I’ve built a Q&A platform where the worst answers win. It’s called AskBad and it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Look, we’ve already got Quora, StackOverflow, Reddit, and a dozen other places to ask questions and get helpful, well-researched answers from knowledgeable people. The internet is drowning in good advice. What we’re clearly missing is a dedicated space for absolutely terrible guidance.
AskBad started as a satirical reverse StackOverflow. You know those answers on Stack Overflow that make you question whether the person has ever touched a computer? Imagine a whole platform celebrating those. The worse your answer, the more upvotes you get. You earn negative karma. There are badges for being spectacularly unhelpful.
Someone asks how to centre a div? Tell them to use twelve nested tables and inline styles. Relationship problems? Recommend they ghost their partner and adopt seventeen cats. Career advice? Suggest they quit their job to become a professional mime. The community votes up the most gloriously bad suggestions.
After some testing with friends, I realised the concept worked beyond just tech questions. It’s funnier when you expand it to life advice, cooking tips, financial guidance, and everything else people ask the internet about. The satirical anti-expert energy translates surprisingly well across topics.
On the tech side, it’s a fully front-end focused app built with Aurelia 2 and TypeScript. Firebase Firestore handles the database and Firebase Authentication manages user accounts. I wanted something I could ship quickly without worrying about backend infrastructure, and Firebase delivered on that front.
The site is live now at askbad.com. Have a play around, ask some questions, provide some terrible answers. I’d love to know what you think.
I’ll probably end up open sourcing the whole thing eventually. Just need to clean up some of the messier bits and finish off a few features I’ve been meaning to add. For now, go forth and give the worst advice you can muster.