Riley Walz

Timeline by topic

Topics follow the event kinds supplied in this index. Each entry links to its full record in the chronological timeline. Dates retain the precision supplied by the publisher.

Timeline

1. 2002Born in Ballston Spa, New YorkbirthBallston Spa, New York

   Grew up in the village north of Albany; attended Ballston Spa High School.

   [45][33]
2. 2014Starts selling voice-overs on Fiverr at twelveother

   Fulfilled more than five hundred orders over several years, then lent earnings through the r/Borrow subreddit.

   [14]
3. 2018Builds Routeshuffleproject

   Random route generator for runners and cyclists — his first internet money, built at about sixteen.

   [15][1]
4. 2020Interns at MSCHFapprenticeshipMSCHF

   Won the internship by placing a resume inside a permitted plastic newspaper box on the sidewalk outside their office.

   [15][16]
5. 2020-02Fake candidate 'Andrew Walz' verified on Twitterproject

   Created a fictional Rhode Island congressional candidate, got him listed on Ballotpedia and verified by Twitter on February 9; CNN covered it February 28 and the account was suspended.

   [19][10]
6. 2022Mehran's Steak House listed on Google MapsprojectNew York, New York

   Roommates labeled their shared Upper East Side townhouse as a steakhouse; a website and months-long 'fully booked' waitlist followed.

   [20][21]
7. 2022-12Co-founds Numerous.aifoundedNumerous.ai

   Two-person startup putting ChatGPT inside spreadsheets; launch demo passed a million views.

   [12][33]
8. 2023-01Moves to San FranciscoroleSan Francisco, California

   Relocated from New York with his best friend to work on the AI startup full time.

   [22][15]
9. 2023-09-23Mehran's Steak House opens for one nightprojectNew York, New York

   The fake restaurant became a real pop-up in an East Village event space, serving roughly 140 diners with dozens of friends as staff.

   [20][21]
10. 2024-09-28Installs Bop Spotter in the Mission DistrictprojectSan Francisco, California

    A solar-powered phone on a pole Shazams street music 24/7 to a public feed — 'ShotSpotter, but for music.'

    [24][23][22]
11. 2024-11Launches IMG_0001project

    Surfaces roughly five million early-iPhone 'Send to YouTube' uploads at random; more than 600,000 visitors played over six million videos in the first month.

    [13][25][14]
12. 2024-12Citi Bike sleuthing backlashmedia

    Posted trip-data analysis of the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter's escape route and shared it with police; drew 'snitch' accusations.

    [26]
13. 2025IMG_0001 exhibited at the Kunstkerk, DordrechtexhibitionDordrecht, Netherlands

    The project was shown in the Netherlands in collaboration with the Dordrechts Museum.

    [45]
14. 2025-07Launches LooksMappingproject

    AI-scored 'hotness' map of restaurant clientele across New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, built from 2.8 million Google Maps reviews.

    [27][11]
15. 2025-07Launches Weather WatchingprojectNew York, New York

    A Manhattan street camera plus vision models tally what pedestrians wear as a crowdsourced weather report.

    [5]
16. 2025-07Stages the 'Waymo DDoS'projectSan Francisco, California

    About fifty people simultaneously ordered robotaxis to the city's longest dead-end street at dusk; revealed publicly in October 2025.

    [34]
17. 2025-07-30Panama Playlists goes liveproject

    Publishes the inferred Spotify accounts and listening habits of politicians, CEOs, and journalists.

    [28][7]
18. 2025-09-23Find My Parking Cops launches — and dies in four hoursprojectSan Francisco, California

    Mapped all 325 SFMTA parking officers near real time from sequential citation IDs; the agency cut the data feed the same afternoon.

    [29][30][31][32]
19. 2025-11-12House Oversight releases 20,000 pages of Epstein estate documentsotherU.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

    The document tranche — emails, texts, financial records — that Jmail would render nine days later.

