Laxman, aka Lucky, works at Chaman Medical Store in New Delhi, India. One day, the spoiled son of a local businessman calls the store asking for a box of condoms. Even though it’s pouring outside, his unkind boss demands that Lucky personally make the delivery to the rude customer. What Lucky sees when he shows up leaves him baffled. There she is, Dimple, Lucky’s girlfriend, in the arms of another man. Heartbroken, Lucky roams the streets of Delhi all night, until he receives another phone call, this time from a representative of the uber-rich Aggarwal family: “Congratulations! You’ve passed the poverty test. You’re now the sole inheritor of the entire Aggarwal empire.” 

This rags-to-riches yarn, Insta Millionaire, is one of the most popular stories on Pocket FM, an Indian audio streaming app. It’s like Audible, but instead of polished audiobooks from professional authors, you listen to user-generated shows with titles like Hellbound With You, Lunatic in Love, and Rejected Billionaire. 

Rags-to-riches stories on the platform like Insta Millionaire feel like a meta allegory of how Pocket FM functions. They promise their writers a light at the end of the tunnel — keep writing; your story could go viral, catapulting you to fame and wealth.

As of December 2024, the English version of Insta Millionaire has more than 1,300 episodes, which users have played over 235 million times. The series has grossed $15 million, according to SF Weekly. Another series, Saving Nora, a revenge saga featuring a woman whose family shuns her for becoming pregnant (without ever having sex, of course), has more than 2,300 episodes and has earned $18 million.

Pocket FM was originally created by Indian engineers for the Indian market. But in 2022, the company  expanded to the US — a much more lucrative market. Now, the platform makes 70 percent of its revenue in the US, a representative of the company told The Verge. In March, Pocket FM raised $103 million in funding, at a valuation of $750 million.

But while Pocket FM’s valuation is booming, its vast network of writers often aren’t sharing in the success and have found the platform’s demands to be stifling.

Amina SB, 19, an aspiring novelist and cafe owner in Abuja, Nigeria, loves that by publishing audio novels on Pocket FM, she can reach many more people than she would with just text. In April of this year, Amina wrote 15,000 words on the platform and applied for a contract with the company. As she waited for a response, she kept “uploading, uploading, uploading” chapters. Finally, after a month, Pocket FM sent her an “exclusive” contract saying it would convert her novel into audio but that she couldn’t republish the story elsewhere. After writing 45,000 words under the novel title Bitter Rivals Bond by Fate, for which she earned a total of $229, Amina says Pocket FM refused to promote her book because she didn’t have enough listeners. 

“Of course I wasn’t gonna get enough listeners. It had only been two months since my book came out, and they didn’t help me promote it,” Amina tells The Verge. She says she won’t keep writing for the platform and that it’s “not good for beginner writers” who might feel “heartbroken” and “think they’re failing.” 

Beyond its flashy numbers, Pocket FM is essentially a content mill for audio fiction and an example of what happens when a tech company dives into story production at scale and across cultural lines. Already, the company publishes translated and original stories in English, Hindi, and several South Indian languages. Now, it’s also trying to penetrate German, Portuguese, and Spanish-language markets.

To produce the massive amount of content it does, Pocket FM uses an extensive network of full-time and contract editors and writers from around the world. A writer can publish on Pocket FM by clicking the “write” button on the app. Once you write 15,000 words, the company sends you a contract detailing your rights and payment. You then record audio / sound for the story yourself or, as of early 2024, use AI to convert text into speech. If your story becomes popular among listeners, Pocket FM may hire voice actors for your show as well as invest in marketing it. 

“What I’m fundamentally against is having a gatekeeper… when someone decides whether a story is good enough or not,” says Rohan Nayak, one of three cofounders of Pocket FM. Nayak says that while Pocket FM is an entertainment platform, his vision was always to create a space where writers from across the world can publish their stories. “So it’s pretty much like a democratic platform,” he adds. 

Pocket FM tells The Verge that most of its writers are based in India and the US. But there also appears to be a sizable contingent in Nigeria, where Pocket FM writers spend time trading tips and concerns in Facebook groups and Reddit threads. 

Miracle Ubah, 26, also Nigerian, first learned of Pocket FM through a writing course. But after writing 9,000 words for the platform, he experienced writer’s block. Ubah’s solution: contract out the writing to someone else, pay them a share of what Pocket FM pays Ubah, and keep the rest for himself. 

