Liam Kloppers Built a Shock Collar to Stop Doomscrolling and It Worked Too Well
Tired of wasting hours on social media? A developer decided to skip the willpower and go straight to involuntary conditioning by hooking a dog collar to his smartphone. Because nothing says 'productivity' like the literal threat of electrocution.
Developer Liam Kloppers Liam decided that standard screen-time reminders were for the weak, so he sourced a Bluetooth-enabled dog shock collar to enforce his digital boundaries. He reverse-engineered the collar's protocol and wrote a custom Python script that talks to MacroDroid on his smartphone. The setup is simple: once a specific social media time limit is hit, the phone sends a signal to the collar, delivering a physical shock to his leg.
Testing proved that even the lowest power setting was an effective deterrent against mindless scrolling. The shock was intense enough that the developer nearly chucked his phone across the room in a fit of involuntary reflex. Kloppers admitted the device was arguably too effective, as he developed a Pavlovian terror toward his own mobile device. He is currently looking into replacing the shock feature with a high-pitched noise, essentially trading physical trauma for permanent migraines.
Technology has finally bridged the gap between behavioral psychology and medieval torture. If society continues to need external hardware to prevent humans from looking at memes for five hours straight, perhaps the problem isn't the phone—it’s the total collapse of basic self-control in the digital age. Or maybe it’s just the natural evolution of the 'nudge' theory.
Source: Hackaday
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