Sadly, it isn’t true. It was all a joke. The app never existed in the first place, so it couldn’t have been shut down because there were no women. It was a funny prank — a good joke, a great one, even. The confirmation bias that NFTs are for sad men is strong enough that this tricked a few news outlets into reporting it as if it were real.
I nearly fell for it, too. In mid-March 2022, I saw an announcement about the “Lonely Ape” dating app, looked at the site, and was intrigued (I like to think I was also somewhat skeptical, but I might be giving myself too much credit here). I sent the site owners an email asking about it, to see if it was a possible story. They responded that it was set to launch in two or three months and had hundreds of signups. I didn’t follow up.
As of now, the account has RT’d a few other people making fun of it — a pretty good sign they were in on it.
Over Twitter DMs today, the prankster confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it was a joke. Well, OK, “confirmed” via a winky smiley face, but like, that’s exactly the emoji you’d use to confirm something’s a joke.
