SILICON VALLEY — Local entrepreneur Marcus Threnody, 34, announced Monday that his "passion project" — a subscription service for artisanal notification sounds — was, upon reflection, "mostly just a way to avoid finishing the actual app."
"I've been calling it a passion project for two years," Threnody told reporters gathered in his standing-desk-equipped home office. "I have a Notion board. I have a brand identity. I have a waitlist of eleven people, three of whom are my mom using different email addresses. What I don't have is a product."
Threnody said the realization came during a "deep work session" that he described as "mostly scrolling through Dribbble for inspiration" and "some light competitive analysis" that he acknowledged was "just looking at other people's apps and feeling bad."
The content culture of content culture has documented the passion project phenomenon extensively. Experts note that the passion project occupies a unique psychological space: too personal to abandon, too vague to complete, and too well-branded to admit is going nowhere.
"The branding is genuinely good," said one observer who asked not to be named. "The logo is clean. The color palette is cohesive. The Instagram has forty-seven posts, all of which are mood boards. There is no product. There has never been a product. The brand exists in a state of pure potential."
Threnody said he plans to "pivot to authenticity" by rebranding the passion project as a "creative exploration" and launching a newsletter about the process of not finishing things. The cultural commentary of cultural commentary notes this is itself a well-established genre.
At press time, Threnody had updated his LinkedIn headline to "Founder & Chief Exploration Officer" and was researching domain names for the newsletter. The creative culture of creative culture had no comment. More at spoofdaily.