My LinkedInfluencer journey began when I was reflecting on the evil fake polycule that I tricked 3 million people into believing in. I was baffled that so many people believed it was real, and my theories on why already sounded LinkedInesque, so I figured I’d post them on LinkedIn.

Also, my friend Mackenzie has been regularly posting on LinkedIn after starting a job in B2B SaaS, and she enthused its untapped potential. I thought it’d be funny to follow her LinkedInfluencer arc but post meaningless garbage instead, which is just like most posts on LinkedIn, but a little bit funnier.1

My LinkedIn post performed unexpectedly decently. And almost immediately, a swarm of other LinkedIn satirical posters requested to connect, I suppose I inadvertently blasted out the shitposting batsignal.

So I began LinkedInifying other schemes I concocted, like when I made men oil up and fight “to the death” to even out the gender ratio in SF.

At this point, not only did I receive no negative reinforcement, I actually got positive reinforcement, so I wanted to see how far I could take that, and posted about my charity strip show.

I should mention that I actually used to work at LinkedIn, which probably made this saga even more exciting for all my former coworkers on the platform.

Then the spirit of professionalism possessed me; I began blacking out and letting the soul of a middle aged salesman take hold.

The above post was reshared by LinkedIn Lunatics (a Twitter account dedicated to sharing cringy LinkedIn posts), but so many commenters thought it was a genuine, unironic post, which was insane. I mean, look at it.

And since I was resharing my LinkedIn shitposts on Substack, a bunch of Substackers started connecting with me on LinkedIn, which was so funny. It’s like when you see your friend dressed up in a little business suit for a formal event, but you just see them as a silly little guy, and the dichotomy is hilarious. I’ve seen your worksona, I know what you really are…. a PROFESSIONAL!

This one came to me in a dream.

While my LinkedIn posts did not reach the viral heights of the “I am humbled and honored to share” announcements on LinkedIn, they did get outsized attention when I reshared them on Substack. Why? Perhaps, the rebellion against society’s idolization of professional life. Perhaps the voyeurism, the little portal through which to peer at another platform, a far darker and more evil place, while remaining safely behind the white-picket suburban, Substackian fence, clutching one’s pearls in horror while one can’t help but look on in grotesque curiosity.

Funny enough, accomplished business professionals, the caliber of which I would want to network with anyway, reached out to ME because of my stupid shitposting. As well as like 50 randos that just wanted to strengthen their professional network or whatever.

Why did you do this?

Because it’s funny.

Also, I’ve recently started taking this approach in life, where whenever I’m scared of doing something, I just do it immediately. I’m a chronic over analyzer, and I waste so much energy stressing about crossing the line.

But if I don’t know where that line is, I will forever needlessly constrain myself. So I have to find it at least once. And in my search to find it, I’ve lost conviction that it even exists. Or at least, it lies far beyond the bounds of what I even want to do.

As I grow older, I’ve also become increasingly dispassionate about optimizing my life around any career or institution.

There’s this parable of the Mexican fisherman and the American investment banker. Basically, the fisherman says he just fishes enough to support his family’s immediate needs, then spends the rest of his day with his family and friends, drinking wine, and sleeping in late. The banker scoffs and says he should spend more time fishing, to afford a bigger boat, then get more boats, then open his own cannery, etc, and become a millionaire. The fisherman asks, what then? And the banker says then, the fisherman can retire, and describes the life of leisure the fisherman is already living.

So imagine instead of fishing, the hero of this story was really passionate about posting stupid shit on the internet.

I don’t want to wait until I’m retired to live my ideal life, I want to live it constantly. Why would I postpone that to when I’m too old and tired to even fully enjoy it? Like, I digital nomaded around for a bit, and already felt the difference of how hard travel is on the body between my early 20’s and late 20’s. Plus, when I’m old I might become out of touch and less funny, the true horror.

Besides, to be honest, we are all tiny cogs in a huge machine and I don’t think other people care much about what you’re doing. Sure, you’ll hear some horror story of someone posting something and getting fired, but also, people go for a walk outside and get hit by a car. It doesn’t mean it’s probable, and the severity of the consequence multiplied by the chance it happens isn’t great enough that you shouldn’t live your life.

I eventually told people at my “big prestigious tech job” about the time I summoned hundreds of people to the park for Sit Club (my parody run club), or my fake steakhouse that went internationally viral, and the worst thing that happened was they asked me to bring more of that creative zest to team events.

“But Danielle, you don’t understand! My job is so big and serious and important, this doesn’t apply at all!” Sure, there’s granularities to it. Don’t start an onlyfans or become a weapons influencer if you want to be taken seriously in a professional career. But I think people overly sterilize themselves for companies that don’t even care enough to read cover letters and would lay you off on a whim because they overspent on Claude credits that month.2

Maybe shitposting on LinkedIn isn’t your first priority after embracing your newfound knowledge that you do, in fact, have free will. But I urge you to toe the line of something, tap your foot against it and see if it even exists at all.3

I took this approach in other areas of my life too - texting friends I’d fallen out of touch with when they came to mind, without overthinking it; shipping projects and only being a bit obsessive about the details; posting things without worrying about every possible person’s reaction to it. Opportunities and good luck only come from putting yourself out there.

TLDR; Think less, create more.4

Love,

Danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁)

P.S. Gargantuan thank you to my patrons - Anne, Jon, Cori, Jen, Travis, Jeff, Dan, Bathtime, Roland, Jey, Erika, Adam, Tamsin, Ryan, Mariarita, Lucy, Patrick, Emily, Kat, Miranda, Sasha, Jade, Francesca, Fanclau, Cristin, Patrek, Eli, Yush, Tomer, Cynthia, Adler, Joana, Gillian, Judy, Christina, Tanairi - for funding my scheming. All subscription funds go straight to the mischief budget.

It’d be a beautiful blend of everyone’s favorite applications - dating docs, roommate searches, job applications1 - seeking the one perfect fit across three dimensions for the six members of my polycule.

A few days later, the polycule would have 25 million views, be the #1 and #2 topic trending on Twitter, and receive over 2,000 applications.

The adverts were simple, black text in Arial font, with a link to apply (which you could not click on, because it was on printed paper).

They directed interested viewers to an application on Notion. I figured a polycule in San Francisco would use Notion, so I made a Notion account. I’ve never used Notion before, but I’ve also never run a polycule before, so this would be a learning moment on many fronts for me.2

The Notion page included a description of the polycule rules, each member, and an application to fill out while listening to “calming rain noise” (Heavy Rain with Thunder 2 Hours). I included my friend Mackenzie as a member, of course.

The next day, I taped up 10 flyers while picking up my prescription from the pharmacy. To be honest, this was done rather performatively, as I wanted to post a picture of the flyer on Twitter that day. I have zero clout on Twitter, in fact I have this sort of dual curse/blessing, the kind they dole out in fairytales, where my projects always go viral, but only from someone else’s post about them. So I am (tragically) attempting to build more Twitter presence.

follow me on twitter!

That same day, someone posted the flyer on Reddit, and someone else on Twitter. Which was wild considering I’d only put up 10 flyers within a 3-block radius.

The comments on Reddit were great, my favorite was one wishing that the satire was more obvious. That’s my bad, next time I’ll make sure to footnote explanations for all my jokes.3

Encouraged by this, I brainstormed other places a seeker of love-employee-roommate might post on, and tried to post on Craigslist and Zillow, and immediately got banned from the platforms. That’s gonna really suck the next time I’m apartment-hunting, so I hope you guys appreciate the sacrifices I make for my art.

A few days later, someone with more clout posted the flyer on Twitter, and it went viral.4

Almost all of the commenters thought it was real, which was insane. I mean, it starts with saying the 7 polycule members enjoy long walks on the beach in a 3:4 formation, has multiple 6-7 jokes, outlines height preferences for “practical positioning” purposes, etc. I loved when one lone warrior would bravely assert, “You guys realize this is obvious satire, right?” And they’d get drowned by replies, “No way, SF polycules are just like that. It’s totally real, it’s way too detailed to be fake.”

Another person retweeted it and linked the site, and most of the commenters on that post got that it was a joke.

It’s crazy how much the initial framing and messenger influenced whether people thought it was real, considering it was just one person’s one-line commentary on a multi-page site. This was an unexpectedly striking insight, and I’ll probably post on LinkedIn later about how the lesson ties back to B2B SaaS.

Some of the best bits in the comments:

• People thought it was an ad for Notion ??5

• Someone hallucinated that the Norman Polycule has existed for years.

• Even though I gave very little identifying information about any hypothetical member of the polycule, Mackenzie got a bunch of texts asking if she was really in a polycule. So I started jokingly threatening my friends that I was gonna add them to the polycule if they upset me.

• Why not?

• People kept tagging this (apparently notorious) shitposter and saying she was obviously behind it, and I figured, at least they’re crediting another women. We need more female representation in male dominated fields (posting stupid shit on the internet).

• Commenters were starting to get concerned for Zaid (“the least favorite member”) so we filmed a video update to reassure everyone that he was okay and loved his polycule.

Aadil did such a good job, we filmed this in the middle of our friend’s party on the roof.6

• Most polyamorous commenters found it funny (the viral repost was actually by a polyamorous person, and the r/polyamory thread was laughing about it), and the people that got really pissed were staunchly anti-polyamory.7 Which is kind of beautifully ironic?

• The application got meme-ified, and the fun thing about that is I would just be scrolling on my feed and get jumpscared by my own work out of context.

• I still do not understand how so many people thought it was real.

The “special move” quandary:

• This needs its own section.

• For context, my friend hooked up with a guy, who afterwards dropped out of the top university in Japan and moved internationally to stalk him full-time. When he was sending texts from one of his many burner numbers, he kept referring to my friend’s “special move,” which apparently was so great it inspired him to commit his life to stalking him.

• This sparked a discussion amongst my friends of whether everyone had a “special move,” a highly divisive question: people either answered, “yes, obviously I have a special move,” or, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

• Based slightly on the data collected and my superior pattern-matching abilities, I deduced that most people over the age of 25 had a special move, and so the quorum decided that by the age of 25, you must find your special move.

• This led to my friends freaking out before their 25th birthday, as we all impress upon them the importance of having figured out your special move by 25.

• If you’ll remember from the polycule application, I mention that during the live-in trial-period, you’ll learn each member’s “special move,” and I also ask what the applicant’s special move is, with the option to skip if they’re under 25 and haven’t figured it out yet.

• My friend Christopher saw the polycule application, didn’t realize I wrote it, and thought, “wow, I guess having a special move and learning it before 25 is not just a thing among our friends, it’s like widely known.” I ran into another acquaintance at a party and he told me he’d been stressing all day about what his special move was.

• I love that “special move” is now becoming part of the public vernacular, as it should tbh. If you don’t have a special move before 25 then quite frankly I don’t know what went wrong in your life.

Over 2,000 people filled out the application.

I’m kinda scared to look through them, because it’s filled with angry evil Twitter people, but there’s some incredible highlights, including:

• For the question “what about our polycule most excites you,” the most common answer was “Deborah” (the 65-year old “mom” of the polycule), with 74 responses. To be clear, this was a write-in question, so 74 people independently wrote in that they were most excited about Deborah. I really think it’s about time that older women get the veneration in our society that they deserve.

• Three people answered every question with “kill yourself,” which to be honest, I find to be a pretty lazy threat. One of them did take the time to select three hobbies: video games, painting, and yoga.

  • I think they should do a little more yoga if they’re getting this worked up about a little polycule application.

  • I also love that the hobbies were a required selection, forcing them to answer something other than “kill yourself.” Like, I’m really in charge here.

Graph time!

Conga line preferences:

Age (years) and Waist (inches):

Onset of familial baldness, when applicable:

The most common hobbies in San Francisco (stat sig):

“Please select a time” heatmap:

I linked all the responses in the appendix, with PII and slurs redacted.8 (I also removed applicants who appear to have filled it out in earnest, because I don’t want to make them feel bad! I hope they find a loving polycule that treats them right, and is not evil like my make-believe one.)

The application made its rounds on other subreddits, Instagram, Threads, Tiktok, even Facebook, which is how you know it’s really been passed around.

You might be wondering, what was the point of this?

To be honest, it’s mostly because I find it pretty funny.

Also, I enjoy melding the connectedness/reach of the online world with the authenticity/humanness9 of the physical world in unexpected ways. Most easily through flyering, and I really relish in the brute force, the humanness of flyering. You have the optionality to look at this thing that I made, because you exist in the same time and space as me. And then when a flyer does end up riding the algorithmic waves, it does so in unexpected ways, because it compelled unknown people to post about it.10

A more potent format involves a gathering of some sort; I had a run of hosting satirical events, like Sit Club (run club without the bad parts), “Death Duel” (to fix the gender ratio in SF), Strippers for Charity (self-explanatory), etc… and although these were really fun, it felt like everything was just a lead up to one day, which is more means-to-an-end than I’d like.

