The Drunken Website Tester

1(1)A few years ago, I was an avid watcher of a YouTube show called My Drunk Kitchen. I just checked, and it’s still going strong–nearly 2 million subscribers.

On the show, Hannah Hart drinks and cooks, with the cooking getting progressively sloppier and funnier the more Hart drinks. Hart is funny without the alcohol, so the “drunk” part is more of a novelty.

The other day I read an article about a professional web developer named Richard who offers a service with a twist on the “drunken” genre: He’ll get tipsy and then test out your website.

His tagline is, “Your website should be so simple, a drunk person could use it.”

It’s a rare opportunity when being drunk is actually an asset to society, and even here it’s kind of a novelty, but it’s also kind of brilliant. Richard is right–your website should be so simple that a drunk person could use it.

I also like that Richard acknowledges that drinking is a serious problem for some people, and he doesn’t want it to become a problem for him. This isn’t a full-time job. He notes: “I intend to drink responsibly. I have close friends checking in with me regularly to make sure this doesn’t become a problem. I’ll do this once or twice a week, and limit the number of clients.”

One of the things I do for Kickstarter backers is a “backer toast” at the end of the project when my business partner and I toast every backer at the $1 level on camera. I do it because I love the connection that forms when I say a backer’s name out loud–it’s the perfect reminder that these are people, not numbers, which is a big part of my philosophy. But it’s also fun–backers seem to get a kick out of seeing us drink a little too much (again, we try to be responsible. I rarely drink at all other than the toasts).

So I was thinking: Are there any other jobs where getting a little tipsy is actually an asset? Website testing is perfect, and the cooking show is a bit of a novelty–is there anything else like that? Should there be?

6 thoughts on “The Drunken Website Tester”

    • That’s true. Sometimes I go with the strategy of simply holding a beer in hand even if I’m not drinking much out of it.

      Reply
  1. What about a person who is live blogging from a technical conference (like a Keynote presentation for Apple)? Being a little tipsy in that type of situation might help lower inhibitions and allow the writer to use more creative language in describing what is being presented. It would have to be the type of person who still has a strong filter even when drinking though, or I could imagine things escalating very badly, very quickly. (I’ve often wondered when reading some of the comments live bloggers have made for past presentations I’ve paid attention to if they weren’t a little tipsy already.)

    Reply

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