There is a cursed vape somewhere in NYC that holds the soul of a Tamagotchi.
If you stop vaping, the digital pet dies.
Only engineers who once worked for Meta and weapons manufacturer Anduril could create a machine so heinous.
A mockup of a Tamagotchi that dies if you stop vaping at the NYU Stupid Hackathon in 2025.© NYU via YouTube.
And thats exactly what they did at the annual NYU Stupid Hackathon last month.
Stupid hackathons are a tradition in the software engineer, hacker, and maker space.
Every year across the country people come together to use their skills to make very dumb things.
The NYU Stupid Hackathon is organized by the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts.
But the vape or die Tamagotchi was the belle of the ball.
The machine is the invention of former Meta employee Rebecca Xun and former Anduril employee Lucia Camacho.
They had originally conceived the machine as a way to help Xun quit vaping.
A traditional Tamagotchi needs many different kinds of love.
It needs to be watered, fed, played with, and groomed.
Users have to clean up its poops and balance its various health meters.
Xun and Camachos digital pet only has one desire: that you keep huffing the vape.
Its very intense, Camacho says in the video as an animation of the Tamagotchi crying plays on screen.
They used a pink Elf Bar BC5000 vape and strapped a tiny screen to it.
Wires run from the screen to some basic components on the back of the Elf Bar.
The Tamaogtchi that dies if you stop puffing was the breakout star of the Stupid Hackathon.
Xunn and Camacho got a lot of attention, but Xuntold Futurismthat the experience hadnt been all positive.
Remember, before the Hackathon she wanted to use a digital pet to help her stop vaping.
Because we tested it so much, we were both diseased from vaping, she said.
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