So I’ve been thinking of other form factors in the melding of online and IRL, this was a rather low-effort experiment, but I have some other thoughts in the works. Projects more like The Advice Line (my reverse advice line you call to give advice), but I don’t want just communication between a stranger and myself, I want to facilitate IRL interaction between strangers. How do I do that without it being an event?

A principle I believe is crucial to this is some level of absurdity; I think absurdity is at the core of sparking interaction between strangers, because most people won’t care enough to break out of their everyday normalcy if there isn’t something to shake them, to make them look up and take notice.

What exactly does this look like? I think the pieces are somewhere in that gargantuan ideas list of mine, and when I figure it out, I’ll let you guys know.

Alright, enough of this earnestness.

Final reflections: I think this was my third most viral scheme (after the fake steakhouse I made real for one night only, and the personal ads site to find love for my friends), but it had the greatest ROI by far, considering I spent all of two hours making it.

The key takeaway: people are much more gullible than I thought.

In conclusion: follow me on Twitter.

Appendix:

The commentary on Twitter is really funny, and since the Norman Polycule trended at #1 and #2 for a time, there’s some nice trending recaps:

• #1 The SF Polycule

• #2 The hallucinated Portland Polycule that is actually the same polycule

Responses to the form here. I removed applicants with slurs/spam, as well as earnest applicants, and redacted PII. If I missed anything, let me know.

(For context: The Raccoon Hole is the hole where the raccoons are.)

Having made so many references to The Raccoon Hole, it came to a point where it felt morally impermissible to continue to refer to it without actually “walking the walk” and taking a pilgrimage there myself.

Now here’s where the lore gets interesting: where exactly is The Raccoon Hole, and how did its legend come to be? You see, I thought I learned about it from my friend Mason, but although he was familiar with the assembly points of raccoons in Golden Gate Park, he did not know of The Raccoon Hole. Mason asserted it was Mackenzie who knew the truth of The Raccoon Hole. So I turned to Mackenzie, and she claimed it was a third party that brought her to that sacred land, and she only had a vague memory of its whereabouts. Like other ancient mythos, the origins of The Raccoon Hole are unclear. But as modern historians, we can gather evidence and form educated hypotheses.

Now part of the reason I thought Mason was the informant behind The Raccoon Hole is because he organizes Raccoon Spotting tours, usually for his teenager friends1, and not his adult friends, who are relatively more “unc” and ostensibly “can’t hang.” But in an act of generational diplomacy, he agreed to give a raccoon tour for those 21+.

My friend Sevy was also familiar with local raccoons and the holes in which they reside. And he expressed a mild interest in an “official” tour, and that’s really all it takes for me to commit to any elaborate scheme. I’m like the IRL embodiment of “If 1 person likes this I’ll do [blank].”

I made an inspo board for chasing the Raccoon Borealis, as one does. I figured that in order to blend in, we should dress raccoon-like, so as to not spook the raccoons or draw the attention of park rangers. And also for fun.

I’ve actually traveled north to see the Aurora Borealis TWICE and both times it lowkey flopped. I wasn’t about to let that happen again with the Raccoon Borealis.

And so my friends gathered under the moonlight to embark on our quest. They took our mission as seriously as necessitated: adorned in faux raccoon hats, clothed in raccoon-like colors, wearing a raccoon face mask, and carrying a raccoon camera2 to capture the magnificence of raccoons.

Mason checked we were of age by sniffing our IDs, gave us a raccoon stamp to certify, and swore us in with a raccoon oath.

We each told our favorite raccoon-themed memory, which I intended as a joke, but everyone actually had poignant tales of how raccoons personally impacted them.

Then I distributed RACCO (raccoon-themed BINGO) as an exercise for the evening.

The night started off strong: we spotted a raccoon shortly after we began. We oohed and ahhed, took some action shots at a respectful distance, marked “saw a raccoon” off RACCO, and continued onward.

Traversing the park at night was beautiful, serene. Lit only by the moonlight, we had to trust our feet would know the path without sight.

We encountered some large dumpsters, and also Nick, who arrived late. The dumpsters appeared unoccupied by our feral targets, so we milled about, to see if the guests of honor would arrive. Mason grabbed a half-eaten hotdog from the trash and placed it on top of the bin, as bait. We retreated to a safe distance, played raccoon mating calls, but alas, no raccoons emerged. We continued onward.

As our pilgrimage brought us by the De Young / Academy of Sciences, we were dazzled by the stage, left unattended with multi-colored lights pulsing. Obviously, this meant it was performance time.

We messed around on the stage, doing improv, testing the echo points, and learning how to do the worm and body rolls.

After an hour or so, we had to get back to business. So we continued onwards, peering in trash bins, playing raccoon mating calls off our phones and imitating them.

We ultimately concluded our journey at the site which we began.

Unfortunately, this meant our stroke of early luck was an anomaly - our first raccoon spotted was the only raccoon we saw. Most likely, our group was too large to covertly convene with the raccoons (despite being dressed like raccoons to blend in).

Although no one won RACCO, we spotted only one raccoon, and we could not find the sacred monument of The Raccoon Hole, there was nonetheless an abundance of raccoon spirit to go around. We will most likely spend our whole lives chasing raccoons. And they will always be there, digging through the dumpsters in Golden Gate Park.

There’s excitement in an unfinished tale, it’s a promise that more adventure is out there. There’s a whole big beautiful world full of raccoons just waiting to be spotted.

As the saying goes, perhaps the real raccoons were the friends we made along the way. And I unironically believe I have the most wonderful friends, that would be down to spend their Sunday night (on international women’s day no less) dressed as raccoons to chase the Raccoon Borealis. That would even contribute their own raccoon thematic bits! I am surely the luckiest person in Golden Gate Park, if not the world.

The same way a raccoon rummages around the dumpster and finds trash left by humans, I rummage around my heart and find joy left by my wonderful friends. And that is the real Raccoon Hole. The one filled with love.

I believe one should always be mischiefmaxxing. This is a introductory course on what that means and how to do it.1

I define mischief as an amusing endeavor that exists for no purpose but to spark delight. It’s a defiance against the status quo that everything must be a means to an end, and a resistance to the monotony and passiveness of everyday life.

Welcome to: a beginner’s guide to mischief.

seeding ideas

Take that off-hand joke you made, and actually make it real.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if…” Do it. Do it. Do it. Don’t just hypothesize. Don’t overthink it.

Wouldn’t it be funny if we made an anti-run club, a “sit club,” since everyone’s joining run clubs these days to meet people, but most of them don’t even enjoy running?

Wouldn’t it be funny to throw a party with a hundred Alexes, to help my roommate Alex find friends?

Wouldn’t it be funny to find my friend a girlfriend via flyers on the street, as if he’s a lost dog?

Wouldn’t it be funny to list my house on google maps as a restaurant, because of my roommate’s infamous steak dinners?

“Ha ha, good one!” You could leave it at that. Or you could yank it into reality, and craft a scheme that takes on a life of its own. A joke among your friends could become entertainment for millions of people across the world. It could lead to meeting your now-closest friends. Funnily enough, it could even result in serious business people trying to hire you.

If this sounds preposterous to you, well, it sounds preposterous to everyone else. So most people don’t ever try, and the few that do reap outsized rewards.

start small, and build up (if you’re scared)

Take your joke, and dial it up a notch. And again. And again. And then maybe half a notch down, so you don’t overdo it.

Some starting points:

• Subvert expectations. Take a popular social phenomenon and flip it on its head.2

• Identify a problem and craft a comically over-engineered solution.

• Create a genuinely useful tool then add a bunch of silly, useless features.

• Take a subject/solution from one domain and apply it to a very unrelated domain.

• Combine two things that should be polar opposites.

• Search for loopholes and exploit them.

• Take something you hate doing and invent a way to make it fun.

Tech bros in San Francisco always complain about the gender ratio → everyone says we need more women → but maybe we just need less men → I should make men fight “to the death” with giant inflatable “weapons” → we’d play songs like “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Eye of the Tiger,” and soundtracks from Super Smash Bros → the men could be shirtless and get oiled up before they fight

Everyone’s joining run clubs to meet people, but most of them don’t even like running → we should stage a counter club → how about a Sit Club → instead of running, we just sit in the park in protest of “Big Run” → it’ll be BYOC (bring your own chair) → we could do sitting warmups, like they do running warmups → we could play musical chairs to find the best sitter

It’d be fun to run an advice line → hmm, kinda overdone, how about a reverse advice line, where instead of getting advice, callers have to give advice → my friends could record their silliest problems, and callers could leave a voicemail suggestion → since it’s already on a phone line, I could add a ridiculously complex phone tree → people left such incredible voicemails, I should turn them into a song

I previously founded a nonprofit, and now I live near a strip club → it’d be kinda funny to combine charity and strippers, the epitome of virtue intertwined with the epitome of degeneracy → let’s call it… Strippers for Charity → I could get my friends/strangers to strip for a charity of their choosing → they perform a song and dance themed around that charity → all money raised is donated to that charity

Bounce ideas off of friends. “Yes, and” your thoughts. Enlisting a friend also makes creation less intimidating, and helps you focus on process over outcome. Because worst case scenario, if you’re the only two that care about your project, that means you had fun creating something with your friend! And that is always worthwhile.

Start in your home. Fabricate some interior design. Throw a silly party. Mail your friends absurd items. Your scheme doesn’t have to be a grand spectacle. Begin in a safe space to get comfortable with play.

form factors

My scheming trifecta is: flyers, websites, and parties.

Flyers (they’re like shitposting but IRL)

You can tape whatever you want to a pole and nobody can stop you3.

Generally, you should include a call to action (CTA): e.g. a QR code that goes to a survey about one’s bean habits, a number you text to join an enigmatic quest, or a website to mobilize the people to STOP CLIMBING.

The benefit of a CTA is you can gleefully watch as people engage with your work. But there’s also a beauty in having absolutely no feedback loop, as it leaves your audience even more puzzled on your abstract and enigmatic intentions.

You will be surprised and delighted by the number of people intrigued by your flyers.

After I’ve amassed enough responses, I like to gift something back to participants. It could be a pseudo-scientific report analyzing data from the survey, a one-way plane ticket to Chicago, or a song made from their voicemails. It closes the loop.4

I design my flyers in Figma, but if you’re a curmudgeon like me who resists learning new tech until you’re convinced of its value, you can literally make a flyer in google slides.5 Just adjust the slide to be letter-sized and you can drag shit in there without having to learn some newfangled tech.

You could also just make flyers from pen and paper. That’s what summoned hundreds of Alexes to the Alextravaganza. No excuses! There are zero barriers to entry!

Websites (they’re like flyers but online)

You can just cast whatever you want into the seas of the open web!

I cannot recommend carrd.co enough for creating no-code websites. Especially for beginners, I wouldn’t recommend using anything more complex. Carrd’s formatting can be a bit rigid, but as much as I desire complete control over every pixel, when site builders allow that, it means you have to manually adjust the design for web, mobile, different device sizes, etc, and it’s a huge bitch to deal with and not worth it 90% of the time. Carrd’s free version is robust, and its premium version is only $19/year.6

For something more complex, you could try vibecoding with Cursor. For something moderately complex, you could add blocks of code into carrd.

The most beautiful quality of sites is the plethora of fun elements you can integrate. Links to other sites! Surveys! Interactivity! Lately I have been very into SMS deep links, where when a user clicks on a button, it pre-loads a text message for them to send to a friend.

When designing sites, I often hop straight into carrd, but for anything complex, I’ll design it in Figma. And I use namecheap to buy domains. (I love buying silly domains, the amount of money I spend on domains is actually absurd.)

Parties (they’re like websites but for friends)

Parties are the highest echelon of schemes. You’re not only reaching into the uncharted universe to beckon strangers, but crafting a container in which strangers can interact with each other.

There’s so much fun in a party’s unpredictability. Whenever I host some absurd public spectacle, people always ask me what’s going to happen. And I reply, I have no idea! I’m along for the ride as much as anyone else.

I’ve met many friends through my parties. I mean, I’m literally filtering for people who are down to clown, which is my favorite quality in a person.

The greatest blockers here are 1) where to host it and 2) the fear of no one showing up.

For the former - if you’re hesitant to have people in your home (especially if you’re advertising the party on the street), I’d recommend scoping out local parks and beaches. Some have more strict park rangers than others, but as long as you’re being reasonable (i.e. no crazy equipment, no excessive drinking, etc), you should be fine. If you live in San Francisco, I highly recommend The SF Nook, which was created by a group of friends as an affordable community/arts space.

For the latter - to mitigate the fear of no one showing up, plan it with a friend or several. Then, worst case scenario, you’re just hanging out with your friends on a beautiful day in the park.

There was a viral Substack essay circling a few months ago, about how everyone wants to be a DJ, but no one wants to dance. I.e. everyone wants to be the creative, the star of the show, but few want to be the audience purely enjoying others’ work. I believe the arbitrage opportunity here is in event hosting, that’s an area in which everyone wants to be a participant, but few want to be the host.

doubts to dispel

Stepping outside of the prescribed path, I sometimes feel like a grand piano’s gonna fall out of the window and bonk me on the head like in a cartoon. But that doesn’t happen, actually.

