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It’s 11:38pm on a Thursday and I’m in the QuirkChat office here in Tulsa. I made a checklist of all the things to do to get ready to announce the beginning of something called rrecess and writing this reflection is the last thing on the list. I have purposefully procrastinated this task to the last possible moment as I try to gather what these last several years have been like building Quirk.

I’m not going to lie…..this feels weird.

Let me back up a bit for those who don’t know me or who recently came across the app.

I’m Bee Law, the founder and CEO of QuirkChat, and I’ve been working on some version of a product for the geek fandom community (especially women and Blerds) for over 5 years now. Before QuirkChat was the Quirktastic app, as well as the convention app, Connie (rip March 2020) and The Quirk Shop. Even before all of this, I had my personal blog, QBL that was the spark that launched everything else. In short, I*’m not new to this, I’m true to this (lol)*. anyone remember the unicorn logo?

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Well, let’s not hold the suspense. As the title shows, I’ve decided to sunset Quirktastic, Inc.’s main product, QuirkChat. The last day to access accounts on the app will be September 1st.

We came to the decision for multiple reasons:

(1) the app is unfortunately poorly built and literally cannot scale. While we finally have been able to build an in-house tech team that knows what they are doing, it makes sense to build a better product.

(2) if you replace and repair every piece of a boat overtime, is it even the same boat? That’s how I feel about QuirkChat/Quirktastic app/Connie/The Quirk Shop and the multitude of now ghost followers on the corresponding social medias. We were forced to pivot so much during the pandemic and economic downfall, and we haven’t really stopped to see if we truly like what we are building. While QuirkChat serves a purpose, we know that it’s not serving our overall mission of helping to create a more cohesive, less toxic fandom industry.

(3) the word “quirky” in the way we were using it makes me cringe. Growing up, I was always the “quirky, Black girl” and thought it would be cool to try to reclaim the word. Regardless, liking whatever you like shouldn’t be deemed as quirky or weird; it’s what makes you you!

(4) piggybacking off of point 3, I plan to build an industry-defining company. I’m not sold that the concept (and name) of QuirkChat could compete with the next generation of social media.

So what’s next?

We are building a new app called rrecess (yes, there are two r’s; think r&r: rest and recreation). rrecess will be a platform that acts as a mindful daily digital break for your inner geek. With this new product, we really want to tackle all of the things that we want to see improved in the geek fandom community while also addressing and hopefully fixing a lot of the things that makes social media suck.

Many of QuirkChat’s users remember when geeky fandoms were heavily gatekeeped, and know how lonely it can be if no one shared your interest in anime, comics or kpop.

We decided to rebrand as rrecess to explore what free time could look like if we pursued our hobbies intentionally with likeminded people and without the constraints of societal age limits.