What do you get when you join a dating app for NFT collectors? Apparently, a site filled with “too many bros”.
A tweet went viral last Saturday after it announced The Lonely Ape Dating Club, a dating app for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT owners, shut down because no women signed up.
The tweet in question came from Twitter user @CoinersTakingLs, a parody account that documents failures inside the crypto space. The post included a screenshot of an announcement made by the Twitter user @y4kxyz (Year 4000), the alleged mastermind behind the dating app. The tweet has since garnered over 150,000 likes and 11,000 retweets.
A funny post, I’ll give it that, Buzzfeed News confirmed the entire dating app turned out to be a prank.
The Lonely Ape Dating App was announced earlier this year, fooling many users and even news outlets. According to the app’s press release, some of its alleged features included allowing users to connect their crypto wallets and NFT collections, as well as letting users filter their matches by their personal net worth. Another aspect included the app’s “Coin Digger” feature, which allowed “non-BAYC owners to connect with higher net worth individuals for mutual benefit.”
It’s all downhill from here…
The creators first tried this prank back in March; however, the prank did not take off until @CoinersTakingL posted about it in May.
Prior to confirming the app was a prank, a few outlets shared their own skepticism on the matter. MetaversePost pointed out Year 4000 Twitter account was recently created in early February to promote the dating app and only owned 65 followers. Likewise, BAYC’s social channels never officially endorsed the dating app, unlike other Ape-related side-projects. Other outlets couldn’t help but critique the dating app– calling out its elitist and exclusionary undertones.
According to BuzzFeed, the prank aimed to troll the NFT collector crowd— one that has been mired by controversy, carries 10,000 members and is notoriously male-dominated— as well as its opponents.
The prank also fits with cryptocurrency’s recent market crash. Earlier this month, the price of Bitcoin plummeted by half in value, reaching an all-time low. Likewise, the crypto market also lost nearly $200 billion overnight. Swings in crypto prices are not a new phenomenon; however, crypto’s worth has yet to recover, putting many peoples’ livelihoods in question– now that crypto has practically reached the mainstream.
Celebrities who have endorsed investing in crypto have remained silent on the matter. After the market crash, experts like Coindesks’s director Emily Parker have cautioned people to research crypto-investment rather than following celebrity endorsements or their fears of missing out (aka FOMO).
BAYC’s NFTs have also dropped in value by more than 50% following the market crash. Its highest sale price was valued at $403,000 last week; keep in mind BAYC’s artwork has sold for upwards of millions of dollars prior to the market crash.