It’s surprisingly very easy to do any of this. The hardest part is just fighting the inertia and starting.

Creativity is a muscle. If you’re worried that your idea is too stupid, who cares? Do it, so you’ll learn from it and have less stupid ideas in the future. That’s part of what’s freeing about schemes, they’re not meant to be taken seriously. By nature, they’re not a reflection of your intelligence or capability. So there’s no such thing as failure. I’ve learned to say: no matter what happens, it’ll be funny.

it’s not that deep bro, but it also is that deep, bro.

Resistance to the status quo is also a muscle. I’m not saying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but it’s important to habitually question norms and take agency. Mischief is intrinsically tied to agency: it’s questioning why things are the way they are, even if it’s just to make fun of them. It’s toeing the line of what’s permissible, even if it’s just for a joke.

In doing so, you’ll learn to bend implicit rules you didn’t even realize you were following. There’s many things in life we have a vague sense that we’re “not allowed to do,” but we don’t pause to think critically about why that is the case, or if that’s even true.7

As children, we always asked why. Why does this exist? How does it work? Why should I listen to you? Somewhere, somehow, most people stopped asking questions. I mean, it’s not practical to be curious about every single thing. But it’s a cold and dreary world in which one has no sense of curiosity, of wonder. And it’s a complicit world in which we all just blindly follow rules, especially rules that don’t even exist.

And in a world so focused on the ends justifying the means, where every endeavor is expected to be monetized or awarded, it’s freeing to do something that exists for nothing but itself. It’s a helpful tool for unconditioning yourself from perfectionist tendencies, as there is no end goal, it’s about the process and living in the moment.

Of course I get some snide remarks from people online, who comment, “You must have a lot of time on your hands. I wish I had the time to do that.” And my retort is: if you have an active Netflix account or over two hours of daily screen time, I don’t want to hear it.8

a note on “pranks”

I don’t really categorize my work as “pranks,” as that has a negative connotation of being at someone’s expense, and I firmly believe in doing no harm.9 I scheme within the realm of chaotic good to chaotic neutral. Humor purely based on degrading someone else is not only morally reprehensible, it’s also just lazy and uninspired.

If the target of your scheme wouldn’t find it funny, don’t do it. (Unless perhaps they’re some notoriously depraved individual.) Let’s all just agree to be cool guys. Use humor for good.

go forth and be mischievous

If you read this far, then you spent ~10 minutes with me. So I challenge you to spend another 10 minutes today scheming a fun little way to break out of the monotony of everyday life. Start small. Write a silly note to a friend. Craft a quick lil poster. Tape something weird to your wall. Create something that exists for no other reason than to spark delight.

Today, your mission is to make yourself giggle. And then report back, because in the universe of mischief, you have at minimum an audience of me.

And then I figured, why not make it real?

I also added horse mode, where instead of directly morphing from your starting picture to your ending one, you turn into a horse in between.

For the last few weeks, as I’ve been building this out, my DMs have looked like this:

The majority of my friends didn’t even question why I was sending pictures of them as a horse or morphed with others, they just accepted this was a thing I was really into at the time for some reason.

And so they sentenced other people to be horseified.

Why did you do this?

AnimorPFP is a cultural critique of the fragility of one’s online identity, the inherent impermanence in a digital ecosystem in which the inhabitants are intangible.

We increasingly live our lives online, where our presence is represented by a static image, carefully curated to control how we are perceived. Making it jarring for that identity, that single image that represents the totality of an individual, to switch unexpectedly. It’s striking, the lack of object permanence in the digital sphere, as if we are once again infants, confounded by peek-a-boo.

So we must ask: In this era of tech, in a life lived online, what does identity entail? What does it mane to exist online? If one’s digital persona is masked with horse, if one’s visage is more strongly and more often associated with horse than one’s own face, then what separates mankind from equine?

My thoughts on this matter are too profound to be illustrated by prose alone, so I have prepared a poem:

There once was a fella named Harold
He planned to change his PFP but was imperiled
For it defined his identity
Without it, he felt a non-entity
A neighsayer might even claim he was Gerald!

Although to be serious for a paragraph, there is a genuine point to be had about this era of social media, where instead of following friends, the majority of people we follow are strangers. Even more so, our front pages are filled with people we don’t even follow, the algorithm decides who we stay updated on. The “problem” that AnimporPFP solves didn’t meaningfully exist ten years ago, before the rise of the influencer and algorithmic feeds. Back when social media facilitated mutual engagement with friends more than parasocial relations.

(Albeit there were always anonymous or follower-based forums like Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter, but the quintessential social media was friends-based Facebook and old Instagram. Nowadays, essentially every major platform is grounded in serving you content from people you don’t know, and often don’t even follow.)

How does it work?

Why, with the beauty of mathematics, of course!

First, we need to understand what the faces in the start and end images look like, so we map facial features across 468 points (using MediaPipe Face Landmarker). Then, these points are used as references for dividing the face into a series of triangles (Delaunay triangulation). We compare the positions of the triangles in the start image to those in the end image, and as the slider moves along, the triangles warp to the end positions, while fading in the colors of the end image (via WebGL).

Thanks to existing software, creating this was actually very easy. Except for horse mode, which was very difficult and 99% of the work. I know what you’re thinking, that is an incredibly useless feature in an already pointless project. And to that I say fuck you, I’m turning you into a horse.

I also asked Chat for some technical advice, and this is where you can really tell it was heavily trained on Reddit content, as it first explained to me why my own joke was funny. And lowkey roasted me in doing so. I’m not sure what it means by “overengineered,” I think this is a reasonable solution to a serious problem.

I’m just serving AnimorPFP on one of my personal sites, instead of buying a new domain, because to be frank guys, I have spent hundreds of dollars on domains and it’s getting quite ridiculous at this point.

You can try this super helpful tool out for yourself at animorpfp.rawandferal.com.

See you next time, whenever that may be.

Love,

danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁)

This was inspired by my friend/former co-worker Serena’s work memes folder. On her last day of employment, she gathered us to screen share her favorites, before they’d get wiped out by corporate after her departure.

I instead emailed mine to my personal computer.

(IF ANYONE FROM CORPORATE IS READING THIS, THERE IS NO SENSITIVE INFORMATION OR COMPANY SECRETS SO GO AWAY.)

Friendly Feedback!

We are literally a tech company.

The Beautiful Bureaucracy

What.

Shitposting on Slack

Breaking through the worksona (work persona)

*Insert obligatory Severance reverence just to get it out of the way.*

Mackenzie Catherine Sharp

The first time I met Mackenzie, we were at a new grads lunch, and she was explaining how she took meetings from her hot tub and wanted to get a mechanical bull for her apartment. I decided right then we would be friends. We went on to hang out basically every day, lived together for a year (we now live across the street), and even started our Substacks together, so I’d say my plan was a success. People are always surprised to hear that we met at work, such a banal phenomenon, due to the nature of our shenanigans.

The Workplace Team

When corporate built a new workplace cafe, they let us vote on the name. One option was “The Link.” This clearly has connotations of “sneaky link” but apparently no one else thought that, because it won.

At the same time, we had an acquaintance/co-worker who was kinda notorious for being ran-through among the new grads friend group, let’s call him Sebastian. So Mackenzie and I would joke that they were giving Sebastian an office up at The (Sneaky) Link for all his “appointments.”

Also, they let the baristas control the aux in the cafe, so we would sometimes hear: “I’ve been a nasty girl. Nasty. I’ve been a nasty girl. Nasty.” playing over our corporate lunch. Or, “Dirty babe, you see these shackles baby I’m your slave, uh huh. I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave, uh huh.” Etc.

I remember one particular day when I was feeling really down, and trying to have my sad dramatic moment gazing out the window, and Souja Boy was blasting over the speakers. And you really can’t be sad when “watch me crank that souja boy and supersoak that hoe” is blaring through your company’s sound system.

And the final meme:

And with that, I’m LinkedOut.

How? With flyers that act as portals to absurd questionnaires, or mysterious phone lines that subvert expectations, or events so ridiculous that people feel compelled to go, and bond with strangers over the absurdity (e.g. Sit Club, Strippers for Charity, The Death Duel to Fix the Ratio).

And I share these projects of mine on Substack. I love Substack. So naturally, I was inspired to make Substack a bit more analog, a bit more whimsical outside its digital bounds.

How?

I made a tool that turns any Substack into a printable newspaper, at substackprint.com. Note that the full functionality only works on desktop (mobile dynamic formatting is hard!) but you can see a preview of the front page on mobile.

Inspiration for what to do with your newspaper.

As a reader:

1. Reduce your screen time. Read without the distraction of all the fast shapes and fun colors and bright lights on your phone.

2. Bring it to read on a flight / car / bus ride.

3. Tuck a folded up copy in your bag, to read while waiting in line, instead of filling downtime with scrolling on your phone.

4. Read performatively in the park or at a coffee shop to pick up baddies.

5. Gift your friends their favorite Substacker’s writing printed as a newspaper.

As a writer:

1. Print out your front page and frame it. Look at it every day and exclaim, “I am a writer!”

2. Bind it with ribbons and leave it around your house for your nosy friends to flip through when they come over.

3. See if local businesses will stock it! Bookstores, coffee shops, anywhere with a waiting room (beauty saloons, dentist offices), community centers, boutique grocery stores, etc.

4. Hang up the front page as a flyer on the street with a “read more at <your publication link>” or a QR code, to promote your Substack to passerby. (À la ryan elizabeth peete).

5. Share your printed & bound newspaper as a gift (works best for family members, close friends, and devoted subscribers).

6. Get creative with print-on-demand. Display your front page on a postcard, blanket, coffee mug, notebook, stickers. Put your articles on a calendar, wrapping paper, tote bag, puzzle.

7. Join forces with other writers, get a table at a craft fair, and sell your newspapers!

But danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁), I don’t have a printer!

• I am a big fan of FedEx printing! That is a good option.

• Most universities and libraries have printers that anyone can use.

• There’s many print-on-demand companies! I’ve used vistaprint before.

• You can get a used printer off Facebook or Nextdoor marketplace, or from a thrift store, for like $20.

Potential future expansions.

I’ll be honest guys, in the four days I made this, I wanted to rage-quit several times.1 There were many more features I wanted to include, but resigned that I’d add later if there was sufficient interest. Including:

• Combine articles from different Substacks into one newspaper. This was part of the original plan, but it ended up being much more technically complex.2 (Update 1/18/26: I added this!)

• Turn a Substack into a printable zine. This is another format I’d love to have! Also, a magazine and book format.

• Customization. Multiple layout options for the front page. The ability to change the font, colors, and divider style.

• More modes! The current modes are normal, evil, Chris Best, and Chris Worst. I wanted to add vintage, modern, kawaii (pink font & background). Evil mode should have red text.

• Fixing the “established” date on the front page. This was supposed to be when the Substack was created. Due to limitations with the RSS feed (see footnotes) it isn’t always accurate.

• Print on demand. Not everyone has a printer, which I often forget, because I’m a flyer fanatic, and heavily scheme via flyer (e.g. organizing Sit Club, promoting the reverse Advice Line, Beancoming the first Beanfluencer, finding love for all my friends). So it’d be cool to hook up some printing API that’d deliver your Substack newspapers to you! It would be especially cool if it could auto-export your subscriptions and saved/archived articles into a newspaper and send it to you.

If there is sufficient interest, I will build these out. But I’m also unsure if Substack HQ will shut me down / snipe the idea, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Enable and join my scheming <3

If you enjoyed the Substack Print, you can support me with a free or paid subscription :) Know that 100% of income from paid subs is funding projects like this! My passion is sparking joy and bringing people together with creative scheming, and I write about my shenanigans here.

Subscribe now

The other way you can support my work is to use the Substack Print! Seeing people share their generated newspapers makes me so happy. If you use it, or come up with other use cases for it, I would love to hear about it, so please share!

Love,

danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁)

P.S. I had time to create this because I had a week off work! The other project I created was a tool that lets you type with a font made from Bryan Johnson (the millionaire who’s trying to live forever, notorious for swapping blood with his son). Check that out (if you dare) at livefontever.com.

Soupsgiving is my annual tradition of Th*nksgiving, but everything is Soup. It’s simple. Souper simple.

Unlike Th*nksgiving, a colonist propaganda holiday if you really think about it, Soupsgiving is a nondenominational, anarchist festival of nourishment that transcends cultures, as well as a souper douper great time.

The First Annual Soupsgiving: The Genesis.

It all began on a dark and snowy night, in a brownstone on the Upper East Side of New York City. I was living with a dozen other 20-somethings, many of whom had gone home for the holidays, and us stragglers huddled together to weather this cold and dark winter.

My housemate Emily and I brainstormed the most fucked-up twist we could put on Thanksgiving, and decided upon an all-liquid theme.

