Bumble Bought For $1.3bn, Prompting Humanity To Form A Queue
The dating app’s acquisition has been hailed as a rescue mission by an emergency committee of lonely office furniture.
LOWER WOMBLEY, The dating app Bumble has been bought by investment firm Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion, a transaction nobody involved has described as anything except a wager on humanity’s future. Several objects in the vicinity immediately considered whether acquisition might also give them a purpose.
A filing cabinet in Lower Wombley announced that it was ideally placed to oversee modern romance. It has spent years holding secrets, paperwork and an unopened birthday card from 2019. A desk lamp then joined the effort, saying it had been “emotionally available since Tuesday” and would prefer to stop lighting other people’s breakthroughs.
Together, the two pieces of office furniture established the Bureau of Romantic Infrastructure. It is unlicensed and works from a conference room booked until 2043. Its first proposal would replace dating profiles with pictures of applicants’ most candid possessions: a saucepan, a raincoat, perhaps the packet of batteries that says it is “not ready for anything serious.”
“Humanity has outsourced its longing to software, so naturally the software must now be purchased.”
“Humanity has outsourced its longing to software, so naturally the software must be bought by people who enjoy spreadsheets,” said Percival Nib, the bureau’s deputy convenor, who happened to be standing nearby. He said the next stage involved teaching staplers about commitment. The staplers have declined to discuss their feelings.
The purchase brought paperwork, as these things do. The Ministry of Interpersonal Logistics issued a 400-page form asking whether someone looking for romance counts as a user, a customer, a hopeful mammal or a temporary emotional subcontractor. Applicants must provide two references, evidence of adequate banter and a small diagram identifying the location of their “good snacks.”
At a hastily arranged hearing, three houseplants asked for representation after years of silently absorbing the consequences of human decision-making. Lorna Vetch, a ficus who chairs the Committee for Photosynthesis and Personal Growth, proposed that future matches receive approval from plants, one owl and a kettle with strong but undisclosed views.
Funding has yet to reach the bureau. The desk lamp remains upbeat after receiving a calendar invitation titled “potential spark.” Ithaca Holdings’ $1.3 billion acquisition is the real event. The cabinet’s claim to detect chemistry from the sound of a drawer closing belongs to this newspaper’s exhausted imagination.
By Thursday, the Bureau of Romantic Infrastructure had added a relationship status: “Acquired, pending due diligence.” It should suit people who like commitment, administrative review and the prospect that their feelings will eventually be absorbed by a holding company owned by a filing cabinet.