potential dates based on physical fitness test results; an online date that turns out to be a surprise competition against 100 other people; an absolutely insane online dating lie D...

Idea: To camp in a large insulated and temperature-controlled box which is similar to a chest freezer, because it'd be much cheaper than an RV, and because the only time you really need to be enclosed and comfortable while camping is when trying to sleep. Also: an extra-wide 2-person version; a duel-use chest freezer with a normal chest freezer lid and a special camping lid that allows you to brea...

Idea: An app to help you find, background check, pre-interview, and hire someone to be your partner during social events, possibly pretending to be your significant other so you don't get shamed for being single. Also: using the app to hide the fact that you're dating someone who's "not presentable"; using the app to get the correct number of people for a sporting event or physical activ...

A satirical proposal for a society where disgruntled tenants can (legally) challenge their landlords to a physical battle for ownership of the house or apartment, where if the tenant wins, they own the property outright and do not have to pay rent or a mortgage. The purpose is to discourage landlords from being jerks, to discourage people from choosing to become landlords and to instead create a s...

A brainstorming session about a dark and gritty movie adaptation of the Super Mario Bros videogame. Ideas include a 1950s noir detective movie where Mario is the detective who tries to find the kidnapped princess, a movie where Bowser is a sleazy landlord who keeps a drug-addicted Princess as a "strawberry" who supplies Bowser with adult favors in exchange for drugs and lodging, a movie...

Idea: A retractable car seat toilet for the driver to use the restroom while driving or in a stopped car. Also: a built-in bidet because it'd be hard to wipe while driving; dumping the waste onto the road and creating an oil slick like in Mario Kart; reusing the waste as windshield wiper fluid; becoming the crazy astronaut diaper lady Haleigh Potter ( instagram.com/haleighpotter Music: linktr.ee/h...

Idea: Periscopes for short people to use at concerts and music festivals. Also: a periscope view of the crowd might help you avoid danger; stories of being injured at concerts; putting the periscope in a fake head and wearing a trench coat like an Inspector Gadget or Scooby Doo cartoon; ideas for naming it, including Ecstasee, Shakira-to-Shaq, and Peepers Haleigh Potter ( instagram.com/haleighpott...

Idea: A machine which is surgically implanted into your nasal cavity that detects the smell of candy or other unhealthy foods and then rapidly cools down to intentionally give you an "ice cream headache" (aka "brain freeze") to punish you and dissuade you from eating the unhealthy food. Also: its battery could be charged by a wind turbine in your nostril; you could put other ga...

Idea: An app that monitors what you're doing and uses AI to determine if you're using white privilege or being racist, in which case it alerts you, shocks you, plays a loud tone so the other person can't hear what you're saying, etc. Also: a "boomer collar" which temporarily paralyzes your vocal cords to prevent you from saying offensive things; being forced to use the app as punishment;...

Idea: Soft, bite-sized cheese balls with another gooey-er cheese inside, sold in a pack to be eaten alone as a snack. Also: gas station eggs; a series of related cheese products, such as a carbonated cheese-flavored drink; cheese-based toys for kids, such as a Play-Doh-like Lact-O rolling kit or cheese stick Lincoln Logs Haleigh Potter ( instagram.com/haleighpotter Music: linktr.ee/haleighpotter )...

Idea: A festival where people air grievances about annoying household products and then burn them in a fire. Examples of annoying products include dishes that aren't dishwasher or microwave safe, underwear that doesn't have a fly, fridges with annoying beeps, and men's dress shoes that make clomping noises that sound like high heels. Also: the humiliation of nobody else sympathizing with your anno...

Idea: A cleaning product that can clean almost anything, including your body, hair, teeth, shower and sink, clothes, dishes, carpet, car, etc. Also: castile soap; getting flouride all over your house; using it for purposes other than cleaning, such as lube (for both humans and machinery), killing bugs, unclogging pipes, etc; flavors and scents that would be good for some purposes but gross for oth...

Idea: A service to hire bullies to non-aggressively bully your child to help them "build character" if you worry that they're spoiled by social popularity and therefore aren't developing a good personality and/or creative talent. Also: hiring teachers or TikTok social media stars to bully your child; the risk of accidentally creating an out-of-control army of mercenary superbullies; bein...

Idea: To make sequels to the movie "Cocaine Bear" where other animals get drugged and go crazy in over-the-top comedic scenarios. Also: meth sloth; speed tortoise vs. pothead hare; Ree's story of being chased by a raccoon who tried to open a sliding door to follow her into the house; swarms of frogs jumping on your face to steal your drugs whenever you try to do them and thus forcing eve...

Ideas on how to prepare to survive a non-direct-hit nuclear blast that you can also use for other purposes, so you're not wasting your money and accumulating junk which will probably never be used, including an extendable roof that can extend all the way down to the ground to cover your windows during a bomb blast and also allow you to have more solar panels on your roof or to sled down it in the...

Idea: A movie set in a universe where people sing and dance all of the time (like in a musical or Bollywood movie), and the protagonist is horribly bad at both singing and dancing, which causes his life to be very difficult. Also: Angelyne and the Rockefeller-era woman who couldn't sing but her rich parents tried to make her a famous singer; Bear Grylls struggling to live with the Kardashians, as...

Idea: A speaker hidden inside a mask which uses AI to talk for you (pretending to be you) so you don't have to small talk. Also: it could "trash talk" for you if you get tongue-tied in stressful situations; it could help standup comedians by handling heckers, doing your act for you if you lose your spot in your set, or the audience could wear it and it could laugh for them; it could be w...

Idea: A movie, based on the song "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" by the "Spin Doctors", starring Jimmy Olsen, a photographer who works with Lois Lane in the Superman universe. In the movie, Jimmy's in love with Lois Lane, and he's jealous and angry that she's in love with Superman, who's incompetent, clumsy, and arrogant, and is only able to defeat villains due to dumb luck and Jimmy's h...

Idea: A social-media-style indicator light to indicate whether you're willing to chat (or flirt or otherwise interact) with nearby people in real life. It would either be displayed in the other person's augmented-reality glasses or on your earring. It could either display the same value (such as "green: available to chat" or "red: not available to chat") to everyone, or display...

A conversation about elections and how weird it is that the media can call the result of an election with only like 10% of the votes counted. Also: ideas to increase trust in the election results, including a) forcing the media to wait until all of the votes are counted before announcing a result, b) attaching a random number to your ballot so you can enter that number into a web site later to ens...

Idea: Augmented-reality glasses with an app which displays the names of people who you're looking at, so you don't have to remember their names. It may also display info about the person and how you know them. Also: the difficulty of teachers to remember student names, especially years later when running into them outside of school; assigning a person a "monster avatar" in the glasses as...