Marina Fujiwara/YouTubeAn intriguing device has been invented by a Japanese YouTuber – a light that ‘blinks’ every time someone posts about a break up.
Apparently, it was invented to make people feel better about being single over the festive period, but I think it makes you feel more a sense of schadenfreude than anything…
But aside from feeling some form of joy at other people’s failed relationships, the quirky gadget – which isn’t available to buy yet – could be an interesting gift for a fellow singleton.
PexelsThe bulb might look ordinary, but after connecting to the internet through a ‘bridge’, alerts can be set to detect new social media posts about breaking up and then trigger the light bulb to blink.
Marina Fujiwara, who created the device, wrote on her blog about the ‘huge sense of loneliness’ she feels when seeing other couples enjoying Christmas together.
Marina’s blog reads (translated):
>I really hate Christmas. It’s not a light joke like ‘Christmas or perish’, but I really don’t like it.
I want to celebrate Christmas. But when you see a couple in the world going on a Christmas date and doing something like that, I am attacked by a huge sense of loneliness.
Fuijiwara goes on to explain how a ‘hobby’ of hers is to search the word ‘parting’ on Twitter after following an account created by some high school students who tweet about their anniversaries and other special occasions. After discovering that, when the various couples break up, their shared accounts change their icons and descriptions to ‘parted’.
PexelsFollowing this, Fuijiwara created the interesting light bulb that will glow every time someone tweets about parting or changes their status to ‘parted’.
She explained how the device works with a popular IoT home appliance that allows you to adjust the brightness of your lights from your phone.
She said:
This [appliance] is a popular IoT home appliance that allows you to adjust the brightness and colour of the light bulb from your smartphone. Also, if you connect to other apps and turn on the electricity when you go home, the possibilities are endless.
First of all, connect a ‘bridge’ that will become a hub to connect the light bulb to the Internet. Setup is completed by simply connecting to a WiFi router at home with a LAN cable. Very easy.
Following all this, you can create a ‘trigger’ through Twitter with words like ‘break up’ or similar terms, which will then cause the light bulb to glow.
I mean, to me it all sounds like a bit of a farce just to get a light bulb to glow; I’d rather just turn the light on without knowing other peoples’ relationships have broken down, but each to their own.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.