KWPro.net

A friend of mine once told me, "Man, I love stupid people."  I was like, "Why?"  The situation was in reference to how he knew how to manipulate the World of Warcraft auction market and took advantage of some people not selling things at the correct price.  I think his statement correctly assesses how a lot of good businesses operate: by praying on stupid people.

There was a great article on TechCrunch a while back talking about the questions investors ask potential businesses.  The most significant question was, "What is your deadly sin?"  If you combine that question with the average Joe's inability to see how he's sinning through using your product, then what you produce is a customer.

Earlier, I had managed to catch myself in the midst of a time wasting flame war on YouTube with some goof going about how I was a pro-wrestling smark.  Ironically, by his definition he probably was more of a smark than me.  Better yet, he responded with unbelievable celerity and he could not hounding me.  I kept thinking to myself, "Wow.  YouTube has managed to retain traffic just with the simple concept of comments."  Then again most of the web these days is sustained through comments.  Not just comments.  Unmitigated comments that fan fires from anger and the absolute need to dominate other people via a person's massive ego.

So what are my bets on success?  To answer the investors' question for my own product, I have three lines of thought:

• Wratch (Anger/Nerd Rage)
• Vanity (Bragging)
• Stupidity

It's a shame that stupidity isn't included in the seven deadly sins list.  It ought to be.  Or maybe it's the unsaid 8th sin that someone looking from above is sardonically chuckling to themselves as people on this planet wander around trying to figure out why their lives keep going wrong.