Film the machine.
The Perspective Machine turns one number — an income — into a story: one dot among 8.1 billion, the same money re-lived in 147 countries, and a poverty line most people draw wrong. If you make short video, this page is for you: a demo mode so you never have to reveal your real salary, a replay button for clean takes, and the beats that film best.
Demo mode — film without doxxing yourself
- perspectivemachine.io/?demo pre-fills a fictional income (€12,000 a year in Portugal — the same profile our press stills use). You press "Show me" on camera; the journey runs exactly as it would for a real number.
- Set your own frame:
/?demo=USA:45000— any three-letter country code plus a fictional yearly take-home in local currency. Pick a number your audience will relate to. - It labels itself. A small "Demo — fictional income" ribbon stays on screen and the share card carries a demo stamp — your comment section never has to wonder whether you just revealed your salary.
- Replay this moment. The ribbon's replay button re-runs whatever beat is on stage — the crowd assembles again on cue. A fumbled take never costs a page reload.
Prefer to use your real income? Just use the machine normally — the number never leaves your device either way. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent.
The beats that film best
- The reveal (~7 seconds). The crowd of 8.1 billion assembles for about four seconds, then the machine finds your dot and counts how many people you out-earn. Commit a guess first — the gap between your hunch and the data is the story.
- The drawn poverty line (~15 seconds). You sketch what you think extreme poverty did since 1990; the real line then draws itself in gold over your guess. Nearly everyone draws it wrong — the correction is the single most screenshotted frame the site has.
- The village of 100 (~3 seconds). The whole field collapses into a room of 100 neighbours, you in gold. The fastest "oh" in the journey.
- The re-embodiment (open-ended). Tap countries on the globe and the same income becomes a different person each time — laboratory technician in Switzerland, industrialist elsewhere. This is the improv section; it carries voiceover well.
Three hooks that work
"I typed a salary into this thing and it told me who I'd be in 147 countries."
"This site makes you draw what you think happened to world poverty since 1990. Almost everyone gets it wrong — including me."
"Same money, different country: in Switzerland I'd earn like a lab technician. In Nigeria, an industrialist. Watch."
Screen recording plus voiceover carries all three — no face needed. The layout is phone-first, so portrait framing works out of the box.
Ground rules (all of them friendly)
- Free to film, post, and monetize with a visible credit or link to perspectivemachine.io.
- The numbers are citable. World Bank percentile data, methodology one click away — including what the machine refuses to claim. If a commenter challenges a figure, the methodology page is your receipt.
- Privacy is real, not copy. Incomes are never transmitted or stored; the whole machine runs in the browser. Say so — it lands well.
Assets & contact
Ready-made stills in wide, square and story ratios live on the press page, free to use with credit. For anything else — custom renders, questions on the data, a collab — reach us via newnew.consulting.