The Person Behind Those Viral Polycule Ads Says It’s Just a Joke

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.”

“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.

Egan says the application form got more than 2,000 responses. Some people seemed to get the joke immediately. Some did not and used the post to rage about San Francisco, the concept of polyamory, and tech workers. “A lot of people who filled out the application were angry, evil Twitter people who were like, ‘Kill yourself,’ ‘You guys suck,’ whatever,” Egan says. “So those were not as fun to read through.”

In the online discourse, Egan noted, it was how a viral post framed the story that really influenced how commenters and people who spread the story viewed it. If they framed it as a joke, people seemed to get it. If they were mad about it, others chimed in on the rage train.

“That framing from one person completely changed the tone of its responses,” Egan says. “The sort of sway that it has on the believability of it is just insane to me.”

As for why it got so big in the first place, or why people thought it was real, Egan is still surprised. Maybe it was that a physical flyer helped sell the idea of it being a real, tactile thing. The secondary step of using Notion for the form felt very techy and in line with an SF tech bro stereotype.

Egan says she enjoyed the world-building aspect of the project, comparing it to an alternate reality game, where people could learn snippets about these characters in this polycule world and introduce their own weird (and hopefully) fake characters as part of the charade.

“What really brings me joy is just the idea of engaging with a bunch of strangers and having them see into this little world that I've created and add their own elements,” Egan says. “It’s this sort of fun collaborative project.”

Egan has pulled other stunts in San Francisco, like Sit Club, an antithesis to the ambitious nature of run clubs. She’s also gone after other forms of relationships, like lampooning heterosexual monogamy with a “Death Duel” meant to let tech bros who complain about “the ratio” of men outnumbering women in the city fight each other. (They used inflatable boxing gloves; nobody was harmed.) She says what people often get wrong about these events or stunts is that they’re not supposed to make people think they’re real. Or make anyone the butt of the joke.

“I'm not trying to trick anyone,” Egan says. “I wouldn't even call it a prank. It's more just like, ‘Oh, here's a funny thing, and I'm bringing you into this inside joke.’ It's never coming from a place of malice or trickery or deceit. It's always just that I want to spark delight.”