    [18]
20. 2025-11-21Launches Jmail with Luke Igelproject

    A Gmail-faithful interface to the released Epstein emails, built in about five hours; passed 18.4 million visits within the month.

    [35][36][46]
21. 2025-12Jmail expands into a suitemilestone

    After the DOJ's Epstein Files Transparency Act release, a volunteer crew added JPhotos, JDrive, JFlights, Jamazon, Jacebook, Jmessage, Jotify, and the Jemini search parody, plus the redacted Yahoo inbox.

    [46][39][44]
22. 2026-02Joins OpenAI's OAI LabsroleOpenAI

    Hired to research and prototype new interfaces for how people collaborate with AI, on Joanne Jang's team.

    [40]
23. 2026-03-02 – 2026-03-15Payphone Go scavenger huntprojectCalifornia

    Players claimed California's ~2,200 licensed payphones — located via a public-records request — by calling a toll-free line from each one.

    [42]
24. 2026-04-08'Dirt Alley' becomes The Notion WaymilestoneSan Francisco, California

    After buying the foreclosed Sunset alley for $26,000 with two friends, their naming-rights auction closed with Notion's $140,000 bid; proceeds fund the paving and crowdsourced mural.

    [43][41][8]

Themes

• Public data exhaust as interfaceinferredmethod

  His signature move is finding data that is technically public but practically unreadable — citation portals, PDF dumps, Spotify friend graphs, early-YouTube uploads — and reissuing it inside a pixel-faithful parody of a product everyone already knows. The interface does the editorializing.

  [35][29][1][14]
• The stunt as civic transparencyreportedpractice

  Find My Parking Cops, Panama Playlists, and Jmail all do the work of accountability journalism inside a prank's packaging — a pattern press coverage reads as Robin Hood-style civic commentary rather than mere trolling.

  [38][29][28][44]
• Nostalgia for the old internetreportedinterest

  IMG_0001's forgotten home videos, a payphone scavenger hunt, and single-serving-site formats deliberately evoke the pre-algorithmic web — striking for a Gen Z builder who was a child during Web 2.0's peak.

  [13][25][42]
• Hours-long builds, hundred-dollar budgetsreportedmethod

  Bop Spotter ran about $100 in parts; IMG_0001 took four or five hours; Jmail was one five-hour session. Speed and cheapness are part of the point — the work stays small enough to remain a joke.

  [24][13][37]
• A one-man stress test for institutionsreportedpractice

  Twitter's verification pipeline, the SFMTA's data policy, Waymo's dispatch system, and Ballotpedia's catalog each met one person exploiting an assumption and patched it within hours — a recurring dynamic his projects seem designed to expose.

  [19][29][34][10]
• Surveillance aesthetics, aimed sidewaysstatedphilosophy

  His own copy frames the projects as mirrors: Bop Spotter is 'culture surveillance... about catching vibes,' and LooksMapping is 'a mirror held up to our collective vanity.' The work shows people what their public traces already reveal.

  [2][4][11]
• 'Just engineer is fine'statedbelief

  He declines the artist label the press keeps applying, insisting he is a guy who knows technology and wants to see something cool — and that he would build each project even if nobody ever looked at it.

  [13]
• Committing to the bit in physical spacereportedmethod

  The jokes escalate into the world: a fake listing becomes a real 140-seat dinner, a joke about naming a street becomes buying one, and a 'Waymo DDoS' marshals fifty people at dusk. Digital pranks keep acquiring bodies and deeds.

  [20][43][34][33]
• MSCHF and the single-serving sitereportedinfluence

  He credits his MSCHF internship with shaping his approach, and his work is routinely compared to the one-joke, one-page sites of the 2000s web; IMG_0001 was itself sparked by Ben Wallace's blog post about 'Send to YouTube.'

  [15][13][3]

Works and projects

• Routeshuffleprojectreleased2018

  Random route generator for runners and cyclists; his first internet money, built at about sixteen.

