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The flyer on a pole in San Francisco was very straightforward, if a little bewildering. It read, “Seeking New Polycule Member: We recently had a defector in our polycule and are seeking a new member.”
A link at the bottom invited anyone interested to apply to join a polycule—a group of cohabitating adults all in a consensual romantic relationship. The ad seemed almost normal at first, inviting applicants to join a “fun-loving, diverse, ragtag bunch of lover people.” The more you read, the weirder it gets. The link went to an application page hosted on Notion, where responders could share information about themselves, like their hobbies, their waistline (in inches), and whether they were interested in being a part of a “breeding pool.”
Courtesy of Danielle Egan
“Please do not think of this as an application!” the website read. “We prefer to think of it more like the X-Factor, but for finding another soulmate.” This went viral, of course, spreading across X and Reddit. Some people saw it as a joke. Many were seemingly furious about San Francisco techies or the concept of polyamory. Many asked whether this could possibly be a real thing.
It was not. The flyers—just 10 of them—were placed on a few poles by San Francisco artist and tech worker Danielle Egan. She fessed up to the farce this week, on her personal blog.
“In my mind, I was like, ‘Oh, this is such obvious satire, it’s obviously a joke,’” Egan says in a call with WIRED. “I’m shocked that so many people thought it was real.”
Egan has a history of these shenanigans. She was one of the masterminds behind very public stunts like Mehran’s Steakhouse, where Egan and her friends operated a fake bougie restaurant in New York City for one night only in 2023, and Pursuit, a citywide scavenger hunt that has been held the past two summers in San Francisco. (A third Pursuit is being planned for 2026.) She’s also friends and a fellow collaborator with a group of San Francisco tech renegades, including software engineer and artist Riley Walz, who has gotten lots of other press for projects that let people find old-school internet videos, avoid parking tickets, and have an easier time viewing the Jeffrey Epstein emails.
A former LinkedIn worker who is now building her own startup with a fellow Pursuit planner, Egan says she has a giant notes list in her phone with way more ideas than she has time to execute. She had hung only 10 of the polycule posters while picking up a prescription from the pharmacy. But that was enough to spawn a multitude of discussion threads across X and Reddit.
