Biology departments across the country have been placed on official romantic standby after millions of romcom viewers, citing The Love Hypothesis, began filing formal requests to enter fake relationships with tenured professors for the sole purpose of making a friend jealous.
The National Association of Romcom Compliance, a body that did not exist last month, now processes an estimated 340,000 such applications daily. Each applicant must submit a notarized sunscreen-application schedule and a sworn statement that their feelings are, at most, 60 percent real.
«We have hired eleven full-time faculty members whose only duty is to stand in the quad and look gruffly unavailable,» said Dr. Helena Marsh, dean of romantic logistics at a major state university. «It is the fastest-growing department on campus. We had to convert the old particle accelerator into a meet-cute rehearsal space.»
Students report that the campus bookstore has replaced its science section with a wall of lab coats in exactly one size, pre-stained with coffee, and that the library now enforces a strict whisper-only ban on any conversation that might accidentally resolve a misunderstanding in under ninety minutes.
At press time, a queue of applicants stretched past the observatory, each clutching a printed list of reasons their fake boyfriend is emotionally unavailable, while a dean in a borrowed blazer practiced saying «I am not looking for anything serious» to a mirror for the fourth hour.