ActUP

GitHub Project Link

Inspiration

We noticed that scrolling social media often feels serious, repetitive, and brain-rotting. We wondered: what if social media was pure imagination instead of reality? That sparked ActUP — a platform where you temporarily become someone else for fun.

What it does

Each day you choose from three random personas (e.g., Spiderman, Kim Kardashian, NPC TikToker) and post as them. The feed becomes a playful role-play world instead of real life.

How we built it

We used Next.js + React + TypeScript for the frontend, Supabase for auth and Postgres, and Tailwind for styling. Persona prompts, character pools, and logic were generated using Gemini Flash.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing persona chaos with recognizability, designing a feed that stays fun, handling role resets, and avoiding scope creep (voice filters, livestream personas, etc.).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a working end-to-end role-play social experience in under 24 hours, created a unique persona system, and made a social app that actually feels playful instead of exhausting.

What we learned

People crave escapism and creativity more than they admit. Constraints (one persona per day) increase engagement. AI tooling made persona design faster and more fun.