This Valentine’s Day at TreeHacks, a hackathon that draws college students across the country to collaborate on original projects, the award for “Most Technically Complex” was awarded to a dating app specifically designed to be used by participants of TreeHacks.

The app, called TreeHookups, was created by two Stanford students, John Snerling ’22 and Dennis Jenkins ’21. Like the many others attending a hackathon on the most romantic day of the year, they found themselves channeling their sexual frustration into coding.

“You can’t date a computer. Trust me, I’ve tried. The hardware just isn’t compatible,” Snerling explained. “So when we looked around at all the other thirsty devs, we knew we had a winning idea on our hands with TreeHookups.” 

TreeHookups works by assigning the user another person in the competition, who will then receive that user’s name and location. This lack of choice or agency, Jenkins hopes, will make sure everyone “finally gets some.” But this raises questions of what will happen if those two users are not well matched.

“Our biggest setback was actually the gender ratio. We ended up removing the sexual orientation filter altogether, so users might have to be a little open-minded,” Jenkins explained. “Something is better than nothing.”

“We won this award because we solved one of the unsolvable problems getting in the way of social good: Who will sleep with us?” Snerling added.

Other awards include “Most Covert Data Theft” for 15 Fun Dress-Up Games and “Most Sensual AI” for RealGirl, an AI designed by Greg Knurp ’20 to combat loneliness.

“The hardest part was getting her to talk to me long enough to train her,” Knurp said.

Hackathon organizers are hoping for a less embarrassingly high turnout next Valentine’s Day.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Contact Lana Tleimat at ltleimat ‘at’ stanford.edu.