When I create my projects at Absurd.website , I do not approach them as jokes, parodies or utopian concepts. I try to build them as realistically as possible - right on the edge of absurdity.

I want them to feel like they could genuinely become real. In fact, I often want them to become real.

For me, the line between what is “real” and what is “absurd” is determined by participation. If people begin using an absurd product or service, if they pay for it, believe in it, normalize it - then it becomes real. If nobody participates, it remains an experiment. But even then, it still has value because it expands the boundaries of ideas. That is where art begins for me.

I build startups, but inside Absurd.website there are no real failures. Dead startups simply become artworks. Users themselves can reactivate and normalize projects by interacting with them, using them or paying for them.

The internet is already full of businesses that would have sounded absurd decades ago. Whether something becomes “real” is often determined only by whether people collectively accept and use it.

Human civilization itself is built this way. Countries, governments, religions, armies, money, fashion, sports industries, music industries, corporations - all of these systems are, in some sense, constructed realities that only function because enough people believe in them.

I think I am doing the same thing on a smaller scale.

I play with reality and enjoy participating in its construction.

+++

Interestingly, creating unrealistic, utopian or even seemingly pointless projects often feels far more meaningful to me than building practical businesses.

Practical ideas are usually less interesting.

I prefer exploring unknown conceptual territory, playing with ideas and possibilities rather than solving practical problems for profit.

I would rather create and sell fantasies than ordinary products.

+++

Sometimes I even imagine Absurd.website slowly evolving into a strange multi-business holding company where some of these absurd concepts eventually become fully real startups.

+++

Alongside Absurd.website, I spend my everyday life building more practical internet startups and online businesses. My daily routine consists of generating ideas and trying to realize them.

But my mind constantly filters many of those ideas through absurdity. Sometimes I invent genuinely practical businesses. Other times the ideas become too strange and drift toward Absurd.website.

Interestingly, there are also moments when an absurd idea suddenly starts feeling too real to remain inside the Absurd.website ecosystem.

One example is Booktoilet.com. It originally began as an absurd concept - an Airbnb-style platform where people could rent access to their toilets.

But while developing the idea, I realized it was solving a real problem.

At one point I seriously considered building it as a practical startup. My idea was to first normalize paid toilet access through cafes and small businesses. People could scan a QR code, pay a small fee and use the restroom without awkward social interaction.

Later, after people became accustomed to the system, a second layer could be introduced where private apartment owners rented access to their toilets while tourists gained access to a decentralized bathroom network across cities.

The project never fully worked as a practical startup (validation fail), which is why I am now considering bringing it back into Absurd.website.

But once it returns there, I would remove the “normalization phase” entirely and present the absurd version immediately: strangers renting access to toilets inside private homes.
I am working to bring this project back into Absurd.website.

Both sides - the practical startup world and the absurd conceptual world - constantly feed each other and generate new ideas.

+++

I have never been particularly good at sales.

I am much more interested in building things.

I constantly fall into the classic startup trap: “if I build it, they will come.”

In traditional startup culture, this is considered one of the biggest mistakes possible.

With Absurd.website, I have intentionally decided to follow that exact strategy.

I slowly keep building while quietly imagining that one day someone will eventually discover what I have been constructing.

Sometimes it feels like I am building a cathedral in the desert that nobody has noticed for years. And strangely, part of me feels that the later it gets discovered, the better.

Most startups want rapid validation. They want to quickly determine whether an idea will survive or fail.

I move in the opposite direction.

None of my projects are created with the expectation that they must succeed.

They are already prepared to die and join my growing graveyard of absurd startups.

And somehow, together, all those dead projects slowly become one larger thing.

+++

For me, Absurd.website functions almost like network-based art - a space where I can express myself through the language and medium I naturally use in everyday life: startups, products, systems and internet businesses.

Because I personally define it as art, I also consciously play with some artistic structures in my own way. I write manifestos, create collector systems and imagine future physical exhibitions.

At the same time, I rarely feel like a traditional artist because I come from outside the art world and have no formal art background.

But maybe identity itself works similarly.

People often become what they repeatedly perform, imitate or construct. First we imagine a version of ourselves. Then we start acting as if we are already that person. Eventually the performance slowly becomes reality.

I see identities that way.

But “artist” is still only one of my many parallel identities.

The same thing happens inside my projects.

I imagine an absurd business concept and mentally simulate its future existence as if it already lives somewhere in reality - even if it is obviously small, unrealistic or ridiculous.

Then I build it.

Most of the time the project dies immediately, just like most startups do.

And while it is dying, I am already building the next idea.

Project after project. Concept after concept.

Eventually all of them begin forming one larger system.

+++

At the moment many of my projects are still relatively simple. They often function more like MVP prototypes or landing pages introducing an idea rather than fully developed systems.

But over time I want the projects to become larger, deeper and more functional.

I also increasingly want to create projects that begin as absurd conceptual works but slowly break into reality and become genuinely usable systems.

That, to me, would be the most beautiful outcome possible: an artwork escaping fiction and becoming real.

I hope projects like that eventually emerge.

I also imagine a future where, if my world grows large enough and I gain more resources, I begin building absurd businesses inside physical reality as well - stores, hotels, factories or other spaces where absurdity quietly enters everyday life.

I do not fully know why this fascinates me so much, but I think I enjoy slightly contaminating reality with absurdity.

Almost like graffiti appearing in places where it technically should not exist.

A small act of conceptual subversion.

Originally published at:
Absurd.website