Kit Volta Wants a "Gay Evil Boyfriend"

In a city oversaturated with parties, performances, and profile pics, it takes something uniquely unhinged to cut through the noise. Enter Gay Evil Boyfriend—a chaotic, genre-bending dating campaign from Kit Volta that blended physical flyers, internet culture, and live theatrical chaos into a deeply earnest attempt to fall in love (or at least go on a few dates).

Inspired in part by the surreal joy of watching Cheeseball Man devour an entire jar of cheese balls in Washington Square Park, Kit decided to take whimsy into her own hands. The experience felt oddly transcendent—“I have never felt more alive on a Saturday than that day”—and sparked her desire to create a public spectacle of her own.

The Premise: Find Me a Gay Evil Boyfriend (Please)

Kit, an interdisciplinary interactive media artist, created the Gay Evil Boyfriend campaign as a way to get over a crush - it’s called healing, look it up.

She defines the “Gay Evil Boyfriend” as a metrosexual-coded archetype—think a straight man who paints his nails, has great photos, and listens to Clairo.

To promote the event, Kit plastered flyers outside of Ray’s Bar, Kiki’s, Dimes Square, next to the 2nd Street on Howard, along both Bedford and Jefferson Avenues, and outside of Carousel in Bushwick — places her target audience typically frequents. Each flyer had a scannable QR code that brought them to the application form. Brave strangers were able to submit themselves (or others) for the role of Gay Evil Boyfriend.

But the campaign didn’t just live in the streets. Kit revamped her Hinge profile to market the event, spent $50 on Twitter ads, and built a website that displayed randomized submissions. The chaos worked: collecting around 100 responses, including one from none other than Julian Casablancas of The Strokes (who, in true chaotic-neutral fashion, now views Kit’s stories religiously but doesn’t follow her back).

The Event: Speed Dating Meets Performance Art

Then came the climax: a live event hosted at Telos House in East Williamsburg.

Ninety people RSVP’d via Partiful and Kit’s friends dressed as office sirens to help to present submission data while AI-generated visuals looped in the background like a fever dream. There was a live speed dating round between Kit and five applicants (four men, one woman). At the end, the sirens crowned the “Most Gay,” “Most Evil,” and, of course, “Most Boyfriend.”

The Aftermath: Dates, DMs, and Digital Footprints

Outcomes? Oh, there were outcomes.

Kit has gone on several dates with people she met through the project. What Is New York reposted the flyers. What Is New York Dating covered the campaign. It’s safe to say a niche but mighty cultural moment was born.

But beyond the Instagram reposts and potential romances, Gay Evil Boyfriend offered something rarer: a new framework for what dating can look like when it’s infused with humor, vulnerability, and an unapologetic sense of camp.

The Takeaway: Dating Is Performance Art

For Kit, the project wasn’t just about dating—it was a test of what happens when you design intimacy like an art piece. It was her first experiment involving live performance, user-generated content, and real-time participation. And New York ate it up.

Kit’s biggest learning? People want this. New Yorkers are desperate for dating events that aren’t dead-eyed speed dating nights at Murray Hill bars. They want weird. They want narrative. They want a little evil.

Also: if you’re trying to get over a crush, launching a viral queer dating experiment might just be the way to do it.

💌 Want to find your next Gay Evil Boyfriend? Send this little invite out to potential suitors… you never know how far it’ll take you.