Received this morning via LinkedIn InMail (Ok, look, I don’t understand LinkedIn’s use of camel case when their logo is set in lowercase. Classic bi-polar, indecisive leadership. Anyhoo):
Hi Greg, I'm the COO at Planet Theta, the world's first virtual reality dating app. We're revolutionizing the dating industry, prioritizing convenience and women's safety. Featured in The Today Show, Forbes, CNBC, BBC, and Vice, we're projecting $22.8M in revenue by June 2026. With AI-driven personalized experiences, we gather valuable marketing data.
A few thoughts:
- Ew, gross.
- I highly doubt they’re revolutionizing anything, but I’m sure Meta appreciates that they found another use for their headset. I imagine the growing catalog of virtual experiences is going to resemble the Google Play store filled with a plethora of crap.
- Prioritizing women’s safety is admirable and I am all for it but is it number two on the list? And how does VR protect against types of safety issues like verbal abuse and assault?
- And, I fail to understand how this is convenient to women because any dudes who have a VR headset are likely not highly qualified candidates for dating, virtual or otherwise. They are highly likely to either be single and weird or married (and also weird).
- Nobody cares if this was “featured” in the media anymore. I don’t believe that any of these companies validated that you’re awesome but instead just needed to fill air time. I would have preferred to watch a dog on a surfboard.
- $22.8M in revenue for a company with a website that doesn’t have a product to buy? Is it possible some dot-com douchebag fell into a coma in 1999, woke up in 2023, and is using their old playbook? This figure reminds me of when DivX reported $60M in revenue but most of it came from a revenue stream they didn’t discuss publicly: digitizing porn for online streaming. This has a similar, creepy vibe.
- Normally I would throw up in my mouth a little about now, but I took a Pepcid after breakfast and it's working.
- “With AI-driven personalized experiences, we gather valuable marketing data.” Oh great! So, they say they are concerned about women’s safety but they’re going to use AI in all the worst, unethical ways. Yeah, this is going to work out really great. Speaking in doge: Women much safe.
- Note to self, I need to remove the word “investor” from my LinkedIn profile. It’s just a magnet for bullshit. I wanted to be like the other cool kids and I should have known better. Or, maybe I leave it to attract fodder for more posts like this.
I seriously hope this product never sees the light of day and the people behind it go back to slinging instant hashbrowns at a Waffle House.