Why a joke about “who’s the GOAT” is actually a masterclass in marketplace mechanics
Every cross-border seller I know is obsessed with the wrong question. They ask “how do I rank higher on Amazon?” when they should be asking “how do I build a system where the crowd does my ranking for me?” The first question leads you to a lifetime of chasing algorithm updates, burning cash on Helium 10 subscriptions, and praying to the A9 gods. The second question leads you to something far more valuable: a self-sustaining flywheel where user behavior, not your ad spend, determines visibility. That’s why a silly little Product Hunt launch called whoisthegoat.lol caught my eye. It’s not a serious tool. It’s not going to replace your ERP. But it demonstrates a marketplace mechanic that every DTC operator and FBA brand owner should be stealing within the next 30 days. The product is a joke. The lesson behind it is not.
The product is a joke. The mechanic is not.
Let me break down what whoisthegoat.lol actually does, because the simplicity is the point. The maker, Moss’Ab Mirande-Ney, built a board that ranks 45,000 characters — Cleopatra, Gojo, Mario, Putin, Homer Simpson, Drake — by exactly one metric: how much someone paid to put them there. The highest bid holds the spot until someone else pays more. There’s also an OVERRATED button that, as the maker puts it, “does nothing to the rank and everything to the mood.” Built solo on Murmell in a day, live since this morning.
Now, if you’re a serious Amazon FBA operator reading this, you’re already rolling your eyes. Where’s the PPC automation? Where’s the inventory forecasting? Where’s the multi-channel fulfillment integration? Stop. Look past the meme. What this product has done is compress the entire economics of a marketplace into a single, brutally honest mechanic: willingness to pay is the only ranking signal that matters.
Think about what you do every day on Amazon Seller Central. You’re not ranking products. You’re ranking bids. The algorithm layers in conversion rates, review velocity, and relevance scores, but at the end of the day, the person who spends the most on PPC wins the Buy Box more often than not. This little joke site strips away all the pretense and shows you the raw skeleton of that system. It’s not a toy. It’s a mirror.
Why Amazon sellers should care more than Shopify ones
If you run a Shopify store, you control your own ranking. Your product pages are your real estate. You don’t fight for shelf space; you build the shelf. So this mechanic is interesting to you, but it’s not existentially relevant. You can borrow the gamification, sure. But for Amazon sellers, this is your life. Your entire business hinges on a black-box ranking system that you can’t see, can’t audit, and can’t fully control. You’re already bidding against competitors for every keyword, every placement, every incremental fraction of a conversion rate. This site just makes that fight visible and, frankly, hilarious.
The OVERRATED button is the part that should scare you. It does nothing to the rank. It’s pure emotional venting. But imagine if Amazon had a button like that next to every listing. Imagine if customers could flag a product as overrated without leaving a review, without a purchase requirement, without any friction. The data you’d get from that — the unfiltered sentiment signal — would be worth more than most of your analytics stack. This site gives you that signal for free, on a joke ranking of fictional characters. The lesson is that people will tell you what they really think if you make it effortless and consequence-free. Your review system on Amazon is gated by purchase verification and review guidelines. This is raw id. Pay attention.
What this teaches you about “engagement” that your email tool won’t
You’ve probably spent thousands on Klaviyo flows, segmented audiences, and abandoned cart sequences. You measure open rates, click rates, and conversion rates. All of that is table stakes. What this joke site demonstrates is a different kind of engagement: paid participation. People aren’t just clicking around; they’re spending money to change an outcome. That’s the highest-intent action a user can take, short of buying your actual product.
The maker’s framing is perfect: “The internet has argued ‘who’s the GOAT’ for 20 years and never settled it. So I removed the debate.” That’s the insight. They didn’t build a platform for discussion. They built a platform for resolution through spending. Every marketplace that works — eBay, Etsy, Amazon — works because it converts debate into transaction. You don’t argue about price; you bid. You don’t discuss quality; you review. This site collapses that entire loop into a single action: pay to win.
For your brand, the takeaway is brutal. Your customers don’t want to talk to you. They don’t want to fill out surveys. They don’t want to join your loyalty program. They want to express a preference with their wallet and see it matter. If you can build a mechanic where customer spending directly influences some visible outcome — a charity donation, a product variant, a community ranking — you’re not just selling; you’re creating a stake in the outcome. That’s the difference between a customer and a fan.
Where the math breaks
Now let me be the skeptic in the room. This mechanic works for a joke because the stakes are low and the emotional payoff is high. It does not scale to real commerce without serious friction. Here’s the problem: on whoisthegoat.lol, the “product” is a rank position. The buyer is paying for status, not utility. When you try to translate that to a physical product, you run into the cold reality of margins. If you build a “pay to rank” mechanic into your store, you’re not building engagement; you’re building a pay-to-win scheme that will alienate your non-whale customers. The OVERRATED button works because it’s consequence-free. The moment you tie it to actual discounts or visibility, you’ve created a system for gaming, not for truth.