Ubah’s contract with Pocket FM promises him $375 per month, with the stipulation that the novel get at least 2,000 listeners, of whom 38 percent classify as “active” listeners, i.e., people who listen to the show daily. For a new user, attracting so many regular listeners is monumentally challenging — Ubah is struggling, too. The contractor has written about 50,000 words, but Ubah says he isn’t earning enough money and he’s going to unpublish the novel. 

The writers of Pocket FM find themselves in a catch-22: the platform’s algorithm will only promote their novel if it’s already popular among listeners. On Facebook groups like Pocket FM Writers Hub and Pocket FM Audiobook (Writers and Listeners), it’s common to see people pleading for group members to give their novels a listen. 

Pocket FM isn’t the first platform with a tyrannical algorithm. Companies like YouTube and TikTok work similarly, too — they ask you to keep producing and posting, and you might become a celebrity, meaning instant wealth and status. 

After foregoing her audio novelist dreams, Amina now works as an acquisition editor for Pocket FM, meaning she helps the company hire other writers. The company pays her $50 per new writer she hires. She says she much prefers this job to writing for them because she doesn’t “work with the fear of not being paid for [her] work anymore.” She also warns those she speaks to: she doesn’t personally know of anyone else whose story has gone viral and who earned a sizable revenue through Pocket FM. 

Still, the allure of converting their writing into audio and striking gold continues to draw more aspiring novelists to the platform. “They want to try. They think maybe I’m gonna get lucky,” she adds. 

Like so many other companies, Pocket FM is jumping on the AI train, too. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with the AI voice-cloning company ElevenLabs. The platform wants to triple its content library of over 100,000 hours and says AI-powered tools have helped cut costs by 90 percent. Before generative AI, it was a lot harder for writers to produce audio content. Even if someone had quality recording tools, they could only produce about 30 minutes of high-quality audio content each day. But “with the AI tools, this output can be 10 times more,” said Prateek Dixit, Nayak’s cofounder, to TechCrunch. 

Though AI-produced voice lacks emotional tenor and “is not the best,” Nayak concedes it’s “good enough” and that it “levels the playing field.” Pocket FM won’t stop hiring human voice actors for its top-performing shows, claims Nayak, because “at the end of the day, to be very honest… human voice and human adaptation… is a different level of creativity.” 

The company’s AI-powered dreams don’t just end at converting more text scripts into sound. In the next few months, Pocket FM will launch an AI adaptation tool that will allow writers to publish stories in multiple languages in an instant, making the platform even “more democratic.” Nayak says he doesn’t foresee AI replacing Pocket FM’s global pool of writers. Rather, he envisions this new tool as an “AI assistant” that would allow them to publish the same story in English, German, Spanish, and so on.

But what do we lose when we make stories at the click of a button? 

When asked how she feels about AI’s creative writing, Amina says, “I hate that. I hate that. I think it’s not fair toward writers because we use all our time to write and write and write. But with AI, it’s just easy peasy.” She says AI feels like “cheating” and “it’s really wrong.” Balqis, another Nigerian writer The Verge spoke to, says using AI would “make Pocket FM stoop really low.” Pocket FM’s most popular stories like Insta Millionaire and Saving Nora are full of twists and turns and tempestuous human feelings, and “ultimately, AI lacks emotions.”

Pocket FM thrives on its “vibrant creator community, composed of skilled storytellers, talented voice-over artists, and imaginative writers,” according to the platform’s website. The truth is, no matter how big Pocket FM gets, most of its writers won’t be receiving a lucky phone call anytime soon.

Suriyan Ramasami’s first date with the professor from Sacramento was special. After matching on Bumble and texting and FaceTiming for a week, Ramasami suggested they meet in person. He reserved a table at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, drove two hours from the Bay Area to Sacramento, and even bought her a rose. They hit it off and scheduled a second date of hiking and dinner by a lake. It was then that Ramasami disclosed his living situation: “I don’t stay in an apartment or anything. I’m nomadic, and I actually love it.” 

At first, the Sacramento professor was curious. But, soon after, she gave him the bad news: she wanted to just be friends. This wasn’t Ramasami’s first time in the “friend zone.” In fact, most of his experiences with online dating apps like Bumble, Hinge, and PlentyofFish played out similarly. 

Like Ramasami, many who consider themselves nomadic have tried to find love on the usual dating apps, like Tinder and Bumble, without much luck. Dating apps are generally meant to help you find a partner near you, but for vanlifers, they may not be near any place for too long.

In Ramasami’s case, being “nomadic” means living out of his 2018 Subaru Outback. Especially during the past year, many Americans have foregone apartments and houses for mobile homes like vans, RVs, or, in Ramasami’s case, their cars. Recent studies show that RV ownership increased by 26 percent during the past decade, and sales of RVs broke records in March this year, with over 54,000 shipped to dealers in North America.

