Some love for EmotionalBagCheck.com
October 28th, 2011
Several months back, I made this project for fun called EmotionalBagCheck.com. It’s a site where you can leave your emotional “baggage”, and then someone else will reply to you with a song they think might be appropriate to your situation. The songs come in through the Grooveshark API, which is kind of fun. I shared the project with my friends, and they thought it was cool, but it didn’t get much traction until September of this year, by which time I’d almost forgotten about it. Suddenly it was getting tons and tons of visitors, largely through articles on Wired UK, Marketplace and Good. I have to say, it feels really good to have one’s work acknowledged, especially when it’s a personal project and not something created to someone else’s specifications.
It’s interesting to watch how media attention turns something small into a perceived “legit” entity. I got a good bit of correspondence referring to “you guys” or “your company” — big press denotes a big entity, I guess. With one reporter, no matter how many times I said, “It’s not a company; it’s just me. There’s not a business model; it’s an art project” she’d shoot back something like “What is your position at the company?” Other people assumed it was built by Grooveshark as a marketing tool. Funny how hard it is to convince people that there’s not a catch.
October 28th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
I love emotional bag check so much! I’ve both used it and sent people songs, and I just think it’s such a great tool/art project/way to connect with other human beings. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of emotional baggage around lately though, everytime I go to the site it tells me to check back later…is it still up and running?
October 28th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
It’s still up and running. The traffic has died down a bit, though.
November 4th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
What a shame! Because I totally love the site. Hopefully some other sites will discover it and it will become popular again … with someone other than 15 year olds.
I tried submitting something when it was getting more traffic and I got back four responses. I actually really liked that; it was great seeing different people’s takes on my problem. One of them was mean but hilarious, two of them kinda bland with pretty obvious songs, and one of them was incredibly sweet and had this great song I’d never heard before. Fascinating!
It made me think it be nice to have a public submission space - for people who don’t mind submitting their baggage publicly. That way people can discuss it and compare the most appropriate songs. It’s nice getting more complex feedback … I saw a few people doing that already on Good.is.
Anyway, thanks so much for making it! Even if it doesn’t get much traffic in future, it was a beautiful idea.
November 17th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Is the site broken? I am trying to use it right now and can’t get it to work!
xoxo!
November 18th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Hi Natalie,
Which part of the site is giving you trouble?
November 21st, 2011 at 6:11 am
The site is constantly saying that it has no emotional baggage for me to carry. Is this just happening to me? I can’t imagine there not being any.
November 21st, 2011 at 7:56 am
Sally, it’s not getting that much traffic anymore, so the baggage is just trickling in slowly. And then other times, we’re just out. I know that spoils the fun. Sorry.
-Robyn
December 26th, 2011 at 12:29 am
Hey Robyn, emotionalbagcheck was such a great idea. A nice feature you could add in the future is a checkbox where the song sender would mark if he wanted the receiver to be able to contact him for further talk through e-mail (not be anonymous). They could chat and exchange more songs/advices after. Good luck!
December 28th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
hey, just wanted to say what a great site you have. i hope it never goes away! ha. i think it’s just so awesome to unload anonymously and get such a super fast response from somewhere out there. It definitely makes me feel less alone in my neuroses
but seriously, i think it says something optimistic about the human condition, that people are reaching out to each other in this way without any strings attached (on either end). keep it up!!!
January 30th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Hi Robyn,
I was just introduced to emotionalbackcheck.com this weekend. I love the simplicity of the idea and your execution of it.
Just when I was going to blog about it, I see that you had to take it down for a while. I hope it comes back soon!!
And, keep those great art projects coming!