  [15][1]
• Andrew Walz (fake congressional candidate)projectcompleted2020

  A fictional Republican candidate whose Ballotpedia listing and Twitter verification exposed how thin the candidate-verification pipeline was.

  [19][10]
• Numerous.aiproductongoing2022-12

  ChatGPT inside spreadsheets; a two-person company co-founded with Mehran Jalali that he still runs alongside his public projects.

  [12][33]
• Mehran's Steak Houseprojectcompleted2023-09-23New York, New York

  A fake Google Maps steakhouse with a 900-party waitlist, made real for exactly one night as a staffed pop-up dinner.

  [20][21]
• Bop Spotterprojectongoing2024-09-28San Francisco, California

  A hidden solar-powered phone running Shazam 24/7 on a Mission District pole, logging the street's music to a public feed — 'ShotSpotter for vibes.'

  [24][23][22][2]
• IMG_0001projectreleased2024-11

  A random player for roughly five million unseen early-iPhone YouTube uploads; later exhibited at the Kunstkerk in Dordrecht.

  [13][25][14][45]
• 911 Call StreamprojectreleasedSan Francisco, California

  Maps San Francisco emergency calls in rolling four-hour datasets.

  [1]
• LooksMappingprojectreleased2025-07

  A heat map ranking nearly ten thousand restaurants in three cities by an AI model's attractiveness score of their reviewers' profile photos — 'a mirror held up to our collective vanity.'

  [27][11][4]
• Methodology of LooksMapping: Quantifying Superficiality via Neural Networkspaperpublished

  Self-published methodology paper covering the review scrape, CLIP scoring, and Z-score normalization behind the map.

  [11]
• Weather Watchingprojectongoing2025New York, New York

  An AI-tallied street camera that counts sleeves, pants, and umbrellas to turn a Manhattan crowd into a weather report.

  [5]
• Panama Playlistsprojectreleased2025-07-30

  Published the inferred real Spotify accounts of politicians, executives, and journalists, with playlists and listening feeds scraped since summer 2024.

  [28][7]
• Find My Parking Copsprojectabandoned2025-09-23San Francisco, California

  Near-real-time map of all 325 SFMTA parking officers built from sequential citation IDs; killed within about four hours when the agency obscured the data.

  [29][30][31]
• Waymo DDoSothercompleted2025-07San Francisco, California

  A coordinated stunt sending about fifty simultaneously ordered Waymo robotaxis to the city's longest dead-end street at dusk.

  [34]
• Jmailprojectongoing2025-11-21

  The Gmail-faithful interface to the released Epstein files, co-created with Luke Igel, since expanded into a suite of product parodies — JPhotos, JDrive, JFlights, Jamazon, Jacebook, Jmessage, Jotify, Jemini — run with more than ten volunteers on donations.

  [6][35][36][46][39]
• Payphone Goprojectcompleted2026-03California

  A scavenger hunt for California's ~2,200 licensed payphones, built on a public-records request; players claimed phones by calling in from them through March 15, 2026.

  [42][1]
• The Notion Way ('Dirt Alley')projectcompleted2026-04San Francisco, California

  A foreclosed, unnamed Sunset District alley bought for $26,000, paved, painted with a crowdsourced 1,280-tile mural, and renamed via a naming-rights auction won by Notion at $140,000.

  [41][43][8]
• PursuitprojectongoingSan Francisco, California

  An annual city scavenger hunt he produces with friends, brainstormed on a living-room wall of Post-it notes.

  [33]
• 'Coming 2026, Chick-fil-A' signsothercompleted2025San Francisco, California

  Fake development signs posted overnight on a long-vacant burned-out building, goosing Reddit into outrage at the idea of a Chick-fil-A in San Francisco.

  [33]
• In Every Languageprojectreleased

  A browser for how different language editions of Wikipedia illustrate the same subjects with different photos.