Coincidentally, our roommate Nancy had some temporary stress-induced face paralysis, which made her unable to feel her jaw. So soup was the perfect meal for her. We did not plan this, but let’s say that we did. It was a Soupsgiving miracle.

This was also the first extended conversation I had with Mehran (who I would later raise as a god-figure). A few hours prior to Soupsgiving, Mehran was helping another housemate Josh book a same-day flight to go on a date with a girl in another state. As a token of his gratitude, Josh gave Mehran a handful of gummies, and Mehran immediately took all of them. This caused him to become high out of his mind, a state in which he was either giggling or zonked out, his eyes watering with tears. It was quite the first impression.

Among all these characters and peculiar circumstances was one very normal person Emily had met a few days prior and then invited. I don’t believe we ever heard from her again.

I had planned to make a soup-themed dessert, and figured pumpkin pie was the move, as it’s essentially a baked soup. I put marshmallows on top of the pie, thinking this would toast them crème brûlée style, however, it instead made the pie catch on fire. Upon witnessing this inferno, I immediately shut the oven door and googled what to do, turns out that just closing the door and leaving it in there was the correct move.

At the end of our feast, my co-conspirator Emily summed the night up beautifully: “I’m sleepy from soup and the adrenaline from the fire has worn off.”

And so, from a group of misfits, that cold and snowy night, a beautiful tradition was born.

The Second Annual Soupsgiving: Soupburbia.

Soupsgiving II took place when I was living in Mountain View, and it was rather un-momentous. As one would expect of a celebration in the suburbs.

However, there was no oven fire this year, so that was a marked improvement from the previous.

The Third Annual Soupsgiving: Mega.

For the Third Annual Soupsgiving, a vision came to me in a dream. Megatable. Three long tables, aligned together as one, adorned with soup. A nice sit-down Soupsgiving.

I looked into renting chairs, and it was very expensive. So I figured I’d do Amazon rentals (buy them then return them after). Sorry Jeff. But also, I think you can take the hit.

This year, I introduced a Soupsgiving competition. Attendees were instructed to dress interpretively as their favorite soup, and the winner would be crowned the Soupiest Soupy Soup Boy of the Soup Party. Some people got confused and thought the competition was based on the soup they brought, which was ridiculous.

The winner of the Soupiest Soupy Soup Boy of the Soup Party was Jonathan, and I knighted him accordingly.

I also made alcoholic soup (mulled wine).

Towards the end of Soupsgiving, we combined all the remaining soups into Mega Soup. At first the mixture of different noodles, vegetables, and other chunky ingredients made for a rather unpleasant texture. Then Cool Alex blended Mega Soup together, double-strained it, added garnish with a flourish, and presented It before us. It honestly wasn’t bad. So we had a ritual Consumption Of The Mega Soup where we gathered around and in unison slurped from straws together. The sound of collective slurping haunts me to this day. It was beautiful.

In the aftermath of Soupsgiving, I returned all the folding chairs to Amazon, and this was a huge bitch to deal with. But t’was small sacrifice to pay for the glory of Mega Table, the legacy of Mega Soup, the knighting of the inaugural Soupiest Soupy Soup Boy of The Soup Party, etc.

The Fourth Annual Soupsgiving: The Souposium.

By the time the Fourth Annual Soupsgiving came around, I had run out of soup puns to include in the invite, so I just shoehorned “soup” into a bunch of words in a nonsoupsical way. I refuse to s(t)oup to repeating soup puns.

I figured, we were more mature now. Four years more mature. The time had come for a formal, classy affair. The Souposium. Black tie. And everyone looked sooo cute in their formal wear!

Since this was a distinguished event, we obviously had to drink the soup out of soupagne glasses. No bowls!! No spoons!! Such are the implements of cowards.

I made everyone prepare a presouptation, reminding them several times. For those who nonetheless neglected to come prepared, I assigned them a slam poem about soup written by one of eight AI models.

Some of the best presouptations included:

• A saucy soup-themed erotica

• Reading an excerpt from chapter 15 in Moby Dick, titled “Chowder”

• Performing the song “Soup” by Remi Wolf

• Playing banjo and singing “Jambalaya”

• The thesis “How soup is responsible for decline of society through video games”

Having instated the Soupiest Soupy Soup Boy tradition at last year’s Soupsgiving, I figured that this year, we’d have pageant rules for passing on the title. The voting system was a constitutional monarchy, with everyone casting a vote, but me making the final call.

Sam and Greta (or as you may know them, “Thomas the Spank Engine” and “Jane Goodgirl” from Strippers for Charity) were crowned the Soupiest Soupy Soup Boys of the Fourth Annual Soupsgiving, and Jonathan passed on the crown.

After the presouptations concluded, as the projector was already set up, guests started heckling me to play youtube videos, so I let them do that while we mingled.

This year’s Soupsgiving was the best yet, and it warmed my heart like a simmering soup to have all my friends enthusiastically join in on the bit.

Although most of my stupid little parties for my silly little friends are one-time affairs, like a perpetual stew, no Soupsgiving is the same. And tradition is important, honorable. Sometimes.

Anyways, I hope you and your loved ones stay warm and soupy this holiday soupson.

For paid Soupscribers, I offer a preview of next year’s Soupsgiving theme: The Disouptation, the souperb soup-related challenge from this year’s Souposium, and various consouperations of what constisoups a good party.

Read more

Today I shall recount the tale of my voyage to Alaska, zero score and three years ago. T’was a tumultuous journey, tempted by vices on every deck, engulfed with seafood1, and contemplating the hubris of mankind.

a divine quest unveiled to me

This story began three years ago, when I was attending a party in LA. It was biblical-themed, I was the sexy snake from the Garden of Eden. I met a woman who told me that later that week, she’d be flying to SF to embark on an Alaskan cruise.

Dear reader, I live in SF. So learning about a cruise that conveniently departed right from where I lived - it was a sign, a beckoning from the universe to embark on an adventure. And I simply could not resist the call.

I bought a ticket three days before the cruise would depart. I asked some friends if they’d come along, and they replied, “No, I don’t have a ‘work from anywhere’ policy or unlimited time off, fuck you.” (Paraphrasing.) And so I set forth on my quest alone.

witnessing an affront to g*d

My first thought upon touring the cruise ship was that it was a modern Tower of Babel.2 I cannot begin to describe the blasphemy of an entire hotel somehow floating on the sea. This should not be a possible feat of mankind, and it felt an abomination, an affront to g*d.

I’m not even a particularly religious person. Sure I was raised Catholic and still pray every night, but I’d say I err more towards agnosticism. And yet even I could feel this was deeply wrong.

at sea with nothing but vices

There were two full days at sea before we reached Alaska. I worked remotely, taking zoom calls from my laptop. My coworkers questioned why I didn’t just take the days off (we did have unlimited PTO after all) but I knew I’d be very bored if I did, and would honestly rather be writing my little SQL queries than staring into the rolling blue abyss.

For context, the activities offered onboard were drinking, gambling, and theater - each more sinful than the last. I had little interest in any of these, so I read a lot. Here’s my reviews of the books I read.3

• Vicious by V.E. Schwab and Victoria Schwab - 6/10. Some science superpower bullshit. Was entertaining enough to read, but kinda unremarkable, I had to google the plot just now to remember it.

• The Midnight Library - 6/10. A woman who passes away finds herself in a library, where each book is a portal to another life path she could’ve taken. Cute and heartwarming, I really enjoyed the concept, but felt the execution could’ve been much deeper than it was, and the prose was rather uninspired.

• The Liar’s Dictionary - 8/10. Two storylines: a woman is digitizing a dictionary in present time and finds a bunch of made-up words, a man many years ago was making up those words in his craving to find significance in the world. I loved this book and think about it often. [Spoiler] There’s one bit where the main character (who has social anxiety) goes to hide behind a plant at a party, finds someone already hiding there, and says, “oh sorry, didn’t realize this plant was taken.” I thought that was so funny.

• Nectar by Lily Prior - 4/10. A chambermaid in the countryside in victorian-esque times has a scent that makes all men uncontrollably lustful. I found this through a random book recommender and it was really f*cking strange ngl. I was not a huge fan, but I do have to give it points for originality, definitely no one else is thinking of this.

• Ella Minnow Pea - 7/10. In a fictional town where the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” was invented, there’s a statue with that phrase. Letters start falling off, and the town council interprets that as a divine order to stop using that letter. The book prose itself stops using each letter as it becomes forbidden. It’s a lovely story and unique concept, I really appreciate a book with an interesting form factor. I think about this book a lot.

everyone was really old

I was basically the only passenger onboard without gray hair. One old guy kept approaching me when I was deep in my spreadsheets, and chuckling, “young lady, you shouldn’t be working on vacation!” I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that besides a polite laugh. He later introduced himself in the dining hall as “the old man who kept telling you to stop working.”

I could either dine in the cafeteria-style hall, or make reservations at the restaurant, and I felt very mysterious and aloof to be dining for one. Sometimes I’d be sat with another group, and they’d tell me about their grandchildren. But most often, I wanted to be left to dine with the company of my book.

I’d look out the window at the sea passing by and pretend I was an immigrant making a new life for myself, embarking on a lengthy voyage to stay with my distant cousin, with naught but a few gold coins to my name.

land at last

Every time we docked I immediately f*cked off to the forest, digging my nails into the soil, craving the feral feeling of dirt on my flesh after my time at sea4. The Alaskan woods were gorgeous, the air nourishing, the fog like an embrace. (My perception may’ve been colored by cabin fever.)5

The hikes were luscious. It rained most of the time, but there was a tranquility in accepting you’d get soaked.

After my forest escapades, I returned to the ship and I took a shower with all my clothes on, including my shoes, because I was drenched in mud. Also, I didn’t want to pay for laundry.

penning letters from the seaside

I wrote postcards for my friends. I love writing long form (clearly) and find such a romanticization in sending missives back home. I role played as some wealthy heiress from ye old times on an exotic excursion.

It’s such a fun game to pick out postcards, find a cute coffee shop to write in, then figure out the convoluted postal system in a new place.6

I ate the most delicious fresh salmon I’ve ever had, in a rustic restaurant along the water, and I think about that salmon to this day.

miscellaneous at-sea adventures

I went to karaoke hour just to sing “My Heart Will Go On,” as I thought that’d be funny to do on a cruise. Y’know, like the Titanic. I’m not sure anyone else got the joke though.

What I did really enjoy about the cruise form factor was waking up in a new town each morning, without having to transit myself. It’s like back when you were a kid and fell asleep in the car, so your dad would carry you inside and tuck you into bed.

But I’ll confess, I hated fully-at-sea days. I felt bored and claustrophobic. I looked up flights back from Alaska, to skip the two returning days at sea, but it was like $1,000 and I couldn’t be that big of a baby about it.

In part, it was because I forgot that I get motion sickness. You see, it was never bad enough to make me feel notably nauseous, but just enough for me to think, hmm, kinda weird that I feel slightly terrible all the time.

closing reflections

I realize this article has religious undertones throughout. I always thought a cruise ship akin to the Tower of Babel, but forgot I had first heard about this cruise at a biblical-themed party. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

In totality, I am glad I went on a cruise for the experience, but I would not do it again.7 I still think cruises are an affront to all that is good and holy, regardless of one’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof.

Alaska itself, however, I would love to return to.

Love,

Danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁)

P.S. I have subscribers in 46/50 states, and Alaska is not one of them. Yet I possess not only a profound love and respect for Alaska, but also a deep history with the 49th state, and felt this was not reflected in my blog. So this is my love letter to Alaska, my declaration of devotion. And I so dearly hope Alaska writes back.8

Editor’s note: Is there anything you guys want me to write about / more about? I’m working on a novel (an absurdist comedy about a guy who works in Big Tech who’s trying to figure out what his job actually is) and considering sharing excerpts from that, but that is pretty different from my normal content. Lmk.

Outside of Tuesdays, I rarely drink, I don’t really feel the desire to. But there’s something about getting sloshed on a Tuesday night that’s so funny to me. And lately, my core philosophy has been to make all life decisions based on what’s funniest.

The group chat for this endeavor is called “Cinephiles and Margaritaphiles,” as we used to go watch a ridiculous movie after drinks, like Nosferatu or Paddington in Peru. The name stuck, although we’ve now amassed a large enough community around $1 margs that we just hang there until close.

There is love at $1 Margaritas: once we conspired to set up our two blond friends who seemed a bit flirtatious over margaritas. We arranged a tablecloth, candles, and red roses on a neighboring table. Then when the blondes arrived, we told them, “your table is ready,” and guided them to their seats. To make sure their surprise blind date wouldn’t be weird or anything, we prepared conversational menus with things they liked to talk about. It was very romantic. When the bartenders curiously inquired about the situation, we told them the blondes were celebrating their anniversary. They didn’t mind the romantic microcosm created in their dive-y sports bar and even went up to congratulate the “couple.”

There is war at $1 Margaritas: we prepared for the death duel to fix the ratio by going to one of those fancy gentrified parks and beating the shit out of each other, after a few margaritas.

