Along with dating apps, I’m fascinated by the uncanniness of, say, a spam e-mail, or a message sent from a friend’s hacked account, or a tale of catfishing. My work often explores the notion of the uncanny and how technology, especially in the form of mediated communication and artificial intelligence, can tap into our deepest societal and personal anxieties. I’ve heard people say that if you really want to “succeed” at online dating, in the sense of using it to find a long-term partner, you have to “treat it like a job.” That always sounded awful to me. It was exhausting and joyless, but I felt obligated to do it, because, if I didn’t, I wasn’t “putting myself out there” and would therefore never date again.

The efficiency of the app reduced dating to merely another transaction. I could message with someone for a bit, then close the app and never think about them again. And they felt more disposable, too, since I shared no social connections with them. Somehow, the men I connected with through apps never seemed fully real, even after we’d met in person. I know many people enjoy using dating apps, but at the time they felt to me like another alienating offshoot of the tech industry that dominates San Francisco, where I’ve lived since 2008. I wrote my first blot story a few years ago, during one of my forays into online dating. How did this premise come to you, and what made it appealing to tackle in a fictional setting? One of the recurring motifs of the piece is how difficult it can be to identify blots, since they seem, basically, like perfect men. But there’s a complication: it’s been estimated that many of the men on dating apps are “blots,” fake humans posing as eligible men in order to steal their targets’ personal information.

In “ Out There,” your story in this week’s issue, a woman decides that it’s time to get into online dating.

Kate folk new yorker