Best startup idea ever

[flexagon]

My straddle workout in the gym went well today... touched my chest down at the end and had a good startup idea.

flexagon: does straddle L-sit, using big kettlebells as parallettes
Guy: No way, you are not doing that!
flexagon: I am totally doing it. I will do it for 20 seconds.
Guy: Wow.
flexagon: 10 seconds.
Guy: I want to be you!
flexagon: Okay, sure! You can be me. Annnnd, done. Wait -- can I still be me, too?

Turns out he has a bunch of circus friends... we both know harm_city_heart and several others. And starting from that conversation we came up with, basically, Zipcar for bodies. Except it's more a peer-to-peer lending thing, so it's RelayRides for bodies.

The way it works is, you get to be in a body for some amount of time that you rent. You have to treat the body well -- maybe eat in certain ways, maybe have only protected sex, or maybe everyone who puts a body up for rent get to set their own terms of use. We figure this would be amazing... imagine, to feel what it's like to be the Ant with all that massive shoulder strength, or feel what it's like to be a contortionist who can do the splits totally cold. Or, what would it feel like to be really fat? Really short, really tall? Of course everyone would have some period of just wanting to know what the other gender's genitals feel like from the inside, but this stage would probably wear off quickly.

Beyond recreation, it could change the face of personal training completely. It'd be like "here, take my body and work out with it so you can FEEL its limitations and capabilities". It'd transform medicine similarly: no more asking about pain on a scale of 1 to 10, just let the doctor feel it (while the patient possibly gets some relief).

Ridiculous, but so fun to think about. I have to wonder, if my handstand coach were put in my body, could he even do a handstand at all? Or would he get hurt, trying to rely on strength that wouldn't be there? I like this idea. We need better technology to make it happen, though.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I think about this frequently! I have a lot of pain that is low-level always on in the background, and sometimes I wonder if other people would even recognize it as pain, or whether on the other hand they'd be overwhelmed by it.

[islenskr.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I've had that idea forever. Well, at least I've imagined how weird and awesome and interesting it would be to be in someone else's body for a period of time.

Soooo, what's a straddle L-sit? I'm thinking this is something I can't do, but will still put it on my list of Things to Learn. :)