I've been building an app I'm calling "anti brain-rot" — a vertical short-feed app, structurally similar to TikTok, but optimized for things worth knowing instead of things that just feel good to watch.
The premise
Short-form video figured out something real about human attention. The dopamine loop, the infinite scroll, the autoplay — it works. The problem isn't the format. The problem is what gets optimized for. Current apps optimize for time-in-app, which in practice means maximizing engagement at the cost of everything else.
You can borrow the same format and optimize for something different. A feed that makes you a little sharper instead of a little duller.
The stack
React Native on the client. The core feed experience is a vertical swipe — card up, reveal answer, swipe to next. The interactions are simple by design; the content is where the work is.
The backend runs on infrastructure I already operate for Burket, which keeps the cost manageable while I'm still figuring out what this thing actually needs to be.
The hard part
Generating trivia that's actually interesting is harder than it looks. Not just factually correct — interesting. Questions that make you go "huh" when you read the answer. That have a reveal, not just a fact. Building a content pipeline that produces those at scale, reliably, is the unsolved problem right now.
The feed works. The content quality isn't where I want it yet. Shipping when it is.