There is deep philosophical discussion at $1 Margaritas: we often have spirited debates, e.g. regarding the last time someone was properly dominated and the merits of straight male ass pics.

But most of all, there is joy at $1 Margaritas. Unironically, $1 margaritas has become our third space. There is a beautiful intimacy in having recurring plans with friends, something to look forward to every week. What is community but showing up, time and time again? And in that awkward space between acquaintance and friend, when you aspire to grow your connection with someone, what greater way to bond than inviting them to get plastered in a dive-y sports bar on a Tuesday night?

I would highly recommend creating some sort of weekly office hours for your friends to drop by. It’d probably be better if not alcohol based, but no one’s perfect - not even me.

There is also significant game theory at $1 Margaritas. When we first heard about $1 margs, it seemed preposterous. How are they only $1? The catch: you only have from 7:30-8pm to drink. 30 minutes of unadulterated margarita time. Therefore it’s crucial you spend these 30 minutes focused on margarita consumption. Get a drink, get back in line, consume as you wait. No time for funny business, we’re locked in. There is a bit of a gamble - the baristas mix the margs in giant pitchers with ingredient ratios based purely on vibes, and they’re pretty sweet drinks, so you don’t really know the alcohol content in your drinks until the window of consumption has passed. But that’s the game you must play.

Drinking on a weekend is common, pedestrian. It’s expected behavior, so there’s no thrill. Drinking on a Tuesday is mischievous. Sly. Sexy. It feels forbidden. I generally don’t drink at parties (this is a broader SF tech mindset) because it doesn’t add much to the experience of a party, for me. But drinking on a Tuesday is fun. It adds texture to the week, like I’m not waiting for the weekend to make poor but fun decisions, breaking out of the normalcy of a 9-5. Drinking on a Tuesday feels inherently fun in a way that drinking on a weekend is not - the taboo or unexpectedness makes it more enjoyable.

Tuesday is normally the worst day of the week. Far from the weekend, and without the fresh start of a Monday. But we have transformed it into the best day. We took lemons and made lemonade. Or rather, we took limes and made margaritas.

Going against the grain and doing something silly for the sake of itself - that’s what adds the zest to life. (I elaborate on this in my manifesto.)

If you’re a novice to the art of silliness and absurdity, here’s some basic schemes you can use for inspiration.

A Small Gift For Your Loyalty Over The Years.

I learned cyanotype, which is a process of using solar-activated ink to transfer a film negative onto cloth. Then I immediately brainstormed how I could use this for evil.

I made cyanotype t-shirts of my friend Mehran, then asked his friend for the addresses of all his closest friends.

Then I wrote a letter, pretending it was from Mehran, claiming the Mehran merch was a “small gift” to his friends for their “loyalty over the years.” I signed each letter with my left hand in all caps to make it look like really childish handwriting.

I shipped them to his friends’ homes and hoped they would just wear the shirts to hang out with Mehran without asking questions. And that is exactly what they did.

Y’know, there’s a stereotype that men don’t ask questions, and while this can be annoying, there’s also cases when this is extremely funny. Like none of Mehran’s friends questioned who sent the shirt and why they did so, but just wore them out. A year later, at Mehran’s birthday dinner, one of his friends mentioned the shirt was hung up in his entryway. Upon learning I was the one who sent it, he exclaimed: “Oh no way! I always wondered.” And yet he never just… asked.

Mehran’s dad also received a shirt, of course, and he also wore it to spend time with Mehran.

Furthermore, I made a shirt of my friend Mackenzie and wore it when we hung out. Although the image wasn’t as clear (cyanotype requires an image with significant contrast), she immediately clocked it and laughed. I made another one for her, and we’d wear our matching Mackenzie shirts into work together. Very cunty. The pinnacle of girlhood, really.

Merch of Your Friends.

I made stickers of my friends, with relevant slogans. Then I found all of their friends’ addresses that I could. Whether from an old party invite, the time they texted it to me months ago, etc - my only rule was that I couldn’t ask them or their friends directly, I had to scrounge it up. Then I mystery sent the stickers.

Physical mail is really an under-utilized medium these days. I got really into mailing my friends postcards when I was traveling to exotic locations like Capri, the Amalfi Coast, and Alaska. I would roleplay as a wealthy, capricious older woman and pen elaborate messages.

Mehran’s Big Surprise.

I learned that my friends Riley and Mehran share a Google Calendar because they run a startup together. So I sent a calendar invite to Riley called “Mehran’s Big Surprise,” knowing Mehran would see this. Riley immediately declined and texted me that Mehran could see his calendar for the surprise, and I texted back that was the point, then re-sent the invite.

Mehran kept asking all our friends, “What’s my big surprise? What’s my big surprise??” And I found this really funny, that he kept referring to the surprise as his “big surprise.” That sounds so silly.

The day came and went, I think next I’ll add to Riley’s calendar: “Mehran’s Even Bigger Surprise” and “Mehran’s Massive Surprise” and so forth. At some point, I’ll actually have a surprise for Mehran - right when it’s least expected - making it a surprise, if you will.

Taylor Day (a Taylor-Themed Day).

Mackenzie and I went to Fidget Camp, a week-long “summer camp” for creative technologists, and met Taylor, who is the coolest person ever created. Taylor invited us to his fruit salad birthday party, where we expressed we had friend crushes on each other. So Mackenzie and I decided we should hang out with Taylor more. I texted him asking if we could go on a Taylor day. I meant that as a day hanging out with Taylor, but he interpreted that as a Taylor-themed day, and I thought, y’know, that’s a fantastic idea. So Mackenzie and I researched all the Taylor-themed activities we could do.

We sent Taylor a calendar hold for 12 hours, and he replied, “Hey, is this supposed to be 12 hours? Cool if so, just want to prepare ahead.” And we confirmed, “Yes, it’s Taylor Day, not Taylor-few-hours.”

We kicked off Taylor day getting brunch at Taylor Street Cafe, then got in my car. After driving 10 minutes, Taylor started laughing, “Wait, does the navigation say one hour?” And then we drove one hour to Taylor State Park, where we embarked on a beautiful hike. Afterwards, Taylor decorated our water bottles with the decree: “Honorary Taylor.”

Now Taylor’s a great friend of ours. Spending a whole day with someone is a excellent way to press fast-forward on a friendship.

Mackenzie really wanted to take Taylor to Taylor’s House of Karate, Taylor Mountain Canine Retreat, and Taylor Elder Care Management. I vetoed these because my philosophy is the bit has to be both funny and enjoyable, especially when we’re trying to befriend someone. Especially someone as cool as Taylor. Now that we’re good friends with Taylor, perhaps we can broach Taylor’s House of Karate together.

Reflections:

In the title of this post, I put “pranks” in quotation marks because I wouldn’t actually qualify these as pranks. Pranks have a negative connotation of being hurtful; people say “it’s just a prank” as an excuse to mock their target. And I don’t think humor should be weaponized in that way. I would never want a project to even slightly hurt my friends’ feelings. My litmus test is - does the target of this “prank” find it funny themselves?

So I usually call my projects schemes. (Which also can have a bit of a negative connotation, but at least feels more complex and encompassing of a descriptor.)

Also, you may be wondering - why are so many of your schemes targeted towards Mehran? Well, Mehran is a great target/muse because he has outsized reactions and loves attention. I also have quite a bit of positive karma with featuring Mehran, considering the first time I did so I made him an international superstar.

Anyway, go forth, and be good, and be silly.

Editor’s Note:

Hello my beautiful subscribers. As you know, I’m all about getting people to go outside exploring their city, touching grass, engaging in tomfoolery, conversing with strangers, etc. I’m now building on this thesis at scale :) (it was inevitable, I live in San Francisco, am lowk a tech bro, etc). If you’re a founder or investor in consumer social, or a community organizer, I would love to chat! Email or DM me on Substack. Thanks, love ya!

For context, I used to live with Mackenzie and Regular Alex, and we hosted many parties, like Soupsgiving and the Handcuff Party. At these parties, I would meet Regular Alex’s friends, who went to the University of Michigan (UMich) like he did. Logically, then, I would assume they met while attending college, until it would invariably come up that they actually met at an alumni mixer the previous week.

It seemed Regular Alex was trying to retroactively build a strong friend group from college. Which was all fine and well, to me. But not to Mackenzie.

You see, Mackenzie is like a little purse dog, all her heart desires is to be brought along to things. So she was rather upset she couldn’t attend the many events Regular Alex was hosting for the UMich community.

This was brought to a head when Regular Alex threw a bonfire at Ocean Beach, one of Mackenzie’s favorite places. She asked for an invite, and he expressed that since she was not a UMich alumna, she could not attend.

As she was lamenting her sorrows to me, I suggested she take one of those online courses from UMich, then treat the certificate as her way in. She immediately sprung to action, finding the shortest course available: “Generative Leadership: Inspiring Capability in an AI World.”

“Hmm, is it worth $60?” She pondered.

“You can probably get it reimbursed under our company’s education stipend.” I replied.

And she did. In fact, her boss praised her for the initiative taken in expanding her expertise.

While Mackenzie learned how to inspire capability in an AI world, I began planning her commencement.

For Mackenzie’s special day, I invited her closest friends, as well as people who I thought would be funny to attend, including:

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It all started because I was craving violence, so I sort of A/B tested fighting ring ideas by making posters and putting them on the street. Idea A: a “men’s fight to the death” to fix the gender ratio in SF. Idea B: a “couple’s fighting ring” to help spice up your relationship.

A friend posted Idea A on Twitter and it immediately blew up, so I felt obliged to make it real.

For Non-San-Franciscans, "The Ratio" is a common term used by tech bros to lament that there’s more men than women in their circles, and that's the sole reason why they're struggling to get any. Used in sentence: "Damn bro The Ratio at this AI-biohacking climbing party sucks" and "I can't deal with The Ratio, I need to move to New York where I will still get rejected, but at least by many more women."

However, while many men complain about The Ratio, none are creating B2B SaaS (Boy to Boy, Slaying as a Solution) ways to fix it. So I stepped up.

I contacted the SF Transbay Joint Powers Authority Bay to see if I could actually host the fight in Salesforce Park, but they respectfully declined. (Said it would cost $6,000.)

I thought it’d be funny to have the men fight shirtless, and the natural next thought was to make them oil up before they fight. You see, as a feminist, I am sick and tired of the objectification of women, and the best solution is to objectify men just as much. That way, the baseline of “objectification” is raised and relatively no one is objectified.

I’ve already made people strip (for CHARITY, it’s altruistic) so making them fight just seemed like the natural next step. Interestingly, there was a lot of overlap between the strip show and the fighting ring: the pole kittens became the ring girl/boy, there was a strong element of performance, each contender had an alias. The fighters were actually much more sexualized because they were shirtless and oiled up, whereas the strip show was surprisingly wholesome.

Serendipitously, my friend Samuel Sliman (or as you may know him, “Thomas The Spank Engine” from Strippers for Charity) had experience running a meme fighting ring. (He challenged the frontrunner of his college’s presidential race to a boxing match, and although some claim he “lost” the fight, he won the people’s hearts and earned the presidency.) Sam suggested using inflatable boxing gloves to minimize liability.

Because I am highly dedicated to my craft, we did a trial run of the duel. After getting sloshed on $1 margs at my weekly “office hours,” we went to one of those fancy gentrified parks and beat the shit out of each other.

^Me and Greta fighting, never say I don’t practice what I preach. (Violence.)

I made a playlist of appropriate music, including Kung Fu Fighting, Eye of The Tiger, the Wii Sports Theme, and songs from Pokemon, Mario, Super Smash Bros, and Naruto. I had my friends vote on the best oil for the men, and baby oil won. I later realized this may’ve been due to the Diddy meme, but by then it was too late to change.

Sffuncheap shared the event and called me a cultural renegade (I’m blushing). I found it really funny that they added so much context to the event. Like, what’s confusing you babyboy?

Day of, as we were staking out the location for the fight, we saw a huge children’s party, so we stayed far away (responsibly). We did end up near a baby shower, but that was for adults. Their gender reveal showed it was a boy, so a bunch of oiled up boys fighting nearby was a fitting peek into their future.

Patrick brought his folding table on a bike. Everybody say thank you Patrick.

People kept coming up to me and asking what the inspiration for the fight was. And I was like, “well I thought it would be funny.” I don’t understand what’s so confusing about this. It was funny - I was literally right.

Sam refereed the match, we actually showed up wearing the exact same shirt. Sam did an incredible job, everyone say thank you Sam. He strip dances, he referees, what can’t this guy do?

Our fighters’ names included:

• Daddy Bone

• The Accountant

• The Daltic Beast

• Shareholder Value

• Nico

• B2B Ass

• Nate

• Michael

• Tisslord

• Number 1

• Big Friendly

• Slamuel L. Jackson

• Amber Sucks

• Fist of Justin

• A Challenger Approaches

• Plot Twist

To be clear, these were mostly aliases made up for the fight. I do not know what their real names were, and I guess I never will.

