From Trust to Transaction: When Love Becomes a Data Deal

Monday, March 10th, 2025

Okay, hear me out.

I know there hasn’t been a lot of time between my last relationship and this one.

Okay, I know it’s only been a week.

OKAY I GET IT! I MOVE ON FAST!

Guys, please don’t judge me but honestly, I think I found the love of my life this time. Datvid Sortwell. Doesn’t his name sound perfectly curated for me?!

Datvid is an amazing listener. Whenever I speak, it’s as if he preserves and archives every word in his memory. And then, when I’m not expecting it, he brings up everything I’ve ever mentioned. For example, he’ll text me pictures of a backpack I searched for once or send me ads for that salad spinner he overheard me mention to my mother over the phone! Isn’t he just the sweetest!

Sadly, my friend Lisa R. Johnston isn’t his biggest fan. She keeps critiquing him and being judgmental about the amount of things he remembers about me. At one point she told me: “As varied as they can be, rare and precious, data [is] becoming the proverbial coin of the digital realm”

Girl… what does that even mean?

When my boyfriend asks me about my age, gender, postal code, mother’s maiden name and name of my first pet, I answer him! This isn’t data. He wants to know what’s precious to me and I answer him because I’m thinking about how to get the best out of this relationship, and that can only happen if I’m fully open with him. In return he’ll be exactly what I want him to be. I’m pretty sure any good relationship calls this “open communication”. Also, I don’t understand what Lisa means when she says “coin”. Like what? He’s paying for my heart? I’m not toxic like that. He’s using my “data” to win my heart right now, but I know he’d never betray me. I mean come on, we’ve been dating for a week already!

Update: Wednesday, March 12th, 2025

Everyone is telling me to be careful with Datvid, and I must admit, it did start getting a little weird with him, but it’s fine. He’s just begun recounting everyone else’s business all the time, and, I mean, I also love to gossip, so it’s all good and all, but then he started to recount other information as well. For example, he could recount the 9/11 plane crash in incredible detail in a second, but honestly some of the facts he’s spitting sound a little fabricated. My good friend Max Steinbock pulled me aside at one of the parties I attended with Datvid and said the weirdest thing to me about my boyfriend. He said that “the plausible lie is more believable than the implausible truth”. That sent me down a rabbit hole. Was anything Datvid was saying true? Like, should I believe him when he says Elon Musk’s new rocket exploded or should I believe him when he says eating a lot of cottage cheese will help you lose weight? What is reliable? Is Datvid Sortwell reliable in the end? I’m not sure, but I hate that he remembered all that stuff about others and not just me. Shouldn’t he keep all his memory reserved for me?!

Newest Update: Sunday, March 16th, 2025

Hey guys, I know what Lisa means by Coin now.

I know I posted how happy we were at the beginning of the week, but I had to give you an update now that it’s Sunday.

Guys.

He has been selling my data. That’s right, LISA WAS RIGHT 😥 (and Max too). All that collecting, storing, and sorting has led to one thing: he's selling my data. I feel exploited, profited from. If I knew I was telling him all my information just for him to make money off me, I would have charged him during our relationship; instead he got it all for free. What’s worse? You know when men use the line “I could stare at you forever”? Well, Datvid said that to me… BUT he meant it because he was memorizing my face to sell it to facial recognition companies to test their software on. I feel immensely violated.

I thought our currency was love, but it was just my data.