Page 3 of Certified Heartthrob

Review from Daphne—0 stars—As a single woman in her thirties, it is hard enough to put yourself out there and go on dates. But it makes it even harder when Heartstring neglects to vet their users well enough to remove them from the service when it’s obvious there’s someone purposefully treating women to bad dates. I was recommended to and matched with one Mark Silver, who ended up being the biggest asshole I have ever met in my life. And this was no accident. He was determined to “teach me a lesson” and turn me off love forever. However, he did succeed in turning me off of Heartstring. It’s poorly run and a waste of time. I will never be using your service again.

Re: Review from Daphne—0 stars—Daphne, apologies that our date was not what you were hoping it would be. Get used to that feeling, because that is a good summary of love and dating in general. If matchmaking companies like Heartstring were honest about that, I wouldn’t feel compelled to use dating as a method for telling women the hard truth. You all should thank me, really. But at least the one thing we can agree on is that Heartstring is inadequate to say the least, and it should stop preying on people’s lonely desperation just to make money...when they know all too well themselves that love is a waste of time. Look up their CEOs and admins. Interesting stuff.

Jack Landson, one of our main advisors, stopped reading and slammed his laptop shut. He slid his glasses from his face and tossed those down as well, massaging his brow and the bridge of his nose. He groaned. “We’ve got to put a stop to this.”

Jack had recently alerted us to this troll, who was hell-bent on sabotaging every date he went on just to generate bad reviews. It was some kind of oddly obsessive attempt at tearing our company down.

“What does he mean...look at the CEOs and admins?” my sister Jada asked.

He looked even more exasperated. “What do you think it means? We’re all single! And up until recently, Lucas was, too.”

“But he ended up with a fairytale romance,” I reminded him. “A very public one at that. I thought we weren’t under fire for that anymore.”

“As long as we’re still losing hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly over this guy...we’re most definitely still under fire. It doesn’t matter what Lucas’s relationship status is anymore. Now, they’re looking at the rest of us.”

In our original briefing, Jack had explained that the monthly paid memberships to our family’s matchmaking and internet dating service were down three percent thanks to our newest troll. Which equated to ninety thousand customers and over three hundred thousand dollars lost each month. It was no laughing matter.

“So, then maybe you should pay someone to be your wife next,” Lucas quipped at Jack. “I’ve already done my part.”

I squirmed in my seat a little, hoping no one would redirect their expectations towards Jada and me. I knew my little sister was a hopeless romantic, and secretly very sad and insecure about being single, while I felt strangely in agreement with this Mark Silver.

Going into the business of matchmaking had not been my idea. When our wealthy father passed away, it turned out that instead of receiving inheritances and trust funds, we were to be stripped of every penny and asset to our names, thanks to his bad business deals and debts. We’d had to think of something to rebuild our family name...and bank accounts.

Lucas, as the oldest, teamed up with his buddy, Jack, and decided that love was something everyone longed for, but lots of people didn’t have...and they were willing to spend money to change that. With a lot of hard work, careful strategizing, and a few PR nightmares that were spun to work in our favor, we ended up with one of the leading dating apps in the country and in many other parts of the world.

But truthfully, I hated the idea of capitalizing on something that was nothing more than a social construct. Why did we put so much pressure on people to be in relationships and get married? I certainly wanted nothing to do with any of it. But our membership numbers proved that there were more than enough people out there who strongly disagreed with me.

“What about Joshua?” Jada suggested. “He does the least amount of work and he’s single, too. Make him get married next. He’s not even here today!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “There’s a reason Joshua’s not married, and no amount of money is going to convince a woman to walk down the aisle with him.”

“No arranged marriages,” Jack snapped, standing up to pace the front of the conference room. “The press always finds out they’re arranged and that damn near killed us with Lucas. It doesn’t matter which of us are single or married, anyway. We need to put a stop to this guy.”

“I told you I’d handle it,” I assured him. “I already have a meeting scheduled with the IT department to get some more details on what we can do.”

“Perfect. Please keep us updated. We need to get this guy off the site, but also do damage control so he doesn’t find some other platform to roast us on,” Lucas stated, already shooting up from his seat to gather his things.

The meeting was hastily adjourned as each of my siblings, along with Jack, filed out of the room to rush off onto their own business for the day. I was left standing there with the file Jack had handed over to me, filled with printed reports of many of the reviews associated with this Mark Silver. I got sucked into reading them longer than I meant to.

I had to agree with him...love and dating in general usually proved to be disappointing for most people. I could remember how when Lucas presented the idea for our company to me, I laughed at him. There were plenty of other dating apps out there—surely there wasn’t room on the market for another one. But I was quickly proved wrong. Apparently, there was no limit to what people were willing to go through to find “the one.”

But something about Mark’s reviews left me feeling guilty. It struck a nerve with me. He wasn’t just down on love, he was down on us for promoting it. He was hitting on an insecurity I’d already felt long before his reviews started popping up. I realized it might be hard to motivate myself to put a stop to someone I secretly agreed with, but then again...what kind of creep dedicates so much time to coaxing women out onto dates just so he can try to make them as jaded and cynical as himself?

His position was far more pathetic than the existence of our company was wrong. I reminded myself of that as I packed everything up and headed downstairs to meet with the tech team.

It took over an hour to update them on everything and make sure they had all the information they needed. Then, they got to work while I supervised.

The head IT guy, Joe, explained to me that this was going to be a little trickier than they’d originally planned.

“Lucas alerted us to this guy months ago, and we got enough bad reviews to justify deleting his account. But as soon as we did, five more popped up in its place. He’s determined, that’s for sure.”

I stood over his shoulder, shaking my head. Who the hell was this guy and how did he have so much time to devote to this crusade against us?

“What do we know about him? Is Mark Silver even his real name?”

“Several of the accounts are under different names, so it’s hard to say. And they all have different photos and profiles...so it’s also hard to say what he really looks like,” Joe replied. “But we can track him down through his IP address and figure out who the real Mark Silver is.”

“Great. Get on that. Let me know as soon as you’ve tracked him down.”

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