The fighters got oiled up, and apparently this was actually useful, as it helped punches skim off the skin. Everything got really oily though, which was not a sensation I enjoyed.

The first two rounds were with inflatable gloves.

Then we had a five-way fight with pool noodles to make it to the semi-finals.

The semi-finals were with giant inflatable hammers, which unfortunately could not withstand the sheer power of the revved-up tech bros and ripped.

To give the finalists a breather, there was a “resurrection round” where the audience picked eliminated favorites to duel.

Then the final round brought back the gloves. The winner was awarded a bedazzled belt: “Ratio Champ.”

After the fight, Nick gifted the leftover baby oil to the baby shower happening nearby. It was only right. Then we let the crowd release any frustration (whether Ratio-related or not) in a free-for all. Finally, my friends and I celebrated another successful event by getting boba and burritos.

Upon reflection, I realized moving from a three-bedroom where I’d throw unhinged parties with my roommates, to a one-bedroom where I didn’t have space for parties, and therefore had to host them in public, has truly had cosmic effects on the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’m pretty tired out, so no more parties for a while. And by “a while” I mean until I think of something else that’s kinda funny, which is probably gonna be tomorrow.

Acknowledgements:

A huge thank you to all the incredible people who helped with this event. Sam referee. Patrick table-bringer. The two Ryan photographers. Ryan and Angela, the ring boy and girl. (I do not know why we had three Ryans.) Quincy, Mary, Isla, Graydon, Peter for operational support. Kristine and Ashwin the oilers. Mackenzie for moral support. And of course, the stars of the show, all 18 aforementioned men who had the courage to step up and square up. You guys are the best, thank you for your deep commitment to the bit.

Also so grateful for my friends for coming to support my stupid shit all the time, and the hundreds of strangers who took a chance on an event they saw off a flyer. I couldn’t do it without you. Or I could, but it’d just be me alone in a park, which would be way less fun and kinda weird.

It all started when my friends were lamenting about not having girlfriends, and I jokingly offered to find them ones via flyer (I am notorious for flyering for my schemes, e.g. for Sit Club, an anti-run club, and Strippers for Charity, a charity gala). But my friends were actually interested, and so dear reader, we embarked on our quest to find love.

I took inspiration from the “personals” section of vintage newspapers and made a website sfpersonals.com.

Then I gathered my most eligible single friends at my office hours ($1 margarita night), pitched the idea, and interviewed them. (You may already be familiar with my investigative journalism if you went to Tam High in 2017, where I was the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief. Go Hawks!)

I wrote about each friend like a character you could easily imagine in your mind - colorful, extremely specific, and low-key roasting them.

I also described their ideal partner as a character you can imagine in your head, figuring this would make readers who resonate even more interested, and maybe make readers think of a friend who had those qualities, so they’d forward it along. Each bachelor/bachelorette also had a key question they asked their admirers, to help them vet contenders.

I figured that to reach the right people, this would have to go viral, so it’d have to be funny and entertaining to everyone, not just people looking for a relationship.

I added a crossword, because newspapers have crosswords. Also, if you don’t like hot singles, then you probably like crosswords, and that’s how I’d capture the whole market.

I included some extremely unhelpful FAQs, based not on actual frequently asked questions, but on questions I preemptively thought would be funny to answer.

And yes, I did put myself on the site, because I am a diligent Product Mommy who dogfoods her product (and I may or may not have ulterior motives).

I also made my friends promise that if I find their future spouses, I get to officiate their wedding. You see, three years ago I became a licensed Reverend because it’s fun and easy to do, and every year since, I’ve received an email congratulating me on another year of being a Reverend, unknowingly relentlessly taunting me for still having yet to officiate a wedding. This weighs on me greatly.

Here’s the thing: dating apps are counter-incentivized, they earn money by keeping you single. However, my incentives are aligned, I want to find my friends partners so that I get to officiate their weddings. My Certificate of Ministry is burning a hole in my pocket.

Finally, to advertise my sexy singles, I put flyers up around San Francisco.

Within 24 hours, a dating coach posted a picture on Twitter, and it blew up. Then it went viral on Substack, Reddit’s r/sanfrancisco, on the literal front page of Reddit itself, Reels, Facebook, Threads, even Pinterest???

It amassed millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and 600+ people emailed in to date my friends.

The emails were extremely funny.

• Thousands of people thought Anna and Will should date. The comments section of every post was filled with it, and people wrote long, elaborate theories on why they weren’t already dating, devising fan-fiction basically. Dozens of people emailed just to say they should date, and someone even wrote a multi-paragraph essay about it. Because of this, Anna and Will went on a date. I heard it went alright.

• Cougars loved Alex and he discovered that the feelings were mutual. And so he increased his age range.

• People fucked heavy with the crossword. They would email me just to ask if they completed the crossword correctly.

• Anna has two exes and they’re both Chinese and named Kevin. I told her, “Anna, you just haven’t met the right Chinese Kevin yet.” Then a man wrote in who met exactly what Anna was asking for, and was Chinese and named Kevin. Her soulmate, I think.

• Someone sent the most condescending but well-meaning email titled: “Anna is autistic and that’s wonderful.” Also, someone armchair diagnosed Will with Marfan’s Syndrome. None of you people are doctors, what are you even talking about.

• A women wrote that she was happily partnered, however, she did want to share a multi-page self-insert story of her rescuing Mehran from prison.

• Four separate men answered my question (“how will you support my projects like Strippers for Charity”) by saying they’d MC the event?? Like some guys will really read “how will you support my hard work” and reply, “well I’ll take over as the star of the show.”

• Multiple people made LinkedIn accounts just to apply to date us (I should really be getting a commission here).

• A group of high schoolers saw me in the wild putting up posters and asked to take a photo with me (I guess this is how celebrities feel??)

• Two chaotic bisexual queens offered to date any of us.

The scheme went viral internationally, gaining traction in some really random places. Why were people in Taiwan reading this. Who are these people.

Only ~5k (3.6% of) people who visited the site actually lived in San Francisco. No, the “SF” in “sfpersonals” does not stand for “single friends,” as one commenter thought.

And The Media once again slid into my DMs.

I was also invited to present this project at Demos & Chill! And my friends went on dates with their admirers, but those are not my stories to share.

So. Ultimately, did this work?

No.

But neither do most relationships! Also, it’s important to remember that 50% of marriages end in divorce anyway. Maybe the real relationship was the clout we gained along the way.

To be serious though, it’s only been two months since I launched this and many prospects are still in the pipeline. Plus it keeps randomly blowing up, so it’s possible the right people just haven’t seen it yet. If a marriage does come from this, I’ll make sure my dear 𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁 readers are the first to know.

I have some more personal reflections about this project, but that’s so cringe, so I’m hiding them behind the paywall like a coward. An entrepreneurial coward. If you wanna be nosy, there’s a price to pay ($6.90).

Thanks for reading my blog, love ya!

Edit 10/9/25: this project was featured in the Washington Post.

P.S. Read about my other dating-related scheme, the time I made a survey for guys who want to date me (as a joke) but after 400+ responses, I felt an obligation to the scientific community to write a research paper. And then Substack featured it in their Weekender.

P.P.S. If you’re a loyal 𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁 reader, you may recognize Cool Alex from the SF Personals site, as we met him through our Alextravaganza (Alex-themed party we threw).

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I used to live in North Beach, as my dad put it, “in the red light district,” beside all the strip clubs. And so I gained a deep feeling of camaraderie with strippers.

There was this little guy with a fedora who worked the door at one of my neighborhood strip clubs, who once said, “Thanks for looking at me. I feel so ugly sometimes.” What a capsule of the human condition. We just want to feel seen. Seen, perhaps, on a stage, gyrating our hips for some dollar bills. Maybe! Just maybe. Stay with me here.

When you really think about it, the fabric of American society is delicately held together by two pillars: strippers and charity. We rely on GoFundMe to make up for the shortcomings of a broken healthcare system and misplaced government aid. OnlyFans Ponzi schemes run rampant. Men used to go to war to die, driven solely by the mere glimpse of the bare ankle of a jazz singer.

Anyways, enough of the philosophical musings, let’s get to the main point where I make my friends and strangers strip for a good cause.

So the concept of Strippers for Charity is everyday folks (not professional strippers) pick a charity they want to support, and all the money they earn from stripping goes to that charity. I originally planned to host this in my house, but realized if I wanted to raise a meaningful amount of money, I would have to broaden the invite to the public, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the public in my home. So I put the idea on the back burner.

Then a couple months ago I organized Sit Club (like Run Club but without the bad parts (running)), and people kept asking how they could stay updated on my future events. And I was like “aha just keep an eye out for flyers on lampposts I guess,” then figured I should make an actual mailing list. I included a field where people could offer me things, “like a venue.” A fellow named Fischer offered The Nook, which hosts art events at no upfront cost with the mission of increasing access to community spaces. With Fischer’s note, I had reeled in exactly what I was fishing for.

I went to check out The Nook with Strippers for Charity in mind. I wasn’t sure if this was the kinda arts community that’s pretentious and does ayahuasca in the woods and would turn their nose at more risque forms of art, or if they’re the sorta arts community that’s chaotic and grungy and inclusive. Luckily, they were the latter, and loved Strippers for Charity. We were in, boys.

I started planning and promoting the event. People had many questions and concerns. Folks who attended or missed Sit Club kept DMing me asking when I’d host another Sit Club meeting. And I told them, “aha there is no next one, however, I am throwing Strippers for Charity!” And they were like, “wow that is a very different event!” (Said, I imagine, with great trepidation.) Actually even many of my friends were afraid to come, protesting (perhaps performatively) that they weren’t the type to frequent strip clubs. Cowards! I told them. And convinced them it was time to face their fears.

I wrote the event description as follows:

A week before the event, I realized my RSVP reminders and text blasts on Partiful weren’t working and was stressed this would kill attendance. I had already started planning a future event “Death Duel” and I’ve attended “Hand Jobs” (not what it sounds like) and was invited to “Lube Wrestling” (exactly what it sounds like), all of which were on Partiful, so I was incredulous they would draw the line at Strippers.

I contacted Partiful and they clarified it was actually cellular services cockblocking me, making it clear they “did not have ANY issue” with strippers (lol). So I had to change the title to the much more family-friendly “Exotic Dancing for Charity.”

A few days before the event, my friend asked if I could connect her with a reporter I knew at the SF Standard to cover another event happening the same night, then realized the two conflicted and said she didn’t want to undermine mine. And I was like, aha that’s okay I do not want The Press at Strippers for Charity. Then literally the next morning, I saw the SF Standard somehow heard about Strippers for Charity and had already written about it. I do not know how the press keeps finding me but I do think at this point I should receive some sort of compensation for single-handedly keeping the free media afloat.

Folks were so proactive about helping! A hobbyist pole dancer found out about the event and connected me with her friend who owned a professional-grade pole, another person offered a Sexy Earth Day themed playlist, and they volunteered to be “pole kittens” and clean the pole between acts. I was so grateful to have some experts who knew what they were doing because I certainly had zero expertise and was just winging shit. It takes a village to run a strip show or whatever it is they say.

Also, I may be veering dangerously close to cult leader territory, accumulating followers at various situations I concoct and shepherding them to my next scheme. Of the folks that stripped, I met one during a scavenger hunt I organized, one at a popup restaurant I created (whose girlfriend also stripped), and one at the Sit Club I established.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if this is an abuse of power, like cult leaders often make their followers do weird sexual things in a bad way. But this was for charity. A good thing! Hmm. Anyways.

Finally, the night came - it was time to make it rain for some good causes and great ass.

I announced each performer by their name, their stripper alias, the charity they were supporting, then read a blurb about their charity.

All the performers were incredible, including:

• Not one but two cowboys, one of whom brought a hobby horse, the other who cut a pair of his jeans incredibly short for his costume

• “Misty Todgers” performing a Mr. Rodgers-themed burlesque routine to “Won’t you be my neighbor,” in support of the PBS Foundation

• “Jane Goodgirl” raising money for the Jane Goodall foundation, whose routine included a gorilla mask, banana pasties, and deep throating a banana to the song “Gorilla”

• “Thomas the Spank Engine” performing a mechanic-themed routine for the Clean Air Institute, dancing to “Gas Pedal,” whipping a chain

• Two hobbyist pole dancers who pulled out some insane moves on the pole

• A former ballet dancer whose routine was not only sexy, but elegant, gradually stripping sevenish layers, from a sweater down three dresses down to pasties

• A playful (and multicultural) strip themed around Doraemon

• A medical-themed strip for Doctors Without Borders to the song “Disease”

The audience was also incredible, super body-positive and encouraging and it felt so wholesome, as much as an event can be whilst themed around taking your clothes off for money.

Several of my friends told me post-event they were focusing less on the actual performances and more on my “expressions of pride and joy” as I watched the strippers perform.

