In 1999 I was working for a software company in San Rafael, CA when a co-worker handed me a piece of paper before a meeting. The paper had BS Bingo printed on it. He had recently received it via email as a Microsoft Word document, and printed out copies for many of his co-workers before this meeting.
While I found it quite amusing, I found the fact that everyone had the same "card" was less enjoyable than it could be.
That night I got the idea to build a web based version of the game using server side scripting. Before doing so, I searched the web with Yahoo! and AltaVista, only to find static versions of the game. Seeing that, I knew I had to make a random version. The version I built that night was hosted on my personal site where it lived for 6 years.
Since then I have received many emails with suggestions for additional phrases, and requests for specialized versions of the game. I could always tell when the link had been sent out on a mailing list, or was recently linked from a high traffic site by the amount of email I would start getting with these sort of requests. Each time these requests came in, I would think about doing more with the page, but one thing was clear, it would need a new home.
In October 2005 after getting linked to from a major blog, getting a new flood of email requests for new features, and a lot of pushing from my co-workers, I decided it was time to move the site to a new home. That night I registered bullshitbingo.net and moved the game over to the new domain.
-- Frank Ledo
Have an idea for a new feature? Let me know!