When I was a kid, I played a lot of games where the main story was almost beside the point.

Yes, there was a dragon to defeat, a kingdom to save, a final boss waiting at the end of a long road. But what I remember most are the small things. An old man in a village who had lost his cat. A shopkeeper who needed someone to deliver a letter across town. A stranger who would trade you a lantern for a fish you happened to be carrying. None of these side quests changed the fate of the world. They just made the world feel alive, and made me feel like I belonged in it.

Then I grew up, and real life turned out to have a very loud main quest. Study. Pass the exams. Get into a good university. Get a job. Get a better job. Somewhere along that road, I noticed something strange: I was surrounded by people, but I barely knew anyone who lived within a hundred metres of me.

This is the story of why I built Abang 阿帮 (A BANG!), a local social app that turns swapping items and helping neighbours into real-life side quests, and how I built it on my own, with AI.

The loneliness nobody talks about at the lift

In 2023, the US Surgeon General, Dr Vivek Murthy, published an advisory with a title that stopped a lot of people in their tracks: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. It noted that in recent years about one in two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness, and that the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. [1]

That comparison comes from a 2010 meta-analysis led by Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad; as she points out, the accurate phrasing is that "lacking social connection is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day", not that loneliness is literally smoking. [2][3] But the point holds: social connection is part of health.

And this isn't only an American story. In June 2025, the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Connection reported that around 1 in 6 people worldwide experience loneliness, with young people aged 13–29 among the most affected (roughly 17–21%). It estimated that loneliness is linked to about 871,000 deaths a year. [4][5] WHO defines loneliness as the painful gap between the social connection you want and the connection you actually have.

I did my undergraduate degree in China and my master's in Digital Marketing at King's College London. In both places, in very different cities, I felt that gap. In Chinese, the anthropologist Xiang Biao has a phrase for it that went viral among young people: "the disappearance of the nearby" (附近的消失). We know what's happening on the other side of the world, and we know what's happening inside our own heads. What we've lost is the space in between: the neighbour, the person who sweeps the street, the shop on the corner. [6][7]

The nearby didn't vanish because people stopped caring. We stopped having reasons to talk to each other. Nobody knocks on a door to say "let's be friends". But almost everyone would help find a lost cat.

The lost cat and the infinite scroll

Here's a scene many will recognise. You're scrolling Douyin (or TikTok, or Reels) and a video comes up: someone's cat has gone missing near their apartment block. You feel a pang. Then your thumb moves, and the next video is a cooking hack, and the one after that is a joke. Thirty seconds later, the cat is gone from your mind.

A few days later, you're taking the bins out and you see a cat by the bushes that looks... familiar. Didn't someone post about a cat like this? But which video was it? Which account? Was the phone number in the caption or the comments? You scroll back through your history and can't find it. The clue is right in front of you, and the owner is still waiting.

The problem isn't kindness; it's structure. Back in 1971, the economist Herbert Simon wrote that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention", because what information consumes is the attention of its recipients. [10] Infinite feeds are built to win the next second of that attention, not to hold on to information that matters. A lost-pet post is local (the people who might actually see the cat live within a few kilometres) and persistent (it stays relevant until the cat is home). The feed treats it as global and instant: shown to strangers far away who can't help, then buried within seconds.

This is why Abang is built around a map rather than a feed. A "find my cat" quest is pinned to the place where the cat went missing, and it stays there until it's resolved. So when you actually see that cat, you don't need to remember where you saw the post. You just open the map, look at what's nearby, and the owner's request is right there. Tap to help and message them. A feed asks "what do you want to watch next?" A map of quests asks "who near you needs a hand?"

Abang's home screen: a map of side quests pinned near you, not a feed.

Meanwhile, our cupboards are full

The other thing I kept noticing was stuff.

The pan you can't take with you when you graduate. The lamp you bought for a flat you've since moved out of. The gift from an ex that you'll never use but can't quite bring yourself to bin. We buy easily, and then we get stuck. Selling things second-hand means taking photos, setting a price, haggling, packing, posting. For a lot of small items, it never feels worth the effort, so they sit there, or they go in the rubbish.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one of the main voices on the circular economy, estimates that the equivalent of one rubbish truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second, and that more than half of fast fashion is disposed of within a year. [8][9] That's just clothing. The core idea of a circular economy is simple: keep products and materials in use, at their highest value, for as long as possible. [9]

What struck me was that the easiest loop isn't global at all. It's local. The thing gathering dust in your cupboard might be exactly what someone two streets away is looking for. The problem isn't supply or demand. It's that the two can't see each other.

So I made a map of side quests

Abang is my answer to both of those problems at once, and it's built around one idea: your life has a main quest, but it should also have side quests.

