Idea: 73
Saturday, 14 March 2015
By. David Fauchier

SMILE

— LIES remixed!

Cheeky
Cheeky
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

I love the idea of enabling something super nice to happen to someone I don’t know… I think that’s awesome. Random acts of kindness, productised.

Riffing a little off of Idea #66: “LIES” here, we present to you … SMILE.

There’s a tradition of random acts of kindness in the backpacking community that I’ve always loved. It’s happened to me a few times — somebody approaches you, and does something really damn kind — perhaps offering you a place to stay, some money to eat, a free pass… And they tell you something along the lines of ‘somebody once did this for me, and asked me to pass on the kindness one day.’

These chains of random acts of kindness exist, they’re not new. There have been social campaigns to try and kickstart new ones, but no successful ones that I know of.

Instead of a chain, how about a pyramid scheme?
$ You hear about the idea, and buy into it by subscribing, for a $1 a week, to SMILE.

> Every month / year, you get to nominate someone who you think deserves some happiness.
> Every week / month, good shit happens to the nominee who’s next in line, paid for out of the pot. It gets written up and sent out as a weekly / monthly newsletter.

? Would you join this community? Who would you nominate? What random act of kindness would you like to see done?
? Would you enjoy reading or watching random acts of kindness to strangers?
? If none of your nominees were selected in the first year, how disappointed would you be? Would you stick around for the second year?
? How many cents of every dollar would you feel comfortable giving to SMILE / the community manager?
? How large would the community need to be to get started? 100 members or 1,000 or more?
? What would the MVP “look like” and how would you launch it to get those first members?
? Can you think of scaling problems that would prevent this from being a worldwide movement?

Cheeky: Ideas

Ideas make the world a better place.

Cheeky

Written by

Cheeky

Tools of thought.

Cheeky: Ideas

Ideas make the world a better place.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade