The Art of Booty

I want to start doing some more artistic stuff, but I’m not sure where to begin. I get random ideas a lot but I never really know if they are possible. I guess I should actually try… So, starting next month I’m going to see if I can make custom wooden coasters. This partly comes from a need of mine, I don’t have coasters and there is a lot of random wood around my house. My plan is to reclaim it and turn them into coasters.

Now, these won’t be just normal coasters, I want to put pictures on them. I realize that isn’t a particularly original idea itself but my hope is to put pictures of my friends… in particular, my friend’s butts. Clearly, this will require some audience participation.

My idea is to set up a website or use some service to anonymously collect submitted pictures of my friend’s butts (or maybe chests and genitals… but butts are kind of funnier to me). The system would prevent even me from knowing who submitted the picture, then I could print it off and attach it to the reclaimed wood that I’ve shaped into a coaster.

So, why would I do this? Well, I think it would be kind of funny to have black and white pictures of butts on the coasters in my house. Also, I like the idea of using my friend’s who have a variety of body types as the models. I could also pay anyone who submits a high-quality image in bitcoin as well, so they could make some cash.

I also think this could become a business. It may not be the next Google but it might bring in a little extra cash for everyone involved. I’m still brainstorming but here are my basic ideas:

• Basically, sell packs of butt coasters (or chests and genitals) to people, they can either choose from the photos available, submit their own or have random ones sent to them
  • If they choose from the photos available it will cost a little more
  • If they submit their own it can be a one-time thing (with the images destroyed after the coasters are delivered), they can be stored in our database privately for future ordering, or they can be made public so that others can order the prints
  • If they choose random ones it will be cheaper and I would work to send a diverse group of prints from our most popular (or maybe they can filter by gender or other characteristics if that is important).
• If you want to submit an image you can earn a little extra cash, maybe 10% of any sales from people picking your image (that amount is totally random)
• There could be seasonal contests and deals like Christmas themed images, etc.
• Maybe making coasters is thinking too small. If I had the capabilities I could put user submitted butt/chest/genital pics on just about anything (posters, mugs, artistic prints, etc), but maybe that is thinking too big.

So, potential problems that could arise

1. Too many pictures are submitted, so we will need a filtering process. Maybe limit submissions to only a few from an email address or pictures expire every 30 days
2. Early entry could be key to popularity instead of actual quality when people who order the images don’t want to surf through thousands of submissions. It is easier just to look at the most popular. I think resetting every 30 days will help with this, but maybe we can also have staff pick some of the “top” choices, or maybe break them into categories such as Black and White, Comical, etc.
3. We could also have too few images if people are uncomfortable submitting a picture, even if anonymity is guaranteed. Hopefully, this will resolve itself if there is a market for the product. More demand for the product means higher wages for those in the market, which will encourage other people to submit images to get in on that cash.
4. I’m not really sure how to guarantee anonymity, particularly if I am paying people. Bitcoin is the easiest way for me but very few people use bitcoin, and I’m not sure what the legal issues are with paying people bitcoin. Though, I don’t think there is a high likelihood of someone hacking a small business to expose random people whose email addresses are connected to butt pictures (though it would destroy the business if there is a security leak, anonymity is necessary to gain trust for many people… but maybe some people won’t care about being anonymous, it could be good for some people’s brand)

I guess the key isn’t really what the image is, it is creating an organizational structure that incentivizes submissions from people and provides a product that is desired.

So, that’s what’s on my mind. Next month I’ll probably figure out the anonymous submission details and see if I can gather some images from my network. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure out the logistical issues involved and see what the price point would be to turn this into a business.