Also, consider the sustainability. The maker says it was “built solo on Murmell in a day.” That’s the beauty and the curse. There’s no moderation, no fraud detection, no anti-bot measures. For a joke site, fine. For a real marketplace, you’d need to build an entire trust and safety layer that would eat the margins and kill the spontaneity. The raw mechanic is brilliant; the production version is a nightmare. Don’t copy the feature. Copy the principle.
What cross-border sellers can actually borrow from this
Let me give you three concrete, non-obvious takeaways you can implement this week, not next quarter.
First, run a “paid opinion” experiment on your own audience. Pick a low-cost SKU, create a limited edition variant, and let customers bid on what it should be called, what color it should be, or which charity it should support. Use a tool like Gleam or even a simple Shopify app to collect bids. The point isn’t the revenue; it’s the data. You’ll learn what your customers actually value, not what they say they value in a survey. The bid amount is the truth serum.
Second, build a consequence-free feedback loop. Add an “overrated” button to your product pages — not as a public ranking, but as a private signal. Tell customers it “does nothing to the rank and everything to the mood,” just like the joke site. Then watch what gets flagged. You’ll find products that have high ratings but low repeat purchase intent. That’s your hidden churn risk. Most sellers only see the star rating; this gives you the gut reaction.
Third, study the 45,000-character list as a market segmentation exercise. The maker chose Cleopatra, Gojo, Mario, Putin, Homer Simpson, and Drake. That’s not random. That’s a cross-section of global fandoms, political tribalism, gaming nostalgia, and meme culture. If you sell on TikTok Shop or Etsy, you already know that niche identity beats broad appeal. This list is a masterclass in micro-community targeting. Each character has a fanbase that will pay to defend their honor. Your product needs a “character” that people will pay to defend. Find your Gojo.
Where my judgment says it falls short
I’ve praised the mechanic, so let me be clear about the ceiling. This product will not become a business. It’s a portfolio piece, a proof of concept, a meme with a payment gateway. The maker’s own framing — “there’s an OVERRATED button too; it does nothing to the rank and everything to the mood” — is a confession that the core loop is hollow. It’s fun for a day, but there’s no retention loop. You bid, you win, you look at the board, you leave. There’s no reason to come back tomorrow unless someone outbids you, and the emotional trigger to re-engage is weak. For a cross-border seller, this is the cautionary tale: engagement without retention is just a spike in your analytics dashboard.
Also, the monetization is capped. The maximum anyone will pay for a joke ranking is a few dollars, maybe a few tens of dollars if a fanbase gets competitive. There’s no subscription, no recurring revenue, no upsell. It’s a one-shot transaction model with a declining marginal utility. If you build this mechanic into your store, you’ll hit the same wall. Customers will pay once for novelty, twice for nostalgia, and then they’re done. You need a ladder from novelty to habit, and this product doesn’t have one.
Finally, the data is meaningless. The ranking tells you who has the most passionate, richest fans — not who is the actual GOAT. As a market research tool, it’s entertainment, not insight. If you base a product decision on this kind of data, you’ll be building for the loudest, not the largest. That’s a classic trap for DTC brands that mistake virality for validation.
What I’d watch / test next
Here’s what I’d actually do this week, as a cross-border operator, after studying this launch.
First, replicate the mechanic as a social poll on your Instagram or TikTok, not on your store. Use the native polling features to ask your audience who the GOAT is in your niche — best flavor, best size, best use case. Don’t attach a payment; just gauge the emotional intensity. The comments will tell you more than any survey. This takes 20 minutes and costs nothing.
Second, take the “paid opinion” experiment I mentioned and run it on a single SKU with a tight audience. Use your email list, not your entire customer base. Offer a $1 bid option where the winner gets the product for free and the runner-up gets a discount code. You’ll spend less than $50 and learn more about your top customers’ price sensitivity than any Jungle Scout report. The key is to make the bid visible, so people can see the competition heating up. That’s the hook.
Third, watch the Product Hunt page for whoisthegoat.lol for the next 48 hours. The comments section will be a live focus group. See which characters get the most bids, which ones get the most OVERRATED clicks, and how the maker responds to criticism. That’s a real-time case study in community management and marketplace dynamics. You’ll see pricing psychology, tribalism, and trolling all in one thread. Take notes.
Fourth, build your own OVERRATED button, but for real. Add a one-click “this product missed the mark” button to your post-purchase email. Don’t ask for a review; just ask for the gut reaction. The data you collect will be ugly, but it will be honest. And honesty is the one thing your current review system is not giving you.
The lesson from this joke is simple: people will pay to be heard, and they will pay to win. Your job as a seller is to find a way to let them do both without turning your store into a circus. Start small, start cheap, and start this week. The GOAT argument has been running for 20 years. Your next product launch doesn’t need to wait that long.
