i sought a jam.

How sweet would it be if, while chatting with a buddy, your friend used a phrase like “just the two of us” and instantly the chorus of the Bill Withers hit started playing to both chatters’ utter delight? This is totally possible.

I write this knowing full well that it’s the greatest idea ever and I can’t afford a patent, so whoever implements this, please use it for good rather than evil and make it free to the user (or at least me). But before your eyes go dollar sign, is it really worth it?

Much discussion and thought has gone into this in the last day and a half since the grand notion was conceived, and a couple of people raised some great points that are helping me flesh out the whole concept.

Thanks to thinksketch who laid it all out at Team Brunch this morning, we figured it could basically be a mod of the last.fm client. By that I mean last actively scrobbles your listening habits and has the ability to stream music. But this client (and I really need a name for this soon) is going to be actively parsing your chat, running key phrases against a database and playing the relevant clip to you and your buddy. Just like Twitter’s @reply, there could be a special character that tells the client to take the following phrase as a lyric and search for the appropriate clip.

So this sounds all well and good but what if the chatters don’t share a common cultural context? What if it’s just not funny on the receiving end?

The fun is that this is a natural extension of the kind of humor that’s used every day between friends. When I’m talking to you face-to-face I’m only going to tell a joke that I think you’ll respond to, and if you don’t I steer clear in the future. Much like normal conversation, the usage is completely self-selecting.

By doing this through a separate app, or a chat client add-on, the users have to opt in if they’re open to this kind of humor. So if you’re having a serious conversation, turn it off if you don’t want to hear some glam rock he-va mocking your recent romantic crisis to a chorus of wailing guitar. And get over yourself; there’s no problem in the world that Ziggy Stardust can’t solve.

I mean, just imagine:

“we really had a good thing going…”
[cue: Hang on to Yourself by David Bowie]

See what just happened here? I thought you might respond to that, and BAM! Now you’re laughing your tail off.

So… what if you’re not laughing? Find out in part two coming soon.