Tragedize

For free: Chrome Extension, never installed

August 2018

In the world of literature, there’s a famous six-word story that’s often attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s a miniature tragedy that has lost it’s impact in a world that has already meme-d it thousands to times over. I found myself wondering what it would look like if I brought that intended level of gravity and poetic depth to the mundane world of online shopping.

A Poetic Experiment

For a fun little Chrome Extension experiment, I decided to do just that. Tragedize was a simple browser extension that focused on a single website: Zappos. When a user with the extension installed visited the an item’s page on Zappos, the extension would programmatically alter the product titles, replacing the standard descriptions with something a bit more evocative and, well, tragic.

Technical Implementation

The extension was a simple exercise in content script injection and DOM manipulation. I had to write a script that would scan the page for the product title section and then manipulate that into a new string.

Screenshots

Looking Back

While Tragedize was never intended to be a serious or even a particularly useful tool, it was a fun way to explore the intersection of literature and the modern web. It was also a great introduction to the world of Chrome Extension development, which I would later use for more practical projects. This project taught me the value of simple, focused experimentation and how even a small, silly idea can be a great way to learn a new set of technical skills.

For free: Chrome extension, never installed.