We ended up raising over $1K for charity! We probably would’ve raised more were we not limited by cash availability, it turns out that it’s very difficult to get $1 bills. “Thomas the Spank Engine” helped get cash pre-event and said he had to check five different places because ATMs don’t give $1 bills, so he ended up getting ~$100ish in $1 bills from a grocery store.

I made a golden charity thong for the dancer who raised the most money for their charity. (Shoutout to Athena for letting me use her Cricut while we coworked in her makerspace, her grinding founder mode, me giggling as I applied vinyl cut letters to a thong.) Alex, one of the hobbyist pole dancers, raised the most money, $190 for Bay Area Workers Support, a charity supporting sex workers in the Bay.

My only regret of the night was not stripping. While I’m sure many people later regret showing their body off for money, I may be the first to regret not doing so. I usually don’t throw the same event twice but will probably reprise this one because I’m feeling a bit of FOMO I didn’t get the chance to dance half-naked in front of my closest friends and furthest strangers.

After the thrill of the night, I had a relaxing morning after, counting wads of dollar bills on my floor, feeling more like a pimp than ever before. Donating the money to all the different charities was a huge pain in the ass, but I suppose that’s my own charity work.

It was a wildly fun night, made possible by so many incredible humans! A huge thank you to The Nook, the strippers, the pole kittens, the pole transporters, the accountants, and everyone who came out to support some great causes and even greater ass.

If you want to join my mailing list to be in the know for Strippers for Charity II and other events concocted in my dark and twisted mind, go to tinyurl.com/sfschemes !

FAQs:

Danielle, have you ever been to a strip club?

Once! With my barista from work, Kyle. It started when Mackenzie and I invited him to get tacos at Run Don’t Walk. That’s not the actual name of the restaurant, that’s just what we call it because it has a sign in front that says something like “Margaritas here. Run, Don’t Walk!” and once when we were walking by we were like oh okay yessir and ran right in. And ever since then, we go there all the time. I also sometimes call it “the margarita restaurant” but fear that makes me sound like an alcoholic. Anyways, me, Mackenzie, Kyle, and Regular Alex got really sloshed on like a Tuesday night and were planning our next move and somehow decided on the nearby stripclub in the Tenderloin, Crazy Horse. However, the cover was $25 and we were like no way. So then we went back home, where all the other strip clubs were, and went around asking what their covers were. They were all $20, and all the bouncers said, “but we have the best tits and ass.” And we said, “We want the worst tits and ass! We want tits and ass that make us feel better about ourselves!” The bouncers didn’t love that. Eventually we made our way into Centerfolds, and I have to say, it was rather underwhelming. The strippers really didn’t have their hearts in it. Kyle took an edible and slept over in our living room, which has JeffDog (Jeff Bezos as a hotdog) in it and said he had shroom-induced nightmares about JeffDog that night. So all in all, I would not recommend the strip club.

They are completely and utterly pointless.

When hearing about my schemes, people always ask what the purpose is. After the “successful” ones, I’m encouraged to monetize them and repeat them.

Because in our capitalist society, every skill must be leveraged to make money. Every pastime must be selected and perfected to look good on a college app or resume.

We judge the value of an endeavor by its end result. But *wanting* that result is a feeling that could consume you for days, for years, for your entire life, while *having* achieved it is come and gone in a moment.

And so life goes by in the *wanting* and not the *having.*

Wouldn’t it be better if the wanting and the having were the same? If the enjoyment and purpose came from the process of an action, not its completion?

A few events shaped my perspective on this. As a kid, I got into a lot of trouble from challenging authority and doing things my own way. (Actually, in the way that parents casually break news that in a moment reshapes your entire perception of self, my mom only recently told me I was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a child. So I rejected authority, clinically.) But I was also very competitive, and so I regrettably fell in line with the rat race of get-into-a-good-college, get-good-internships, land-a-prestigious-job, climb-the-corporate-ladder, then die. Blinders on, locked in on this path, measuring everything I did by how it would help me reach these goals. And it’s a frustrating, unfair path, where most results come from luck, but you expect and are expected to achieve them by working harder. There was always something greater to aspire to, or a self-inflicted need to prove yourself after a perceived shortcoming.

I was moderately successful with this path. I got into a good college, continued grinding to get into the business major (at my university, students apply their sophomore year), I was accepted, then the pandemic hit. Without another clear milestone to immediately strive for, I felt restless, dissecting every failure in my past, since there wasn’t another goal to whip myself toward.

I eventually channeled that energy into something useful, and founded a nonprofit that provided free virtual extracurricular classes to 5,000 kids across 45 countries, taught by 400 college student volunteers. This felt like the first real thing I did with my life, something I did purely because it was a cause I was passionate about, outside the prescribed path of “success.”

I learned so much about starting a business, and also about the depth of my obsessive nature. Every second I was awake, I was working on it, thinking about it, stressing about it. I’d have a dozen false starts to sleep, as I’d grab my phone to jot down an idea, draft a message, note a to-do. I dreamed about it. Every minor mishap ravaged my sympathetic nervous system. But every achievement made me dizzy with pride, and the ups and downs were addicting. Nothing feels as good as obsession - isn’t that the core of all hedonistic pursuits, all pleasure? And this was for work I made no money off of, completely voluntary. Although I learned how good it felt to do something for the sake of itself, I also learned I should probably never rely on a passion project for my livelihood, because I’d let it eat me up from the inside out.

After graduating, I was very lucky to land my “dream job.” I moved to New York and lived in a group house with a dozen or so young people working in the startup sphere. In this community, people didn’t really care where you went to college or what your GPA was - many of them dropped out of college or never went at all. That’s not to say that assessing someone’s status based on their twitter followers or number of beta signups is better, but it was different, at least. Success wasn’t as rigidly defined, and so there wasn’t as clear of a hierarchy to climb in this universe.

Meanwhile, I had a terrible experience at my dream job. My manager actively tried to throw me under the bus, then run me over with the bus, then back up to hit me again with the bus, and prior to that had tied me down to the road under the bus, etc. This job represented everything I’d been chasing after. I felt I’d lived a life of always getting second place - too close to complain, but never what I wanted most - and this job was the first time I won. But it wasn’t just underwhelming, it sucked. And no matter how many late nights I worked or how much I energy I poured in or how I dropped everything else in my life to focus on work, it continued to suck. My quarter-life crisis ensued, trying to find meaning in all this.

My housemate/friend Michelle was a significant inspiration to me. After her internship told her she couldn’t take a vacation they’d previously approved or they’d fire her, she quit, took that vacation, and found a new internship a week later. My new mantra became: jobs are replaceable, years of your life are not. We dubbed ourselves “Overachievers Anonymous,” reminding each other to “underachieve” and stop thinking of work as life-or-death. Do your job well, but don’t destroy yourself over it.

I sought fulfillment in things that were unrelated to work - art, friendships, and of course schemes. The latter were particularly delightful, because they were so antithetical to what I had been conditioned to value - these projects would add absolutely nothing to my resume!

My housemate/friend Emily and I held Soupsgiving (Thanksgiving but all the dishes are soup), made clay figurines of all our housemates and took them on a photoshoot, the girls made a surprisingly-aesthetic tampon curtain to claim the women’s bathroom, we created a shrine to our housemate who’d been on a lengthy vacation away, we made up and played silly games, and I listed our house on Google Maps as Mehran’s Steak House after our housemate who cooked great steaks, in what would later snowball into a viral international sensation, covered by the New York Times, BBC, ABC, CBC, and all the other three-letter acronyms.

As miserable as that manager made me, I was ultimately glad for the experience - I was lucky to get what I thought I wanted, and lucky to realize it wasn’t what I wanted at all. I had to reach what I was so desperately chasing after to realize how unfulfilling it was.

I spent more time living in the 5-9 than the 9-5, and using that 5-9 time for things that notably did not benefit the 9-5 at all.

I found that there is something delightfully mischievous in an endeavor that has no end value, in which the purpose is nothing but the act itself. It sparks a child-like joy to turn off the rational, adult brain that says - “this is pointless,” and to think in immediacy and glee - “this is pointless!”

Children are associated with joy, creativity, and freedom from learned societal constraints. They haven’t yet grasped long-term effects, so they live in the moment. While (obviously) we should consider the consequences of our actions, this can become a crippling consideration - we no longer experiment, no longer play, because we’re afraid of being judged, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of looking silly, afraid of “wasting time.” And so it’s safer to do nothing.

So. Could I make money from my schemes? Sure, but that gives them a clear, boring success metric, that you’d compare to any other money-making endeavor, and if the ratio of {time input} to {money output} is less, you’d simply not do them. And it shifts the focus from the creating to the ending, and adds in other people with their own objectives and opinions to conform to. All of which sucks out the joy.

Could I repeat schemes I pull off successfully? Sure, but then the delightful becomes normal and mundane, and it boxes me into a niche, rather than challenging me to explore the bounds of what I’m capable of.

Could I quit my job and focus on this full time? Sure, but I’d be incapable of caring about it a healthy amount, and would hedonistically let it consume me in some grotesque Nosferatu freaky demon way.

Usually, when people ask these questions on why I do the things I do, I give some flippant answer - “cuz it’s funny.” Because the honest reason takes 1,600 words to describe, is an 8 minute read according to Substack, and is much more earnest than a justification for schemes has any right to be.

You may’ve clicked on this article thinking this would be some beautiful metaphor about an ex-lover proving their devotion to me, or a regret hunting me down over the years. But no, I mean quite literally this is a recounting of the times I have been physically chased in the streets of San Francisco.

The First Chasing

The first time I was chased, I was with Mackenzie, Riley, Mehran, Train Guy, and two members of the Mehran Himbo Brigade.

Read more

Yet this lie has become so widespread, with run clubs infecting the nation. Promising fitness and, of course, love - that elusive thing that so desperately spurs us all. With false prophets across our algorithms, encouraging impressionable minds to join their local run club, use it to meet singles, use it to catch some ass.

So we dared to take a stand. And sit. To stop running from problems, but to sit and face them, head on.

I know what you’re thinking - let people pretend to enjoy what they want to pretend to enjoy. Who cares? It doesn’t affect you at all. But here’s the thing - it does affect me. You see, I start my weekend mornings off with a Mocha Tesora from my local Philz. Yet one fateful day, as I was minding my own business, going to get my mocha, a run club arrived just before me, a thirty-odd-person-barrier cucking me from my morning fix. The audacity! If not for the lies sold to them by run club, these posers wouldn’t even be awake at this hour, let alone in my neighborhood Philz.

I fear the egos of these runners are approaching biker-level. Bikers - the greatest threat to the fabric of our society. They think they’re a car when the light is green, and a pedestrian when it’s red. They bike on sidewalks! They consider themselves some magical shapeshifting being, some transformer that can morph between human and machine, some god above the laws of civil society, but they’re just dicks on wheels. They’re next.

Anyways. If you’re a loyal 𝓇𝒶𝓌 and 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁 reader, you know the drill. We made posters calling our fellow civilians to arms (and legs). Connie used Blender to its greatest potential, 3-D rendering a sitting man on a sitting man on a sitting man, etc, on a chair.

Then we took to the streets to flyer. (Shoutout to our friend/unpaid intern Mason, and Mackenzie’s boyfriend/unpaid intern Russell, who valiantly helped flyer.)

Our preparation also included spending over ten minutes thinking of sitting-themed activities and writing an event description.

And so the people rose up to join us. In equal parts they rsvp’d “yes” and “maybe,” some courageous in the face of Big Run, others hopeful yet afraid.

People posted pictures of our flyers to Reddit, and we trended at the top of r/sanfrancisco. Some commenters hypothesized this was a marketing scheme for the party-planning platform we were using, or for Grindr, not realizing we could just be motivated by the simple joy of sitting. One commenter said the advert reminded them of those from a scavenger hunt last year (which I actually did make, my personal brand is becoming recognizable lol).

Reporters from CBS, The SF Standard, and the SF Gazetteer started sliding into our DMs.

And so we did maybe the most ridiculous interview ever on TV, which you can watch here.

Day of Sit Club - we arrived at Golden Gate Park and staked out Sit Club signs that Connie designed. Sitters started tricking in. We distributed Sit Club stickers and I led some sitting warm-ups to prepare us for an afternoon of sitting.

Then Mackenzie and I led a game of musical chairs to find the fastest sitter at Sit Club. Obviously, we only played sitting-related songs, such as “Sit Still, Look Pretty,” “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” and “Sit Next to Me.” As you can see below, it became intense very quickly.

The winner of musical chairs was a guy in a wheelchair named Andy, who easily won because he always had a seat (his wheelchair). Now you may think it’s unfair that Andy has this natural advantage in sitting, however, it’s been proven that Michael Phelps has genetic advantages in swimming, and we celebrate him nonetheless.

The runner up of musical chairs was our friend Patrick (not in a wheelchair, but we love him all the same).

After all this excitement, the only thing left to do was sit back and relax.

Our friend Russell brought his couch, a karaoke set, and bubbles to Sit Club. He also ordered Uber Eats to his couch and got pushed around by a mysterious unicycle man. If there’s one thing I would change if I could go back in time and do Sit Club again, it would be being born as Russell, cuz that guy had a blast.

