I woke up this morning with an idea I thought was good at the time, but turned out to be a really bad one. It was about scalpers, people who bulk buy premium goods like tickets and electronics to force scarcity and resell at higher prices for profit. My idea was that companies could combat them with an opt in reward system involving buyers submitting photos of their IDs. Then on goods redeem, showing the ID to earn the rewards. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I later was made aware that I was hugely underinformed on the risks of data leaks. Anyway, here's how my experience played out.
So it started with a video from a content creator I like. A v-tuber who is preparing for a concert. Ticket scalping hit them and they're upset because their fans either won't be able to attend, or will be forced to pay scalpers for tickets to be able to be there. It got me thinking that maybe the best way to fight scalpers without hurting normal consumers would be to find a way to decrease the value of items scalpers buy, by adding value if you can prove on purchase redeem that you ordered the item directly. Basically, make the items the scalpers have seem even more expensive because you get less out of buying them, so you would be even more dissuaded from paying their exorbitant prices.
After formulating this idea, my next step was to visit ChatGPT, to see if there were any obvious glaring issues with the idea. Of course, I don't trust AI to be perfect in its responses, but I wanted to use an artificial system to tell me if my idea was bad before bringing it up to actual people and risk looking underinformed. ChatGPT let me down here, because while it acknowledged the need for strict data protocols, it didn't mention that companies don't really have much incentive to protect consumer data.
So, feeling like I had a potentially good idea, I went to a chat group I frequent and asked actual people for their impressions. The initial responses were polite, but not supportive of the idea. Which was fine, because I expected that my idea was flawed since it isn't already common practice. But then one person responded by giving me a cringe emote. And that bothered me far more than it probably should, because I'd treated this person nicely in prior interactions.
It got my head spinning very negatively, feeling hurt and angry. I tried reasoning my way through it and emotionally resolving my problem, because I knew this was mostly my autism making me sensitive to the feeling of judgement and opposition. I wanted to be reactive, and the only thing keeping me back was my camouflaging not wanting me to out myself as feeling bothered by their reaction.
After a long while of sitting with this awful feeling, I decided to go back to the chat and thank the group for responding, and raising that the reason I asked was because I have difficulty seeing things from every perspective. This spurred the person who gave the cringe emote to actually give a detailed response. They explained they work in cybersecurity and don't trust companies to protect user information. That if such a rewards program were to be implemented, they would not use it.
Following this, I took some time to read up on the dangers of data leaks, and came to understand how flawed my idea was. I came back and thanked the person, and was able to let go of my grudge over their initial reaction. I managed to avoid overreacting and maintained my positive presence in that group. I feel bad that I brought such a flawed idea up to other people and now maybe look dumb for it, but the whole point of bringing up the idea to people was to find out why it might not work, so I guess I can live with that. But what's important is that I've managed to continue to be a friendly and respectful person in that group, when my feelings really wanted me to do something that would have probably ruined that. So I'll count that as a win.
