Trolling for ideas

Splashing works a lot of the time. However, splashing is pretty inefficient, especially if you think that the great idea you're looking for is one that someone else might have thought of already. In such instances, you'll want to put yourself in a place where there's a high probability of encountering an Already-Formed Awesome Idea. You'll be trolling instead of splashing. (Or trawling-- apparently, both spellings are acceptable.) Let's talk about some places to find AFAIs.

PostSecret is one place to go to get condensed, concentrated peeks into the emotional lives of other people. It's run by a guy in Germantown, Maryland, who started soliciting people to write their secrets on postcards and mail them to him (anonymously) for publication. Entries can be happy, confessional, tragic, elated, shy, and everything in between. The site updates every Sunday; previous installments aren't easily available because the postcards are also copied, compiled, and published in PostSecret books for purchase. If nothing else, it's a shining example of how a executing a simple idea can grow into wonderful complexity.  There are also PostSecret tours and college campus events.  Go check it out.  (One small caution: some of this stuff gets pretty personal/intense; I have yet to see a PostSecret update that didn't contain a postcard that made me at least a little uncomfortable.)

UbuWeb contains a huge huge huge collection of avant-garde writings, recordings, images, video, you name it. A lot of it is centered around intensely experimental artists and projects like Fluxus and the like. UbuWeb is also the Internet home of one of my favorite AFAI-hunting spots: the 365 Days Project. One totally weird mp3 file for each day of the year, twice over. (Again, some of the stuff here isn't safe for little kids or net-surfing at work. On the other hand, it's also not a bad spot to go for a quick laugh. Or for unlikely cross-cultural hybrids. Or for stuff that's so badly conceived and executed that you'll immediately want to create something good to cancel it out.)

Links to these sites also live in the blogroll in the right-hand column of this page.

There are tons of places like these on the Internet; I'll occasionally re-post on this topic with new sites to check out (probably when I'm having trouble thinking of other topics to post about).  Most friends I know have one or two favorites of their own-- if you know of a site like these, feel free to leave a comment about it.