There’s a website called One Million Scam (note: not MY website).
The premise is simple and beautiful: the creator wants to raise one million dollars total from the internet, one tiny donation at a time. And what do you get for contributing?
Absolutely nothing.
No dashboard.
No login.
No AI-powered synergy engine.
No “Pro” tier that unlocks the ability to export your own data.
Just a big, beautiful button that says:
Give me one dollar. (Or more, your choice.)
And the worst part — the part that should make every SaaS founder stare into the middle distance — is that this joke is still more honest than half the software I’ve used in the last decade. (And it’s “generated” almost $70 in “revenue” so far!)
The purity of the scam
There’s something refreshing about a scam that doesn’t even pretend to offer value.
No dark patterns.
No onboarding funnel.
No “We noticed you haven’t finished setting up your workspace!” emails.
No mascot named “Tasky” who pops up to explain features you’ll never use.
Just:
Give me money. I will do nothing.
It’s SaaS stripped down to its primordial essence.
The primordial subscription.
The final boss of recurring billing.
Honestly, it’s the first business model in years that feels spiritually aligned with the modern software economy.
We’ve been conditioned to pay for nothing
Let’s be honest: we’ve all been slowly trained to accept that “nothing” is a feature.
- “Unlimited” storage that is aggressively limited
- “AI copilots” that hallucinate with the confidence of a mediocre improv troupe
- “Productivity tools” that require more maintenance than the tasks they’re supposed to simplify
- “Cloud services” that go down exactly when you need them, like a toddler in a grocery store
One Million Scam simply removes the middleman.
It removes the pretense.
It removes the UI/UX team that spent six months designing a button with “just the right amount of whimsy.”
It is the first product brave enough to say:
You’re not paying for value. You’re paying because you’ve been emotionally groomed by the subscription economy.
The subscription economy has broken our brains
Somewhere along the way, we accepted that everything must be a subscription.
Everything.
Want to use your printer? Subscription.
Want heated seats in your car? Subscription.
Want to export your own notes? Subscription.
Want the “premium” version of a flashlight app? Subscription.
Want to breathe near a Peloton? Probably a subscription. (Fortunately for me, my employer pays for a limited Peloton subscription so that I can use their videos — well, most of them — for free.)
We are frogs in a pot, except the pot is a recurring billing cycle and the water is lukewarm disappointment.
One Million Scam is the first product that says:
Let’s stop pretending. You’re not buying a service. You’re buying the idea of buying a service.
The [LAPSE... brain dead] Premium Tier
Naturally, this got me thinking:
What if I launched a premium tier for Lapse Brain Dead?
For $1,000,000 per month, subscribers would receive:
- Nothing
- No features
- No dashboard (but we will send you a screenshot of a dashboard from another product, if you send us enough emails asking for it)
- No login (you can try, but nothing will happen). If you really want a login, contact us and maybe we’ll make a fake login page…
- No newsletter (unless I accidentally send you a test draft at 2 AM)
- No merch (unless you count an empty cardboard box — or rather, the image of one at the top of this post)
- No AI agent (but if one shows up, it’s not ours)
- No early access (to anything, but you can subscribe to our RSS feed to watch us not ship updates in real time)
- No Discord (we lost the password)
- No roadmap (we drew one once, but the dog ate it — if you want something to look at, maybe see our sitemap? — warning: it's raw XML, like nature intended)
- No roadmap updates (because see above)
- No “We’re excited to announce…” emails (we’re not excited — see the newsletter notice above)
- No “We’re sunsetting this feature you liked” emails (there are no features; see point #2 above)
- No “We’ve updated our privacy policy” emails (we haven’t, but you can always check out our privacy notice, as many times as you want. For free.)
Just the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you’ve participated in the purest business model ever invented.
Honestly, it might be the most ethical product I’ve ever offered. (And if you actually do want to contribute to my debt‑reduction/retirement fund, hit me up at the Contact page and I'll give you my PayPal, Venmo, and bank routing and account numbers, no questions asked.†)
The real joke
The real punchline is that One Million Scam isn’t a scam at all.
It’s a mirror.
It reflects back the absurdity of modern software pricing.
It exposes the hollowness of “value propositions” that are really just marketing Mad Libs.
It reminds us that somewhere along the way, we stopped asking a very basic question:
What am I actually paying for?
And maybe that’s why I love it.
Because in a world full of products pretending to be more than they are, One Million Scam is the only one honest enough to say:
I’m nothing.
Give me money anyway.
Totally unrelated side note: I recently discovered that dishwasher rinse agent is not, in fact, optional. I thought it was like fabric softener — a scam invented by Big Laundry. Turns out it actually does something. And I'm not (really, maybe only?) talking spots: I thought dishwashers "just don't dry dishes well" — turns out, I just needed to add Finish Jet-Dry Rinse Aid to the appropriate spot (hey, I guess they do make that "rinse agent holder" for a reason!), and bang! didn't even have to use the "extra dry" option to get the dishes almost completely dry!
†Obviously I’m not going to give out my banking info, but if you do want to support me — even a cup of coffee or something — seriously, hit me up and let’s talk. I’d definitely appreciate it.
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