Indian-American man hires woman off Craigslist to slap him every time he uses Facebook; Elon Musk approves

Maneesh Sethi’s peculiar act was advertised in Craigslist back in 2012 and has started doing the rounds on social media nine years later after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to it

Maneesh Sethi, an Indian-American entrepreneur hired a “slapper” off Craigslist to slap him every time he opened Facebook. Sethi, founder of wearable devices brand Pavlok, hired a woman named Kara, for $8 an hour, to watch his screen and slap him if he went on the social media platform.

Maneesh Sethi had credited Kara with helping him up his productivity rate by slapping him every time he got distracted. (Twitter)

Sethi’s peculiar act was advertised in Craigslist back in 2012 and has started doing the rounds on social media nine years later after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to it using two ‘fire’ emojis, injecting new life into the stunt.

“When I am wasting time, you’ll have to yell at me or if need be, slap me,” Sethi had written in the 2012 ad.

Sethi reacted to Musk’s response with doubt, wondering if the ‘fire’ emojis symbolised his ‘Icarus flying too close to the sun moment. “I'm the guy in this picture. Is @elonmusk giving me two emojis the highest I'll ever reach? Is this my icarus flying too close to the sun moment? Was that implied by the fire symbols elon posted? Time will tell,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Sethi had credited Kara with helping him up his productivity rate by slapping him every time he got distracted. “My average productivity runs around 35-40% on most days. When Kara sat next to me, my productivity skyrocketed to 98%,” he wrote in a blog post.

Sethi, whose Twitter bio refers to him as a “Mad Scientist with a mission to help every human stick to their goals”, also used this opportunity to promote his brand Pavlok, claiming that he found an alternative to hiring a slapper to help with his productivity levels.

“And in the off chance anyone sees this, I founded a wearable device company to change habits based on this experiment. @pavlok. Wearable device that delivers an electric zap and positive sensations to reward good habits and break bad ones,” he tweeted.