Matty Benedetto personally greets every visitor to his Burlington studio. Sort of. The first thing you'll see upon entering the foyer of his gleaming white, 6,400-square-foot space is a life-size replica of Benedetto that the inventor fashioned using 3D printers. Despite being composed of a rainbow of bright plastic and resin filaments, the statue is remarkably lifelike — right down to Benedetto's now-trademark mustache. Triggered by a motion sensor, it welcomes guests with a variety of upbeat greetings in its creator's voice: "Hey, there. Welcome to the Unnecessary Studio!" Benedetto, 34, is the founder and sole proprietor of Unnecessary Inventions, a brand that exists to develop elaborately silly solutions to what are, at best, negligible real-world problems. If you've spent any time online in recent years, you might recognize some of Benedetto's most successful creations. There's the Burrito Bumper, a food funnel that solves the scourge of messy burritos by collecting fallen fillings into a taco shell. The Jewel Cooler diverts cold air from your car's air conditioning up your shorts via a plastic hose. And the Phone Facilities Facilitator offers an ergonomic way to scroll on your phone from the toilet. Those are among the roughly 400 inventions Benedetto has designed and fully prototyped since launching Unnecessary Inventions five years ago. With very few exceptions, you can't buy any of them, which is part of the charm. They exist solely as funny and exceedingly meme-able online content that has taken social media by storm and made their maker something of an internet celebrity. This Saturday, October 26, Benedetto will talk about the past, present and future of Unnecessary Inventions as part of the Vermont Tech Jam at Hula in Burlington. Seven Days first profiled Benedetto in 2019, a few months after he rolled out his first imaginary products. At that point, Unnecessary Inventions had amassed a couple hundred thousand followers across various social media platforms, and Benedetto was unsure how or even if he'd be able to monetize his creations. Somewhat quaintly — it appears in hindsight — he was considering publishing a book. [content-2] He needn't have worried. To maximize his reach, Benedetto posts to pretty much every social media platform but Truth Social — he's even got a decent following on LinkedIn. His 15 million followers include 1.8 million on Instagram, 6.5 million on TikTok and more than 5 million YouTube subscribers. His videos…