Around the corner from our office is a small Chinese restaurant. And next to the counter of this restaurant, are some of those “Love Test” machines, where you drop a quarter in, put your finger on a little sensor, and find out what sort of lover boy (or girl) you are. Essentially, some lights flash and it gives you some obviously bogus read-out. Beyond some basic blinking-light mechanisms, there isn’t much going on here.
It got me thinking one day, that it’d be fun to have a machine like this, that quite literally did nothing. Or more specifically, didn’t even claim to do anything that would even be remotely of value to the user.
Rather than a machine that flashes and beeps at you under the guise of providing some love-test results, I’d like to create a little machine like this that merely asks you to deposit a quarter and then nonsensically flashes colored lights at you for 5 or 10 seconds, with no other perceived value beyond just the flashing lights. Maybe call it “The Amazing Flashing Light Machine“. The end.
I can almost guarantee, that this machine, placed in a bar, would make money.