So the world is a lot right now. You’ve noticed. I’ve noticed. We’re all just… yeah.
Anyway, I made a website where you zoom infinitely into a potato. There’s another potato inside. And another. It’s potatoes all the way down. I don’t know what to tell you. You can also receive a random compliment from a very specific person. There is a Victorian ghost out there that really believes in you.
What is this
Weird Little Joy Machines is a collection of tiny, pointless joy machines. The whole point is there’s no point. You click around, maybe smile, close the tab, go back to your life. That’s it.
I wanted it to feel like the internet used to feel. Just weird stuff someone made because they wanted to.
None of it will help you finish that thing at work. But that’s the whole point.
Why though
Honestly? I needed to build something that didn’t matter.
I work in marketing technology. My whole job is making things purposeful and measurable. Which is fine. But sometimes you just need to make a website that generates compliments from a Victorian ghost who haunts a Trader Joe’s.
The idea started as a list that got out of hand. “What if there was a button that did nothing but you held it anyway?” “What if a PDF was loading forever and you just watched?” One thing led to another and now there are 13 of these things, with more coming.
Some favorites
Hold This Button to Feel Something is exactly what it sounds like. Timer goes up. Nothing happens. You hold it anyway. The messages get more introspective the longer you stay. People have held this for… a long time. I don’t ask why.
Every Time You Refresh, This Sentence Gets Worse starts totally normal and then things get weird. By refresh 20 it looks like language is having a medical emergency. You keep refreshing. There’s no reward. But you should do it anyway.
A PDF Is Loading. It Will Never Finish. Progress bar at 99% forever. Occasional flickers of hope. I think this one resonates because we’ve all been there.
Why Your Cat Is Mad at You Today gives you a new extremely specific feline grievance every day. You looked at another cat on Instagram. The food was correct but the bowl was wrong. That kind of thing.
Fortune Cookie But Unhelpful — the universe has a message for you. It’s not useful. Open it anyway.
The full list
There are 13 machines live right now, split into three categories:
Generators — push a button, receive nonsense. Corporate buzzword excuses. Compliments from very specific strangers. What your houseplant named itself. Fake podcasts. Unhelpful fortune cookies. Why your cat is mad at you.
Interactive — poke at things. Hold the button. Be perceived. Zoom infinitely into a potato.
Chaos — watch things fall apart. The sentence that gets worse. The PDF that never loads. Guess if a town name is real. Predict if a toddler will eat something. (They won’t.)
How I built it
HTML, CSS, vanilla JavaScript. Some localStorage for persistence where it makes sense. Static files on Netlify.
I used Claude to brainstorm ideas and do the heavy lifting when it came to coding. The main constraint was: keep it dumb. No feature creep. Just make the thing, ship the thing, move on. It’s been kind of liberating.
What’s next
I still have ideas in the backlog. A door that won’t open and has demands. A plant that remembers if you forget to water it. A website that believes you owe it money but won’t say how much. Dragging your emotional baggage into a void that offers unsolicited feedback. Things are going to get weird.
I’ll add them when I need another break from all the super fun, happy, and positive things happening in the world.
Go play
None of it will help you finish that thing at work. But that’s the whole point.