Dating apps have largely become minefields of toxicity. Subscriptions, hidden algorithms and spam proliferate what used to be a way for people to find others. In this scenario, we imagine a world where a tech company offers a surveillance tool that seems too good to be true. This tool would log your life and activate when your matches appear in real life, creating the veneer of connection in real life.

This one was actually inspired by real-life art, namely the Black Mirror episode “Hang The DJ” and to a lesser extent, the 2013 film Her about a man who falls in love with an AI interface.

In the case of these imagined tools, there would be different ways they’d work in order to find you a match include 24-7 surveillance, preference adaptation & perhaps other future tech that would create the veneer of “perfection” to make it worth your while to spend to keep it working.