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Do more weird

From Hogpedia, the free encyclopedia

This article documents company lore. It is written in the same register as the rest of Hogpedia, but the subject is an in-joke and not a product. For the products, see Category: Products.

"Do more weird" is a stated PostHog company value.[2] It is also a documented practice with its own handbook page, which the handbook opens by conceding that for some, and possibly all, of the company it is "not just a benign corporate value" but "a way of life. A craft, to be honed."[1]

The thesis[edit]

The handbook states the reasoning plainly: PostHog's competition for attention is not other business software companies, but the internet as a whole – memes, TikTok, Hacker News. The company's response is to bring a consumer mindset to a business context.[1]

Two clauses in that statement do most of the work. The practice aims at awareness of the brand among product engineers at high-growth companies, and the handbook says explicitly that it is not trying to make people sign up.[1] A marketing activity with no conversion target is unusual enough to be worth recording.

Rules[edit]

The handbook sets out the conditions under which weirdness is permitted.

  • It is a numbers game. About 95 per cent of ideas are expected to go nowhere, and of the ones attempted only some will succeed.[1]
  • It must be genuinely entertaining. The stated test is whether the author would enthusiastically share it with a friend.[1]
  • Feedback must address the idea, not the feasibility. The handbook states that weird ideas are fragile, so the useful question is "do I think this is a good idea" and not "can we do it".[1]

Recorded examples[edit]

The handbook lists past output. A selection:

  • DeskHog, an open-source developer toy.[3]
  • A hot dog cart taken to a conference.
  • Bus advertising in San Francisco.
  • Action figures of a co-founder, with an accompanying advertisement.
  • A fake boardroom, with a fake board meeting, at a conference.
  • The Hacker News feed placed inside the PostHog setup wizard.
  • A data processing agreement generator with fairy tale, pop-star, and Gen Z slang versions.[5]
  • A feet pics page, which the handbook notes ranked on Google for "feet pics" for a period.
  • Hedgehog Mode, with an accompanying documentary.[4]

The handbook also records that PostHog Desktop was made to say "meep".[1]

Controversy[edit]

The handbook devotes a section to what the practice is not, which amounts to a list of the ways it fails.[1]

Corporate try-hard. Described as "how do you do fellow kids" energy. The handbook states the company knows it when it sees it.

"Marketing team do some work." Having an idea for someone else to execute is permitted; expecting them to execute it is not, because other teams have their own weird ideas.

In-jokes. The handbook is specific that the output must be funny to a person who does not work at PostHog, and proposes a test: describe it to a friend, a partner, or a stranger, and see whether they laugh.

That last rule is the interesting one, because it disqualifies most of what a company finds funny about itself. This encyclopedia does not claim to pass it.

See also

References

  1. ^PostHog handbook, "Do more weird"
  2. ^PostHog handbook, "Values"
  3. ^DeskHog, an open-source developer toy
  4. ^Hedgehog Mode
  5. ^PostHog DPA generator
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This page was last modified on October 7, 2026.

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