IRL Mad Scientist & XR Designer π¨βπ¬ I make weird inventions & build @PillowSocial. TED Speaker π¨βπ¬π§ͺ
Apr 2 β’ 11 tweets β’ 3 min read
If you are building a Mixed Reality app, you need to see this thread.
MR is an edge case nightmare. Meta doesn't know how to properly test it yet, and if you don't know this, you will get 1 star reviews.
Here are the top edge cases I had to deal with building @pillowsocial π
#1: Users will walk out of their scanned room.
By far our largest source of bad reviews. People would start the app in their living room, walk into their bedroom & then report that the app was broken.
But it wasn't: they just left it behind.
Implement room boundary detection.
Aug 25, 2022 β’ 4 tweets β’ 1 min read
Another reason most social Metaverse companies will fail: ALL of their social interactions right now are REAL-TIME, not asynchronous!
Just look at the ENTIRE social internet right now: IT'S ALL async! The top 14 social apps! E-mail. Twitter. TikTok!
Real-time does NOT scale.
Why async? 2 simple reasons.
CONVENIENCE: you can interact with folks immediately, whenever - no pre-planning necessary.
VALUE: Value builds exponentially in async. Social interactions are not bound to time & can be consumed forever. But in real-time, it's all ethereal.
Aug 23, 2022 β’ 4 tweets β’ 2 min read
Holy moly. I just got 350k followers on TikTok & Instagram in ONE WEEK π³
Looks like I finally found a platform for my wild tech inventions ππ
What it took me 2 years to get on Youtube I got on Insta & Tiktok in 7 days (a 4000% increase in audience).
It appears that the world wants me to do short form and Youtube hates me lmao
Jun 15, 2022 β’ 18 tweets β’ 8 min read
I recorded +1000 of my Farts & turned them into carbon positive, beautiful & interoperable Metaverse NFTs.
This is the REAL story of how I'm saving the world (and the crypto market) with my ass.
A thread (1/18)
NFTs today suck. They have potential as tech, but almost everything people do with them is uncreative, selfish & useless. At the same time, $BTC & $ETH are the lowest they've been in years.
Crypto is in need of help, inspiration, hope!
Crypto is in need of my booty. (2/18)
Jun 8, 2022 β’ 11 tweets β’ 3 min read
You don't need a publisher.
You don't need a music label.
You don't need a movie studio.
The age of middlemen in art is over. The world now belongs to independent artists.
25% of all top songs on Spotify in 2021 have come from TikTok users that broke into the mainstream all on their own.
Music labels have been desperate, offering deals to TikTokers that are historically some of the most artist-favorable deals we've ever seen.
Apr 27, 2022 β’ 17 tweets β’ 10 min read
I built the closest thing to a real-life Time Machine using modern technology. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life.
A threadπ¨βπ» (1/17)
First, some backstory: In 2019 I decided to do something awesome: to take a gap year & travel the world! πβοΈ
It was going to be amazing. +20 countries & countless adventures that would change me forever.
But I also had one great fear... (2/17)
Apr 19, 2022 β’ 24 tweets β’ 12 min read
I brought my childhood imaginary friend back to life using A.I. (#GPT3) and it was one of the scariest and most transformative experiences of my life.
A thread π€ (1/23)
First, some backstory. When I was a kid, I had a really unusual imaginary friend: and that was my kitchen microwave.
I have no idea why. My parents were puzzled. My sisters mocked me. I didn't care. He was real to me & I talked to it every day. (2/23)
Jul 14, 2021 β’ 6 tweets β’ 2 min read
AR is the next big thing and me + @Aidan_Wolf are looking to start an AR creator house in LA!
6 amazing artists co-living together, creating the most mindblowing shit you've ever seen, all while transforming theπ into an AR exhibition that becomes the β₯οΈ of the LA AR community.
We would do events. We would do workshops. We would do TONS of social and the artists would be charged $0.
They'd only have one focus: innovate & transform the space into the most surreal house the world has ever seen.
We need $100k for 6 months. Who should I talk to?
Jan 29, 2020 β’ 8 tweets β’ 2 min read
A lot of people have asked me how I manage to survive financially as an independent VR/AR developer.
Here's how it breaks down for me πΈ hope someone finds this useful!
To be clear, I don't have a day job, so I spend 100% of my time working on my own projects, for better or worse.
As you can see, grants + small investments were incredibly important in kick-starting my career and still make the majority of my income. Still chasing them today.
Dec 13, 2019 β’ 14 tweets β’ 7 min read
Given that @WhereThoughts Go just launched, I wanted to create a thread showing a little bit about the process behind creating it & how messy making games can beπ
This is what the first 3-week prototype looked like: a room where people could say anything as an audio orb! ποΈ
I didn't know what this project would become at this time, but I was really intrigued. But I also immediately realized that people wouldn't say interesting things unless they were asked to. π€
So I made prompts! And then I made them physically reactive, which felt amazing. π€ΎββοΈ