Some of the best ideas start as vague concepts in written form, and not all of them translate to reality successfully.
Imagine the first time people heard of how retrieving information and communicating with others long before the advent of the digital age when people used rotary phones.
The number of times that written introduction must've been laughed off must've been a common occurrence.
But no matter how awful it sounds, bold concepts have to start somewhere, right?
Curious to hear from strangers online about exceeding expectations, Redditor treny0000 asked:
"What's an example of an idea that's terrible on paper but worked brilliantly in reality?"
People's lives have benefitted from these major life-changing ideas.
Information Evolution
"As someone who spent a lot of time around 2005 trying to describe it to some very skeptical people, I would definitely say Wikipedia."
– vanityklaw
"I can't believe this is so low. There's no reason Wikipedia should work. Yet it's really one of mankind's greatest accomplishments."
– gsfgf
Driving Benefits
"Let's drive a car with a GPS and a camera down EVERY STREET ON EARTH!"
– A_MonsantoBreakfast Staple
"Toast."
"'Hey let's take something we already finished baking and heat it up again.' The person who first came up with it must have sounded crazy."
– Crafty_Soul
When people's lives are at stake, there are no bad ideas.
Bold Rescue
"A plane has crashed in the jungles of New Guinea. Three survivors have found a village and managed to get communication. There's no way to get an airplane room to land and take off, and helicopters can't make it into the valley."
"I know! We'll airdrop medical personnel and supplies for a glider, assemble it, and slingshot it into the air! Then, we'll catch it with a tow-plane."
"It worked."
– algae429
Trapped Soccer Team
"The way they extracted those kids from the cave in Thailand. The diver and anesthesiologist (first off, how f'king lucky to find somebody with that overlap in skills) who was consulted and joined the effort said it was a terrible idea. It was only when presented with the other options that he realized this terrible idea was truly their best option."
"They rescued all the kids and their coach successfully."
– pittstop33
Someone fortunately listened to these ideas with an open mind, and the world was forever changed.
The Big Dreamer And Doer
"In the 1700s, this guy named Timothy Dexter had a few of these."
"Bed warmers are useful in cold climates, but he took a shipload of them to the Caribbean for sale. They were sold to the molasses industry as ladles and turned a handsome profit."
"He took a load of mittens to the same place. Some Asians bought them to sell onward to Siberia."
"Newcastle was a major coal-mining area. He took a shipload of coal there for sale, arrived during a major miner's strike, and turned a big profit."
"He did the mittens thing again, this time to the South Seas, and arrived just in time to sell them to some Portuguese traders on their way to China."
– existentialpenguin
The Cynic
"What, Sir? Would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense.”
"Napoleon Bonaparte, regarding the steam engine."
– nicetrylaocheREALLY
Going Places
"Louis Brennan, inventor of the gyro monorail. His monorail was a single-track train that used a gyroscope-based balancing system to remain upright. The designs look insane on paper but it was crazy innovative, safe for passengers, and was apparently even faster than the regular trains (of those days)."
– NervousSeagull
Cats deserved their own category.
The Memory That Doesn't Go Away
"CATS, the Broadway musical. A nonsense fever dream about horny catpeople competing to die and be reborn (yes, that is the plot, insofar as CATS has one), based on a book of silly short poems by T.S. Eliot that are not really related to each other except all being about cats. Just catpeople introducing themselves and rubbing on each other for several hours, then one of them "ascends" aka dies."
"To date, CATS has made over a billion dollars worldwide."
– ScaryBoyRobots
"To date the only production I’ve walked out of midway through. I had no idea what it was about. Figured, CATS is famous, sure I’ll go. Intermission: I confirmed there was actually no plot and was just done."
– Brideshead
It's Raining Cats
"Dropping a whole bunch of cats by parachute over Borneo to stop the spread of plague."
– ceruleanbear8Medical science research papers must've looked insane.
Finding A Cure
"Attempting to cure syphilis with malaria. Brilliantly worked is a stretch, though."
– bitsplease_
"The inventor won a Nobel prize for it, too. Gotta love early 19th-century medical solutions."
– Nafeels
"sounds similar to modern chemo. Let's poison you and hope it kills cancer faster than it kills you."
– aliensheep
You have to take risks.
Watch What Happens
"Putting out oil well fires by blowing them up."
– The_Real_Scrotus
"Similarly, controlling the spread of forest fires by lighting pre-emptive fires."
– xkulp8
It always doesn't have to be life-changing, but sometimes, you just gotta go for broke.
Unusual Pet
"Have you ever heard of the 'Pet Rock' phenomenon? It sounded absurd to sell rocks as pets. On paper, it was a headache, but in reality, in the 70s, people went crazy about it. Sometimes, the craziest ideas spark the most!”
– FinelyTrail
"The guy made a million dollars! You know.. I had an idea like that once. It was a JUMP to conclusions mat! You'd have this mat, and on it would be different CONCLUSIONS that you could JUMP to!"
– JPMoney81
Playing God
"The Sims computer game. It sounds like the stupidest idea ever - who would want to control a Sim character doing all the mundane sh*t we do every day. How boring. But I played the sh*t out of the Sims, then the subsequent versions."
– mst3k_42
Back In The Day
"A movie rental company that mails you DVDs. I thought it was the sh*ttiest idea when it first came out when I could drive 5 minutes to Blockbuster and get whatever I wanted then."
– biscovery
We take them for granted now, but I imagine the written proposal for the first smartphones must've been wild.
The fact that an iPhone could be used to guide 120,000,000 Apollo-era spacecraft to the moon is incomprehensible.
It's true. Smartphones are exponentially more powerful than the guidance computer used by NASA for the famed Apollo 11 mission that enabled man's first spaceflight to the moon.
Nowadays, we use all that juice on my phone for crushing candies.