  [1]
• Postal Arbitrageprojectreleased

  Demonstrates that mailing a letter via Amazon Prime packaging is cheaper than buying a stamp.

  [1]

Appearances

• TBPN segment on the street-name auctionTBPN2026-04-07

  with John Coogan, Jordi Hays

  Walked through the Dirt Alley purchase, the pixel-art mural vote, and the live naming-rights bidding that Notion won.

  • audio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tokenmaxxing-sf-street-name-auction-corporate-retreat/id1772360235?i=1000760132117
  [17]
• NPR segment on Payphone GoNPR / Morning Edition2026-03-14

  with Vincent Acovino

  Interviewed about the public-records request behind the payphone map and the game's call-in mechanics.

  [42]
• The Tech Jester Who Pranks San FranciscoThe New York Times2025-10-04

  with Heather Knight

  A profile from his North Beach apartment covering the parking-cop tracker, sign pranks, Pursuit, and Numerous.ai.

  • article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/us/riley-walz-san-francisco-parking-tickets-app.html
  • article: https://archive.is/kOqc7
  [33][48]
• TBPN segment on Find My Parking CopsTBPN2025-09-24

  with John Coogan, Jordi Hays

  Explained the sequential-citation-ID scrape and the SFMTA's same-day response on the live tech talk show.

  • audio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peter-thiel-gets-apocalyptic-the-myth-of-ai-millions/id1772360235?i=1000728291972
  [16]
• The Artist Exposing the Data We Leave OnlineThe New Yorker2024-12-18

  with Kyle Chayka

  A profile interview covering IMG_0001, his Fiverr childhood, and the data deposits people leave online.

  • article: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-artist-exposing-the-data-we-leave-online
  [14]
• The Guy Behind the Most Nostalgic Sites on the InternetWIRED2024-11-29

  with Angela Watercutter

  A Q&A on IMG_0001, the Andrew Walz stunt, and why he resists the 'artist' label.

  • article: https://www.wired.com/story/riley-walz-the-guy-behind-the-most-nostalgic-sites-on-the-internet/
  [13]
• NPR segment on Bop SpotterNPR2024-10-04

  Interviewed about the hidden Shazam phone and the Mission District's street music.

  [24]
• CNN Business: fake 2020 candidate interviewCNN Business2020-02-28

  with Donie O'Sullivan

  A CNN crew interviewed him in his upstate New York high school classroom after Twitter verified his fictional candidate.

  • article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/tech/fake-twitter-candidate-2020/index.html
  [19][13]
• Training the Idea MuscleSF Alexandria

  A friend's profile covering Routeshuffle, the MSCHF newspaper-box internship, Numerous.ai, and his idea backlog.

  • article: https://sfalexandria.com/posts/rileys-ideas/
  [15]

Relations

• OpenAIemployed by2026-02 –

  Joined OpenAI's OAI Labs in February 2026 — the team prototyping new interfaces for collaborating with AI; an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the hire.

  [40][45]
• MSCHFemployed by2020 –

  Interned at the internet-prank products company around 2020 after winning their attention with a permitted newspaper box holding his resume outside their office.

  [15][16]
• Numerous.aifounded2022-12 –

  Co-founded the two-person ChatGPT-in-spreadsheets company in December 2022 with Mehran Jalali; he says it still runs.

  [12][33][15]
• Mehran Jalalicofounder

  His best friend and Numerous.ai co-founder; they also co-created Mehran's Steak House, the fake-listing-turned-pop-up, and moved to San Francisco together.

  [12][33][20]
• Luke Igelcollaborated2025-11-21 –

  Co-built Jmail with him in about five hours when the Epstein estate documents dropped — launched November 21, 2025.

  [35][36][37][46]
• Patrick Hultquistcollaborated2026 –

  Co-bought the foreclosed 'Dirt Alley' in early 2026 and ran its mural and naming-rights auction with him.

