What happens when Crowdwish grants your wish

I first heard about Crowdwish back in March, when the website tricked the infamous Katie Hopkins into signing her own gagging order, when someone wished that ‘Katie Hopkins was the subject of a gagging order banning her from any form of public speaking.’

The website and app works by allowing users to make wishes, with others clicking ‘me too’, if they have the same desire. Everyday, at 7pm, Crowdwish grants the most popular wish of the day before, and on Friday, mine was the one chosen!

When I got the tweet from Crowdwish on Friday morning, telling me that my wish was the chosen one, I was extremely excited, but I actually couldn’t remember what I’d asked for! It turned out that I had wished for ‘the motivation to lose weight’. So, I spent the day wondering how they’d grant that wish, thinking I’d just get sent some motivational Instagram quotes like, ‘You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great’ etc.

After being asked what was stopping me from being able to lose weight, to which I replied ‘I love food and alcohol too much’, and how much weight I wanted to lose and by when, to which I gave a realistic goal of a stone by the end of the year (which my friend made me realise is actually going to be quite hard, because of Christmas), Crowdwish informed me that they were offering me £100 if I managed to achieve the goal I’d set myself.

A list of ways to help others lose weight was written on the blog too, including a suggestion of cutting out bread and pasta, which I’m not sure I can do (what do you eat for lunch without pasta or bread when you don’t like salad?), and a tip to drink as much water as alcohol, so the toilet will be my new best friend. I do think the £100 incentive was a very good idea, even if I’m not sure I can keep to the tips Crowdwish offered up.

The founder of Crowdwish, Bill Griffin told me his favourite wishes are the obscure wishes, like the Katie Hopkins one, as the company gets to be imaginative with how they grant the wish.

He said: “We don’t completely fulfil wishes, but we can always do something, no matter how metaphysical the wish is. Our motto is that a journey starts with a single step, so, if someone were to wish for world peace, we could do something like produce hoodies, that the money for goes to a charity to do with ending war.”

While my wish wasn’t quite a metaphysical one, I’m impressed with the way they went about granting it, as I would never have thought they’d try and motivate me with money, so it was a lovely surprise!

The Crowdwish app is available to download on the App Store.

Hayley Minn