We sat long and hard, and then departed ways, to go carry forth the tradition of sitting, back in our own homes. Shortly after, the SF Standard dropped an article.

I have a long and storied history with reporters, most notably The Reporter, also from the SF Standard, who I played a mischievous game of cat-and-mouse with a year ago. Ever since she left the paper, I’ve felt a great emptiness, a void. Will this become our new The Reporter we (metaphorically) tango with? Only time will tell…

My friend Mehran (of the internationally acclaimed Mehran’s Steakhouse) once declared - “Everything you touch turns to gold.” And I think about that a lot, when I’m turning things to gold. Maybe I’d make millions, billions in day trading or other forms of gambling with my magic touch. I’m not going to do that though, I’m going to continue doing stupid things instead.

The CDC recommends adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity per week. Know that I do take cardiovascular health very seriously. Some fun and acceptable forms of exercise are: incline walking, pilates, hip hop dance, and a non-pickleball sport. Please try these and speak to a trusted friend or family member before turning to running.

If you would like to stay in know for future SF-based schemes or help orchestrate them, join our mailing list here. And/or, y’know, subscribe ;)

Appendix

Where did all these people come from??? You may wonder. Look at this graph I made.

The Pit

What’s better than a conversation pit? A conversation pit that is also a ball pit. Pit^2. The Pit, proper noun. This idea, revolutionary in its simplicity, would become the cornerstone of my home design.

Balls are kinda expensive. However, serendipitously, when my roommates and I moved in we received a cash gift card from AT&T (as a reward for becoming a customer even though it’s a monopoly and we had no choice). So shoutout to AT&T for being the corporate sponsor of our Pit.

We adorned The Pit with ball-themed artwork. Also, an “it’s a ball” sign, inspired by the “it’s a boy” sign from the baby shower of our neighbors, who were doing productive, adult things with their lives - just like us.

Perfection is not static - what is sublime in one moment has room for improvement in the next. The Pit 2.0 was ramped a few months later, fortified with body pillows sewn together around the perimeter of a fitted sheet.

I added a plaque on the wall nearby that read:

“The Pit,” 2022

plastic balls, cardboard, misc couches

Egan et al. labored for months (2, to be precise) to complete this avant-garde masterpiece, archetypal of the “Camp” style, rampant in the 2020’s with artists of the Zed generation. In an allusion to the universe, “The Pit” contains multitudes, tiny spheres that compose the fabric of a whole - impotent, trivial, and repugnant alone - but extraordinary in composition, the whole much greater than its mere parts. The perimeters of this piece consist of miscellaneous lounging apparatuses, conveying a modern take on the classic conversation pit, a nod to humanity and civilization, the discourse and camaraderie in contemporary symposium that distinguishes humankind from mere beasts. This structure encompasses the focal point of the piece, the pit, as humanity and the universe, at once both dissonant and enraptured, are thrust together as one. To quote Egan herself on the inspiration behind this tour de force, “I’ve never met a room that wouldn’t be better with a few thousand balls in it.”

The Tech Daddy Shrine

No Silicon Valley home is complete without a Tech Daddy shrine. It appeared the previous tenants took theirs with them when they left, so we had to install our own. (Really, a disgrace that our landlord didn’t disclose this to us prior.)

As soon as I drew the last drop of sacrificial blood to activate the alter, the house was cast in a #0047bb chroma blue, cybersecurity increased by 73%, and Steve Jobs himself appeared in apparition to express his pleasure.

Read more

Background

I made a Google Form for guys who want to date me (as a joke) but after 400+ responses, I felt an obligation to the scientific community to write a research paper.

Objective

To describe the patterns of male seduction and dating sentiments for such creatures in the Northern California area.

Method

I displayed a Google Form link on my Hinge and Bumble profiles. These apps distributed my profile across the screens of men aged 23-29, predominantly in the Bay Area, although occasionally in New York, New York.

Results

I obtained 471 responses and non-overtly disgusting data (which I immediately eliminated) from 469 (ha) of those units.

Conclusions

It’s rough out there, man. Also, there’s no rizz like being an average-looking woman living in the Bay.

Keywords

Mating, crypto, AI, multi-level marketing, gerrymandering, Google Forms, Google Sheets

1. Introduction

Do you ever look at your love life and think - wow, this is so inefficient, I really need to optimize this? Probably not. This is what separates me from you.

Bored of dating in the Bay Area, I was either going to gamify my love life to biohack some serotonin or else give up entirely. After a statistically significantly disappointing date, I was struck by inspiration - by the hour of 1:38 ante meridian, I had composed a manifesto that encapsulated the tropes of the modern dating stage. I shared it with some friends as yet another high-effort joke, and they insisted I put it on my dating profile. At first I refused - would I really ascend to such cosmic levels of cringe? Clearly, yes.

Once I reached a critical mass of respondents, of course I was going to conduct some data analysis, I literally make spreadsheets for a living.

2. Patients & Methods

Men aged 23-29 living in the Bay Area, and sometimes in New York, because I go there frequently. (I am trying to move to New York but doing a very bad job of it.) The method of distribution was adding the survey link to my Hinge and Bumble profiles. That’s organic reach babey.

Note that I did not ask anyone to fill out the form, I just had the link on my profile for the brave and the curious. The survey was open for 22 months and 12 days, from January 25, 2023 through December 6, 2024.

3. Results

3.1 “Guys Literally Only Want One Thing And Its Fucking Dis-”played in This Graph1

When asked what they were looking for, 4.7% of men resonated with the statement “I’ve got a big old head full of beef and I’m just tryna smash.” However, the greatest share of 23.1% agreed “I am literally on my hands and knees begging for a goddess to worship,” and 8.1% thought the previous answer was “mad kinky” and instead was seeking a “nice Christian suburban wife to birth my five children.”

5.4% affirmed “I have no idea, I’m just a silly little guy [who thinks] commitment is soooo scary.” Although an additional 58.7% had a write-in vote in the “other” section, they can be bucketed into this latter section as well because despite their attempts to hedge, the options provided are clearly MECE.2

3.2 Critical Shortages in the Oxytocin Supply Chain

This study uncovered some critical supply chain issues when it came to feeling the consensual, caring touch of a woman. For 24.8% of men, the greatest share, it had been “20 long years; ever since I enlisted in the army at the precocious age of four” since they had felt the touch of a woman. However, a lucky 14.3% “literally hugged my mom this morning. I love my mom so much. She smells so good.” And 1.3% of men were for the streets, claiming, “I am actively sleeping with SO many ‘people.’ I’d tell you my body count but I can’t count that high.”

3.3 Temporal Spikes in Yearning

When does loneliness strike men most, you may ask. I may answer. Men were most likely to fill out this form on Monday or Saturday (16.0% each), or at 10pm (8.5%). If you’re trying to send a “u up?” text to a guy and he happens to be one of the men who filled out my form (sorry girl) you may have the greatest luck at these times. Interestingly, the tied-for second most frequent time of day was 8am, another time when people may or may not be “up.” (I personally will not be.)

3.4 Correlations Between Seduction and Democratic Participation

82.7% of the men attempting to seduce me were registered to vote, but only 15.6% of them had an enthusiastic sentiment about it (as determined by manual sentiment analysis). Foreigners made up 7.2% of respondents, many from countries that don’t require voter registration and therefore their voter status was not a good indication of their civic participation. 4.7% were, unfortunately, unconcerned civilian non-voters. However, we cannot determine for certain if my profile had a positive, negative, or neutral attraction for men with a strong sense of civic duty. To validate this, the study would have to be replicated in a controlled environment.

3.5 Duplicities and Abundancies in Male Monikers

The most common names of form-fillers are listed below. Very original, guys. Try doing something different for a change.

• 6 Ryans

• 6 Joe/Josephs

• 6 Nick/Nicholases

Depending how pedantic we are, there were 8 John-adjacents: 3 pure Johns, 2 Jonathans, 1 Johnny, 1 Jon, and 1 Jonathy.

The most common non-white name came in a tredecuple tie at #16, Ayush with 3 respondents.

3.6 Males’ Intimacy With Google Sheets

Almost half of men confessed they felt lust towards Google Sheets. For 17.3% this was a straightforward “immense and overpowering lust” at the thought of Google Sheets, with an additional 23.3% of men feeling a more nuanced and bittersweet “aching pain because of the near-unbearable pleasure Google Sheets brings.” The intense passions of love and hate are often conflated, and these emotions are particularly intertwined with the complexity of such a product as Google Sheet. Accordingly, 8.1% of men were filed with an “all-consuming rage” when they thought of Google Sheets, and relatably feel the urge to “pour out lamb’s blood by the moonlight at the witching hour” to unleash this fury.

51.3% felt the dynamic between themselves and Google Sheets was too intricate, too intimate, to be encapsulated by the words of another, and had a write-in answer. In a scenario akin to Romeo-and-Juliette, 8.8% of men were more inclined towards Excel. As a Mac user, we come from different worlds and would never be compatible.3

3.7 Positive Indications I Have The “Fattest Ass” In Modern-Day History

18.6% of men agreed I “have the fattest ass [they’ve] ever seen in [their] life on G*d.” An additional 30.7% of men asserted they were filling out my form out of “morbid curiosity,” indisputably morbid curiosity about the fattest ass they’ve ever seen in their life on G*d. This means for at least 49.3% of men, I have the fattest ass they’ve ever seen, a positive indication that my ass is of great historical significance.

3.8 Creating Romantic Opportunity for Every Member of the Global Workforce4

Of the 469 respondents, 218 provided their LinkedIn profiles, with the others withholding, not having a LinkedIn, supplying a fake link, or suggesting I look them up myself. I identified an additional 73 LinkedIn profiles from respondents’ input names or from inferring their names from their email addresses. Of those 291 profiles, I was able to scrape 210 to add to my spreadsheet. (hehehe.) Therefore, my sample size of professional personas was 44.8% of the general form-filler populace.

Unsurprisingly, a significant chunk of these professionals self-identified as engineers (35.2%). 9.0% identified as researchers, 4.3% as founders, and 1.9% mentioned AI in their title.

Men from 57 industries filled out my form. Their average number of LinkedIn followers was 610, and the median was 337. I attracted 7 Google employees (3.3%), 4 Meta employees (1.9%), and NVIDIA was in a quintuple-tie for third, with 3 interested workers (1.4%) - a notable missed arbitrage opportunity.

3.9 The Most Effective Funnels for Romantic Lead Generation

The majority of men reported they found my form via Hinge (59.9%), approximately 3x that of Bumble (20.0%). 1.1% of men claimed they found it via Tinder, which I do not have, so either someone is impersonating me (not good) or Tinder has undergone genericide and is synonymous with “a dating app” (maybe also not so good). While I did not measure the proportion of time I spent on each app, which would certainly factor into how frequently my profile was shown, I believe time spent was approximately equal. I speculate the Hinge rate was 3x higher due to the nature of the app encouraging one-sided first-moves (versus mutual matching), being more text-focused, and permitting fewer likes per day. Since I never asked people to fill out the form, but just had the link on my profile, these elements would naturally encourage more voluntary respondents.

Notably, 1.1% of men asserted they received the form link from my mom, which is not entirely implausible, as my mother has been on my ass about finding a husband. However, I doubt she would be aligned with my methods. Additionally, 1.3% of men claimed they received the link in a dream - very powerful.

4. Discussion

I certified this paper as “peer-reviewed” by, well, showing it to some of my peers. They said - what the fuck, Danielle.

5. Conclusion

After a statistically significant number of responses and not having found the love of my life, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am the problem here (97%, P = 0.001). However, I did gain a greater respect and affection for the formidable functionality of Google Forms and Google Sheets. Ultimately, I learned that love isn’t found in a person, it’s found in optimization, and the real treasures are the spreadsheets we made along the way. As a result of this study, I have decided to bestow the love normally shared with a romantic partner into a parasocial relationship with Google Suite.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare no financial, legal, moral, or other conflicts of interest.

Financial Disclosure

This paper presents independent research sponsored by Danielle under her personal checking account funding in Bank of America although she clearly spent $0 on this. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and not necessarily those of Hinge, Bumble, Google, Alphabet Inc, or the United States Department of Health.

Acknowledgements

We5 would like to thank the 469 valiant men aged 23-29 who responded to our survey. We would also like to thank Sundar Pichai, the Google Forms team, and the Google Sheets team for statistical support.

References

Please see the footnotes for all the meme references. I wish I could always footnote my meme references…

Appendix

My Dating Form

Confirmation Message

A Selection of Survey Responses to the Final Question: “Any questions or concerns?”

Below are some notable submissions, with Personal Identifying Information (PII) redacted for privacy. While 5 respondents confessed their love for me and 2 others proposed marriage, 2 suggested therapy - so kind of them all to care.

Thanks for reading my Scientific Paper. If you have any questions or concerns well I don’t care. Feel free to write them in the comment section below, where I won’t read them.