Social Pariah Project for a Happier Life

Do you have controversial opinions? Do you have no controversial opinions? Do you have a spicy hot take or a dark secret that you want off your shoulders? Are your thoughts harmless and acceptable or fringe and dangerous?

The Social Pariah Project for a Happier Life is dedicated to exposing you and your friends to new and exciting ideas!

The Concept

Each visitor to the Social Pariah Project is assigned an electronics-equipped wearable that can detect and expose your controversial opinions. The wearables resemble a sorting hat with feathery ears and a prominent lightbulb. The ears animate when the hat is thinking or excited, and the bulb glows to demonstrate your (probable) support for controversial topics as they show up on a prominent display.

The hats are equipped with ESP8266 microcontrollers, LEDs, batteries, and a servo. The hats and prompt displays communicate with a server running on AWS.

How it Works

Opinions and topics are sourced in a few ways:

  1. Statistical prompts (decided ahead of time). Real world data reflected by a random group of hats lighting up.
      “Doesn’t believe in climate change”

    1. “Didn’t get vaccinated”
    2. “Goes to therapy”
    3. “Thinks therapy is stupid”
    4. “Has an undiagnosed mental condition”
    5. “Has sociopathic tendencies”
    6. “Knows a sociopath”
    7. “Will develop alzheimer’s in their lifetime”
    8. “Is clinically depressed”
    9. “Is hangry right now”
    10. “Disagrees with affirmative action”
    11. “Does not support reparations”
    12. “Reads Ayn Rand”
  2. User-submitted hot takes (generally more light-hearted)
    1. “Thinks white chocolate tastes decent”
    2. “Still does the Donnnnner thing”
    3. “From the South“
    4. “Voted for Panic! Art The CFA for this show’s title”
  3. Survey-answers are prompts based off of demographic info or survey questions
    1. “Thinks being in exploded ensemble is cool”
    2. “Would complain that this project promotes cancel culture”

Every 30 seconds or so the prompt rotates, and the hats collectively think and decide if their wearer supports the claim. Eventually they either light up or don’t to indicate your support.

A key aspect is that your support could be real or randomly decided by the council of sorting hats! Wearers will also have the choice to “opt-in” to a claim by pressing a button on their hat.

Statistical vs user-submitted prompts will be differentiated by background colors and animations of the prompts.