Tinder tells us between February 1st and July 1st this year, mentions of “nomad” increased by 23 percent in profiles, while mentions of “RV” and “van” both increased by 8 percent. Still, these users sometimes strike out when they disclose their lifestyle to dates. Most apps use location as a parameter to surface potential matches, and if you’re on the move, that might not be the most accurate way to date. Plus, the apps don’t include a filter for people who move around frequently. 

Now, other apps and websites have sprung up to address these issues — and they’re growing in popularity. There’s Nomad Soulmates, a Facebook group for remote workers and nomads to connect and date (the team says they are working on an app that is scheduled to release later this year). There’s Sēkr, an app meant for vanlifers to find community and resources while on the move. Sēkr doesn’t market itself explicitly as a dating app, but says people in the community refer to it as the “Tinder of vanlife.” 

There’s also Fairytrail, a dating app launched in 2019 for remote workers, nomads, and van dwellers. Taige Zhang, a remote worker himself and the founder of Fairytrail, says he initially launched the app as a travel-matching platform, to find people to travel with or share an Airbnb. But over time, he found more people using the app to date, so his team adjusted their strategy. They stopped accepting travel bookings and poured all their resources into the dating functionality. 

The app has become increasingly popular among van dwellers throughout the pandemic, Zhang says, with an 1,100 percent increase in the number of Fairytrail profiles that mention the words “van,” “campervan,” or “RV” from February 2020 to July 2021.

Bryce Yates is one such person. He moved into his 1999 Chevy Astro van in November of 2019. He experienced similar problems to Ramasami’s on mainstream dating apps and says he’s struggled to convince people he owns a home but chooses to live on the road. To assure one woman he was seeing, Yates requested his then-tenant let the two of them see the place he was renting out. 

“In the back of my mind I’m thinking that if I have to convince someone like this, I don’t think I’ll be dating them for very long,” he says. 

Ramasami believes that part of the problem is that as a society, we connect having a house with stability and security. “In general, a person looks for security, and security is tied to being in one place, being able to be a provider,” he says, adding that even though he sees himself as stable, his dates don’t often share the same opinion. 

While some vanlifers struggle to get dates because of a stigma against their lifestyle, for others, vanlife has proven to be an advantage, at least in the initial stages of the dating process. “If anything, I feel like I’m more attractive than ever living in my van,” says one Fairytrail user, who started her vanlife journey in a mini school bus about two years ago and asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons. She added that in her experience, many men on dating apps were fascinated by her decision and expressed a desire to also do something similar. 

The challenge for this person arises after she has already been on a couple dates with someone. She normally moves cities every season and often finds herself going through “mini-breakups.” For instance, she has recently been going on dates with a man who she likes. “We have so much fun together and I’m like, ‘Oh man, how am I going to break up with this guy, you know, eventually?’” 

The Fairytrail user says she likes the idea of a dating app for remote workers and vanlifers because ultimately, she is looking for someone who shares a similar lifestyle. Yates and Ramasami say they’ve had more success with Fairytrail than with mainstream dating apps because Fairytrail users tend to be more accepting of nontraditional housing situations. 

Still, despite the app’s promise of romantic bliss, it doesn’t magically solve nomadic daters’ hurdles. 

Though there’s an almost even split between men and women on the app, Fairytrail and other apps dwindle in comparison to the size of mainstream dating apps, which makes the possible dating pool relatively small. For instance, as of July 2021, Fairytrail has a little under 20,000 users, whereas Tinder saw a turnout of 20 million people to use just one particular feature on the app. 

Also, because Fairytrail serves remote workers, users often find themselves speaking to someone thousands of miles away, sometimes on a different continent. Ramasami says he recently matched with someone in Portugal. She seems interesting, but realistically, he doesn’t see them meeting in person any time soon. 

Plus, Ramasami says most women on Fairytrail are in their 20s. He, 51, doesn’t see himself dating someone that young because he doesn’t know if their priorities would match. 

Recently, he did find a woman closer in age, named Amy. He’s planning a trip to Mexico soon and hopes to meet her on his way. She’ll fly into New Mexico around the same time he’ll be passing through, and the two will meet there. For years, Ramasami has ridden alone in the driver’s seat of his Subaru Outback. Maybe, this time around, he can find someone who’d like to ride shotgun.

Update August 30th, 12:25PM ET: We made an alteration to how one source was attributed.