In Abang, you can be the NPC who posts a quest, or the main character who takes one on. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• A map of nearby quests. Instead of a feed of strangers' highlights, you open a map of things happening around you: someone has a lamp to swap, someone's cat has gone missing, someone wants to know if the queue at a local restaurant is worth it. Quests stay pinned to their location until they're done, rather than scrolling away.
• Swapping without cash. You list something you no longer need and say what you'd like in return. Swaps involve no money changing hands; you agree the details with the other person in messages.
• Helping with a small reward. If you need a hand, you can post a quest and set a reward in virtual coins. When someone helps and you confirm it's done, they earn coins and "helper points".
• Rankings and announcements. Confirmed help adds up on leaderboards, so kindness gets seen and remembered.
• Virtual coins, not real money. Coins can be used for in-app outfits and virtual assets. They can't be cashed out, and they're not an investment. I was very deliberate about this. I wanted the game layer to make helping feel fun and recognised, not to turn neighbours into gig workers.
• Community moderation. Posts are reviewed before they're shown. When you're meeting people from your area, trust comes first.

A lost-cat quest stays pinned where it happened. Tap "I can help" to respond.

What I love most about the quest format is that the need itself becomes the start of the conversation. No small talk required; the relationship, if there is one, grows out of a swap, a favour, a lost cat.

Swaps are agreed in messages, and no cash changes hands.

Building it alone, with AI

Here's the part people tend to ask about.

I don't come from a computer science background. My undergraduate degree was in Film Studies at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and my master's was in Digital Marketing. For most of my life, "build an app" was something I assumed I would need a team, a technical co-founder and a lot of money to do.

AI changed that equation for me. I built Abang as a solo creator, with AI as my collaborator throughout the process: thinking through product logic, turning ideas into working code, and shaping the experience end to end. AI didn't have the idea, and it didn't decide what Abang should feel like. It did let one person with a very specific, very old dream actually ship it.

A few honest reflections from the process:

1. AI makes building faster, but it doesn't make deciding easier. The hardest questions were never technical. Should coins be convertible to cash? (No.) Should posts go live instantly, or be reviewed first? (Reviewed.) Should swaps involve money? (No.) Those are values questions, and you can't outsource them.
2. My film background mattered more than I expected. Film teaches you to think in scenes and characters. "NPC" and "main character" aren't just cute labels. They're a way of letting people step into a role that makes asking for help, or offering it, feel less awkward.
3. Solo doesn't mean alone. Building by yourself makes you aware of how much you need other people's feedback, which is why Abang is in private beta now.

Confirmed help earns helper points and a spot on the leaderboard (demo data).

What a side quest actually means

I want to be careful not to oversell this. Loneliness is a structural problem. It's tied to how we work, how we house ourselves, how our cities are designed. No app fixes that, and I don't think the answer to "we spend too much time on our phones" is simply "here's another app".

But I do believe in lowering the cost of the first step. Xiang Biao talks about "the first 500 metres", meaning starting from yourself and the space immediately around you, as opposed to the "last 500 metres" that delivery platforms optimise for. [7] That's what I want Abang to be: a reason to step into your first 500 metres.

A side quest is small by definition. It doesn't need to become a friendship. It doesn't need to change your life. You hand over a lamp. You take a photo of a cat you spotted on your way to work. Someone says thank you. For a moment, the person next door is no longer a stranger in the lift, and your neighbourhood feels a little more like a place you live in, rather than a place you sleep in.

When I was a kid, those were the moments that made a game world feel real. I'd like them to make our real world feel a bit more like home.

Come play

Abang is coming soon. It's in private beta right now, and I'd love for you to be one of the first main characters.

• Follow me on X: @CYJISAHUMAN. I share the build, the behind-the-scenes and what I'm learning as a solo AI creator.
• Visit the website (7 languages): https://abang-sidequests.cyj523.chatgpt.site/en/
• Join the beta: email yanjie.chen523@outlook.com with your city and the device you use. Community pilots and partnership enquiries are welcome at the same address.

Life has a main quest. Let's make room for the side quests.

— Yanjie Chen (陈妍洁), Founder of Abang 阿帮 · AI indie creator

Sources

[1] U.S. Surgeon General, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (2023). https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf [2] Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad, "15 Cigarettes". https://www.julianneholtlunstad.com/15-cigarettes [3] The Conversation, "Is loneliness really as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day?" https://theconversation.com/is-loneliness-really-as-damaging-to-your-health-as-smoking-15-cigarettes-a-day-204959 [4] WHO, "Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death" (30 June 2025). https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-linked-to-improved-heath-and-reduced-risk-of-early-death [5] WHO Commission on Social Connection. https://www.who.int/groups/commission-on-social-connection [6] The Paper (澎湃新闻), interview with Xiang Biao on "rebuilding the nearby" (2023). https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_24823590 [7] Yicai (第一财经), interview with Xiang Biao on "the first 500 metres". https://www.yicai.com/news/101599824.html [8] Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A New Textiles Economy (2017). https://content.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/m/6d5071bb8a5f05a2/original/ANew-Textiles-Economy-Redesigning-fashions-future.pdf [9] Ellen MacArthur Foundation, "Fashion and the circular economy". https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/fashion-and-the-circular-economy-deep-dive [10] Herbert A. Simon, "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" (1971). https://gwern.net/doc/design/1971-simon.pdf