Legend
of the Doooeee Bandit
Effortless Bill Splitting
So… why does Doooeee Bandit actually exist?
It all started in the summer of 2021.
Three friends. One long weekend. Christchurch, Dorset — sun, sea air, and the promise of a stress-free getaway on England’s south coast. Or so we thought.
Within 72 hours we had:
Stocked up the Airbnb with food and drink
Hired a car
Eaten out for lunch and dinner four times
Had three nights out
Filled the car up twice
Visited seven coffee shops
Hit three major tourist attractions
Memories? Amazing.
Money management? Absolute chaos.
For nights out, we tried the classic system: cash in a pile, one person holds it. That person was me. The “kitty holder.”
And that’s where things went wrong.
Somehow, the kitty kept running dry. I started dipping into my own money, assuming it must still be the group’s cash. Meanwhile, the other two quietly suspected I was skimming from the pot. No one trusted the numbers. No one trusted each other. What should’ve been simple turned into confusion, frustration, and awkward side-eye glances over every receipt.
So before the next trip, I did what anyone would do — I downloaded a bill-splitting app from the App Store, I tried 4. Big mistake. What I found wasn’t innovation. It was just a spreadsheet in disguise. You have to type in and log expenses every time, no one want to do that, it tells you who owes who, and then you have to ask them for the money, or send them a payment link you hope they will action. No payment automation, no magic, no payment, in fact little of anything. Excel could’ve done the same job.
I was still struggling with the concept of:- Why can’t we pool our money, one person pay, the app pays for everyone from each individuals phone at the point of payment, without ANYONE having to actally do anything, in one simultaneous seamless smooth maneouvre, it just happens.
This must exists right?
Or so I thought.
After trawling the internet, app stores, forums — everywhere — we reached a shocking conclusion: Plenty of apps splitting bills exist, not the app we want, that doesn’t exist. Or if it does, but none of us had it, know of it, or knows anyone else with it. And who reading this, has that app, exactly, none of you. And none of our friends had either. So we did something interesting. We started telling people we’d built an app that did exactly that. Weeks passed. Then months. And time went on those people came back to us asking where they could download it and what is it called, clearly our discussions had resonance — because they wanted it for their own trips, nights out, and friends shared lives. That’s when it clicked. This wasn’t just our problem. It was everyone’s problem.
And …Doooeee Bandit was born.
What is this Doooeee Bandit
In China’s remote Xinjiang province, hard against the shadow of the Tianshan Mountains, in the 1860s — the Dungan Revolt had turned the land into a place of fear, blood, and opportunity.
Along the ancient forest tracks and narrow mountain passes, a ruthless band of highwaymen lay hidden. Silent. Watching. Waiting.
They struck without warning.
Men. Women. Wounded soldiers limping from the battlefield. Deserters fleeing the chaos. No one was spared. From the darkness of the trees they emerged, blades flashing, voices barking orders, stripping their victims of every coin, every possession, every last scrap of value worth stealing.
War made prey of everyone — and these bandits were hungry.
They were predators of turmoil, thriving in the cracks left behind by rebellion and ruin. And in that way, they were no different from a certain infamous figure who stalked England’s roads more than a century earlier.
A ghost of the 1700s.
A legend of the highways.
Dickpin.
Different land. Different century.
Same shadows. Same tactics. Same ruthless ambition.
History, it seems, has always had its bandits.
Many of those who were dragged to a halt on those roads had almost nothing to give. Empty pockets. Torn clothes. War had already taken everything.
But poverty did not earn mercy.
Among the bandits and outlaws was a phrase pulled from the depths of an ancient Archaic tongue — a word that meant failing to pay your share. The phrase:-
Doooeee.
When a victim came up short, the air would crack with shouting. Torches flared. Steel scraped leather. And again and again the robbers roared their accusation:
“Yoo du Doooeee!”.
The words echoed through forests and mountain passes, ringing out at countless robberies where there was little loot to be had. A chant of anger. A mark of shame. A warning.
Before long, Doooeee became more than a word.
It became a verdict.
Among the robbers, it spread like wildfire — a term understood by all, feared by those who heard it, and spoken whenever someone failed to pay what was owed.
Fast forward to the year 2025, in Aberdeen Scotland. In the bars and restaurants lots of people had friends who didnt care to take their turn to pay their share of spend on nights out, and in essence they are Doooeee's and so the phrase Doooeee Bandit is brought back into vocabulary 150 years after it was originally phased out of Chinese Culture and language.
and so the Legend of Doooeee Bandit
Was Born
