Show HN: Touch grass – I built social media that wants you to close it

2 pointsalexsherrick2mo ago3 comments

I wanted old school social media back. Actual connections with friends. Not pity likes and performances and highlight reels.

All my friends have stopped posting. Everyone's a lurker now. I'm a lurker. The only time I see what anyone's doing is when it's a humblebrag. I have no idea what's actually going on in my friends' lives besides the ones I see every week or so.

So I built touch grass. You post once a week: 3 easy questions, max 3 photos. Sunday 6pm mountain time (yeah its my time zone) everyone's posts unlock at the same time. You catch up on what your people have been doing, then close the app. No likes, no comments, no algorithm, no advertisers, no bullshit, besides that one friend maybe.

It's not about content. It's about keeping the connection warm. I see my friend went to the Cowboys game (Texans represent), I text him and ask how it was. That's it. That's the whole point. A reason to actually reach out.

I've weirdly learned more about my parents in the last 5 weeks than the last year it feels like. I get real answers, not performances. It's honestly my favorite thing right now but I built it so I guess that means I'm biased.

When someone asks me "what'd you do this week?", usually I have no idea or at least it takes me a little while. But when I sit down to post, I actually think about it. And my friends see the real stuff, not a curated highlight reel.

The tech: I'm a solo dev. I wanted this to actually survive for years, not die when I couldn't afford the AWS bill. So I needed it cheap. Really cheap. That's when I thought about old school social media. We were using terrible flip phones and marginally good digital cameras, but everyone wanted to be tagged in their photos on Facebook. So I thought using a polaroid filter would be a great way to save some money. Everyone looks good in a polaroid, the warm tones, the grain, the vignette. People steal them from my house, those bastards. It plays into the old school social media vibe perfectly. But here's the thing: it also gave me permission to compress the hell out of every image. 600px, 70% quality, webp. Each photo comes out to sub 40kb, sometimes as little as 10kb, instead of 2mb. The aesthetic hides the compression, but honestly everyone just thinks it works. From the limited data I've gotten.

The whole thing runs on Cloudflare Workers + D1 + R2. Cloudflare is legit the best thing on this planet in my opinion. It's about $5/month for the paid workers but the key is R2 egress, it's also free. Every time someone loads a photo, I pay nothing. On AWS that would be $0.09/GB and I'd be dead. At 10k users loading feeds every Sunday, that's the difference between $0 and $50+/month just in bandwidth. At 100k or 1MM it would start to be too much but on Cloudflare it's quite affordable.

I can run a photo-sharing social network for the cost of a beer or maybe 3 overpriced donuts. That's the only reason this is possible without funding.

I literally just launched a couple of weeks ago with a couple of friends and now I'm at ~150 users right now. I honestly have no idea where some of these users are coming from, that part has been pretty fun. The new year felt like the right time to share, everyone's thinking about screen time and staying connected. This is hopefully my answer to both.

Its free, there's no ads, and I don't sell any data. Honestly who would be buying it. I would love to hear any feedback. It is not perfect by any means but its the most polished thing I've built for the web.

Thanks for reading.

screenshots: https://trytotouchgrass.com/hn mainpage: https://trytotouchgrass.com

3 comments

snarf212mo ago

I find this type of idea very interesting. Much more of a "check in" than the normal social media blast. I love the idea of a weekly status update and check-in window. It was unclear to me if you have to give your own update before you can view other people's (seems like a good idea to me). I also wasn't sure how much of a window there was for adding your answers and viewing others.

At the risk of sounding like "I love your idea but here is how to change it to something I like better that is completely different and nothing like your original idea", here are my (unsolicited) thoughts: The prompts didn't really resonate with me. I don't really care about who someone who haunt as a ghost or what kind of animal you wish you were. I want to check in with friends not share BuzzFeed survey results with each other. That makes more sense in a dating app or ice breaker imo. As far as the pictures go, I would actually prefer that it was only one and mandatory. There feels like there is something compelling to find the picture that best represents your week. Whether that is a picture of your dog or a landscape or a meal you cooked, etc. It also forces you to create an artifact that captures your week. There are lots of weeks where I normally take zero pictures and this could be a nice nudge to force me to pick a moment but not feel like I have to document everything.

I design board games a hobby and am part of a group that has a short weekly accountability meeting once a week. It is structured like a stand-up in some way. Each player says what they worked on last week, what they hope to work on this week and what they could use help with. This is the kind of status that I'd be interesting in both sharing with friends and reading about theirs. The "needs help" part is a perfect specific reason to reach out directly. I also like that this feels a little bit like journaling and even if you don't get friends to join the network, you still have a weekly recap of your year. (Honestly, I could even see a paid product that creates a 52 page book/pdf for you to review and see how your year went and where it went wrong.)

Definitely good potential here, so best of luck on the journey.

alexsherrickOP2mo ago

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, this is exactly the kind of thing that's useful to hear.

To clarify the mechanics: yes, you have to post before you can see anyone else's. The window is monday through sunday, reveal happens sunday 6pm mountain time, and there's a grace period until monday 6pm if you're late. The idea is that everyone posts "blind" without being influenced by what others said.

On the prompts, that's some fair criticism. I've collected a bunch of prompts that I pick through each week. They fall into 3 categories and it is always in order. Q1: Check-in (something about the week), Q2: Fun (something silly usually... this has weirdly been fun to see peoples answers across the friend spectrum), and Q3: thoughtful (something a little deeper but not too heavy). It sounds like you'd prefer it lean harder into the check-in category and it might go that route eventually. I just didn't want people to get bored of the same questions.

Also it is mandatory to post 1 photo, so it's min 1 photo, max 3 photos. I'm terrible at taking photos and it has forced me into trying to take a few more which is good for documenting my life a little bit. Also the life tab becomes your journal. Only you can see it. Once the week is over no one else can see it but you. That was one idea for monetization way down the line somehow leaning into that, but with it being so cheap I just want others to maybe use it and refine it.

Appreciate you taking the time to write this up. Good luck with the board game designs!

funkify2mo ago

cool idea!

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