I had a strange moment of serendipity earlier this evening.
I was reading some RSS feeds and I saw there was a new post to the Flickr tag “firstgoatse.” (If the term goatse is new to you, I’m not sure what to say except: don’t blame me when you look it up… now. The above link is safe to view, by the way.)
I felt like I hadn’t seen a ‘firstgoatse’ in a while, so I checked it out. The photo itself was unremarkable, but I was viewing it on my Nexus S phone and happened to glance away from the screen, at the phone itself. Something clicked in my head, and I thought of a way to breathe new life into the age-old pastime of showing your friends disgusting images and capturing their horrified reaction for sharing on the Internet.
HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS WE ALL HAVE SMARTPHONES WITH FRONT-FACING CAMERAS!! (It must be the future!) These tiny pocket devices are cornucopias of giving: lulz for us, lulz for the Internet, and horrific, can-ever-forget memories for our friends!
Basically, what the best app ever would do is display a horrific image of your choice… self-supplied of course, in case your poison is more tubgirl, or whatever kids these days show other kids these days. It would also capture the reaction of the person holding the phone via the front-facing camera, at the very moment of exposure.
A series of photos leading up to the moment would work nicely too. Heck, what about capturing a video of the entire reaction? For all I know, kids these days are showing each other the video equivalent of that guy bending over and… ugh. For bonus points, it might even combine the original and reaction videos into one, side-by-side, not that anyone would want to ever view that.
I’m ready to believe that a mobile app like this already exists. It clearly, however, can’t exist for iPhone, because Apple doesn’t allow that brand of awesome, and I can’t be bothered to check the Android Market (aside from, okay, my quick search for “goatse,” which turned up nothing), but this is clearly the kind of app that the wold today could use.
Well, there’s a Mac app, but who can fit that in their pocket?
Hey world — somebody make this!