Chapter 17 - The Meat Market

During my time working at the students' union, I stumbled upon an unexpected haven of creative freedom. It was one of those rare environments where you could get away with almost anything, and I thrived in that chaos. Between shifts, I poured my energy into one of my earliest web projects: Meat Market.
The concept sounds ridiculous when I try to explain it, but I promise, it was great. Meat Market was a social network with a bizarre twist. Everyone on the platform became a unique cut of meat, assigned to you upon signing up. The system wasn’t just about chatting or posting updates—it had its own ecosystem. Players could take on roles as butchers, buy and sell "meat," and manage their very own virtual fridges.
It was absurd and tongue-in-cheek, but that was the point. The whole thing became a hilarious parody of online interactions, consumer culture, and even the commodification of ourselves on social platforms. The students loved it, partly because it was just so weird, and partly because it felt like an inside joke we were all in on.
Looking back, Meat Market wasn’t just a silly project. It was an experiment in turning the mundane into the extraordinary, a testament to how much you can do when no one’s looking over your shoulder. It’s a bit of a shame that I let it fall by the wayside, but I still think about it now and then.
In a way, Meat Market set the tone for everything I would go on to create: part satire, part innovation, and entirely unapologetic. The idea was never green-lit. Too expensive for a Students’ union.