Social media is all about sharing things. From the very usual stuffs to the extraordinary: they're all there.
But to some people, social media is like a waste of time. Scrolling endlessly on feeds of algorithm-driven posts to see bunch of friends' status updates, fake news, anxiety- and anger-fueling comment sections, and others.
Every social media users must have experienced that, many times or at least even once. And this is where Binky comes in to counter them all.
Binky is a social media, that is not a social media.
Open Binky that users will find an infinite list of random things, just like regular social media. But unlike any other social media, nothing users do there matters.
Interacting with Binks (posts on Binky), literally does nothing. anything users do there, is just false action.
Like something, swipe right. Hate something, swipe left. Want to share something, re-Bink it. Binky doesn't record anything, and friends will never know anything others do.
Users can comment, but when attempting to do that, much like the app itself, the contents are pre-generated. So there is nothing that users can do there, instead of just wasting their time.
And for those that wonder, what's the point of having a social media that does nothing. The answer is: that is the point.
The thing about Binky is that, users can scroll, share and like random posts, but all those actions are meaningless.
"Binky is just as meaningless as other social media apps, but it's upfront about it," said Binky creator Dan Kurtz.
He said that the inspiration to create Binky came when he scrolled down through his social media feeds, only to realize he couldn't remember what he previously read.
"It started out as a joke," Kurtz said. "I was doing a satire on the moments when you’re flicking through your apps because you’ve got nothing better to do. Facebook is too much anger, stress and sadness, but you want to do something on your phone."
"Does that mean that like, nothing I'm seeing on Facebook actually matters? If I replaced all the stuff that I'm seeing with just random photos of chairs and condiments, would that be just as compelling?" he said. "It turns out the answer is yes."
Binky has all of those regular posts people could find on social media, but doing anything there won't have any consequences. "[It's] the freedom to satisfy the appetite that you have for scrolling through stuff, without needing to worry about any of the consequences, because it's all meaningless," said Kurtz.
In short, Binky is a social network without socializing. It's seen to some, as a cure to the ills of smartphone compulsion: a way to use smartphones without doing anything at all. It's like a reminder that people are becoming so addicted to the digital world, that we couldn't escape from it.