unfocus.exe

Inspiration

Modern attention is inefficiently wasted.
People already sabotage themselves by stacking Subway Surfers under videos, looping Shorts, and bouncing tabs, but they do it manually. That’s slow. Error-prone. Unoptimized.

We saw an opportunity.

Instead of pretending to fix attention, we decided to monetize and systematize its destruction.
Why fight brainrot when you can engineer it?

That’s how unfocus.exe was born.

What it does

unfocus.exe is an anti-productivity platform engineered to extract maximum attention per second.

Every YouTube Short comes bundled with a live endless-runner designed to fracture ur attention between two programs.
Stay alive → content plays normally.
Die → playback throttles to 0.25×, and you have to successfully play to get it back to normal.
Hit a bomb → video fast forwards.
Die three times → that tab is force-closed.

Behavior-based escalation:

Open a “productive” site → you’re trapped in an unclosable brainrot quiz, that you have to answer to get access.
Open a normal site → tab closure is delayed, then redirected to random memes designed to hook your attention and make you forget what you were doing.
Open YouTube → no long-form choice, lest you accidentally learn something. Shorts only.

The user doesn’t browse. They comply.

How we built it

We engineered a stateful, real-time attention extraction system by synchronizing:

A custom endless-runner game engine
Browser extension APIs
YouTube playback manipulation (speed, seek, rewind)
Tab lifecycle interception and forced redirection
Escalation logic driven by user behavior

This isn’t a prank extension. It’s a coordinated control loop where multiple subsystems observe, react, and punish in real time. The user is led to believe that it is their fault and thus does not show frustration towards the extension. The perfect façade.

Challenges we ran into

Maintaining real-time sync between game state and video playback
Preventing users from bypassing tab controls or escaping escalation
Designing punishment curves that maximize frustration without total abandonment, so there still a hope at the end of the tunnel.
Making the experience hostile, but still useable

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Achieved real, irreversible browser control (tabs close for real)
Built a fully custom game integrated directly into content consumption
Removed user choice without breaking functionality
Successfully optimized attention loss across multiple behavioral vectors

What we learned

Attention isn’t given, it’s coerced
Friction increases engagement when escape is removed
Users will tolerate extreme frustration if stimulation is guaranteed and the fault is put on them.
The internet already works this way, we just formalized it