Horny Ape Yacht Club Dating App Turns Into Sad Sausage Fest, Gets Cancelled [Updated]

Horny Ape Yacht Club Dating App Turns Into Sad Sausage Fest, Gets Cancelled [Updated]

We regret to inform you we were fooled. Fooled I tell you. But it was a good foolin’, so we’re leaving this article up. Explanation (and the original article continues throughout), so follow along.

In true don’t-believe-everything-you-read-on-the-internet fashion, this is the perfect opportunity to say we should do just that. We stumbled across a tweet and an accompanying website to back that tweet up. The TL;DR is that there was as an app for NFT die-hards to meet other likeminded people, and maybe find a little bit of love along the way. It was believed to be launched by Lonely Ape and the idea was really a dating app for crypto/NFT enthusiasts. It was, however, a joke.

The tweet (embedded below) told us that the app had been binned because too many crypto bros were signing up. Which, honestly, given our view on this space, it made sense that the Lonely Ape Dating Club was a total sausage fest.

The Lonely Ape Dating Club website was a sad place, emblazoned since with a message that read: “Due to unforeseen circumstances, this project has been put on hold indefinitely. Thank you for your support. Ape [love heart] ape”.

We wrote:

I can’t help but feel that research on their target market wasn’t done before cash was sunk into this thing. It’s genuinely gobsmacking that it wasn’t thought a Tinder for crypto bros would be full of said bros.

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Not much existed on the website, but the press kit contained the press release, last modified February 11, 2022.

“Lonely Ape Dating Club is building the first NFT focused dating app, starting with Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs,” the press release reads. Getting better, of course: “We are a ragtag team of hackers and NFT collectors interested in how we can integrate crypto and Web3 with the dating space.”

The idea behind the app was that users would be able to connect their crypto wallets and filter potential matches by net worth of cryptocurrency and NFTs held in their wallets. It was unbelievable, but also, you know….

And: “Get the attention of potential matches by sending them tips in crypto. Show off cool metrics like how long you have diamond handed (held on to) your NFTs, as well as your personal net worth and NFT portfolio.”

They even named a feature “Coin Digger”, which would allow non-Bored Ape Yacht Club owners to “connect with higher net worth individuals for mutual benefit”. This should have been the sign.

Here’s the screen renders:

lonely ape dating club
Image: Y4K Studio

This whole thing sounded utterly awful. But, you know. NFT bros.

Thanks, Buzzfeed. You’re the real MVP here. We’re truly glad this thing didn’t exist beyond a prank.

This article has been updated since it was first published.


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