[dgunn]

I had a similar idea a while back but it didn't have as noble a goal. Really just another time waster but I could (and still do) see some potential.

It was going to be an extension of something like HN or Reddit and it would have been called "Internet Fight!". The premise is that arguments happen all the time on these forum sites and I thought it would be funny to highlight them as the primary content of an application.

I was going to promote it primarily by using it on Reddit first. I would make it easy for anyone to initiate a formal fight between any two reddit users. For example, I may happen across an argument taking place between two users (reddit_user_1 and reddit_user_2) and I would reply to one of them with a link to their fight - say, "www.internetfights.com/reddit_user_1_vs_reddit_user_2/ or something.

It would create highlights, declare a winner at some point, allow others to comment on a parallel thread about the fight itself. I still think it would be great. Someone make it. As many fights as there are on reddit, your go to market plan is basically you just setting around initiating fights til it catches on.

[oxplot]

Interesting. When I first thought about it, the concept of controversy, trouble, fight stood out. I kept thinking how I could declare a side the winning side and stamp a "Fact/Fiction" label on the statement at the end of a set period (ie a week after the statement is posed provided the commenting activity slows down).

I also thought long and hard about people who just wanna stir things up by constantly posting new statements, based on recent news (I even thought of writing a bot initially to generate such statements off news sites).

So what you're describing sounds very familiar to me.