  [41][43][17]
• Theo Bleiercollaborated2026 –

  Co-bought the foreclosed 'Dirt Alley' in early 2026 and ran its mural and naming-rights auction with him.

  [41][43][17]
• Joanne Jangcollaborated2026-02 –

  Research leader of OpenAI's OAI Labs — the team he joined in February 2026.

  [40]
• Distributed Denial of Secretscollaborated2025-11 –

  Jmail's second inbox — Epstein's Yahoo emails — was obtained through DDoSecrets and redacted with Drop Site News.

  [44][46]
• Drop Site Newscollaborated2025-11 –

  Co-redacted the Epstein Yahoo inbox dataset that became Jmail's second inbox.

  [46][44]
• Dordrechts Museumcollaborated2025 –

  IMG_0001 was exhibited at the Kunstkerk in Dordrecht in 2025 in collaboration with the museum.

  [45]
• Donie O'Sullivaninterviewed by2020-02 –

  CNN Business interview on the verified fake congressional candidate, February 2020.

  [19]
• Angela Watercutterinterviewed by2024-11 –

  WIRED profile, 'The Guy Behind the Most Nostalgic Sites on the Internet,' November 2024.

  [13]
• Kyle Chaykainterviewed by2024-12 –

  New Yorker Infinite Scroll profile, 'The Artist Exposing the Data We Leave Online,' December 2024.

  [14]
• Heather Knightinterviewed by2025-10 –

  New York Times profile, 'The Tech Jester Who Pranks San Francisco,' October 2025.

  [33][48]
• John Cooganinterviewed by2025-09 –

  TBPN segments on Find My Parking Cops (September 2025) and the Dirt Alley auction (April 2026).

  [16][17]
• Jordi Haysinterviewed by2025-09 –

  TBPN segments on Find My Parking Cops (September 2025) and the Dirt Alley auction (April 2026).

  [16][17]
• Vincent Acovinointerviewed by2026-03 –

  NPR Morning Edition piece on Payphone Go, March 2026.

  [42]

Claims

• factRiley Walz was born in 2002 and grew up in Ballston Spa, New York, where he attended Ballston Spa High School; his mother is a second-grade teacher and his father works for a government contractor on a naval base.[45][33][47]
• factIn early 2020, as a 17-year-old high school student, he created a fictional Republican congressional candidate named Andrew Walz, submitted him to Ballotpedia, and got the account a Twitter verification checkmark on February 9, 2020; Twitter suspended the account after CNN's reporting.[19][10][45]
• factAt age twelve he began selling voice-over services on Fiverr, fulfilling more than five hundred orders over several years, then lent the earnings through the r/Borrow subreddit.[14]
• factAt about sixteen he built Routeshuffle, a random route generator for runners and cyclists, which earned his first internet money; he has run every day since high school.[15][1]
• factAround 2020 he interned at MSCHF, the internet-prank products company, after getting their attention by getting a city permit to place a plastic newspaper box holding his resume on the sidewalk in front of their office.[15][16]
• factHe taught himself to code, studied business in college, and dropped out to pursue a career in tech.[33][45]
• factIn December 2022 he co-founded Numerous.ai, a two-person company putting ChatGPT inside spreadsheets, with his best friend Mehran (Jalali); their launch demo passed a million views on Twitter.[12][33][15]
• factHe moved from New York to San Francisco in January 2023; coverage in 2025 places him in North Beach.[22][33]
• factHe co-created Mehran's Steak House: a fake Google Maps listing for a shared Upper East Side townhouse grew a waitlist of about 900 parties, and on September 23, 2023 the group staged a real one-night pop-up serving roughly 140 diners with dozens of friends as staff.[20][21]
• factOn September 28, 2024 he installed Bop Spotter — a roughly $100 rig of a used Android phone, cardioid microphone, and solar panel on a Mission District pole — which runs Shazam continuously over public Wi-Fi and posts every recognized song to a public feed.[24][23][22][2]
• factIn November 2024 he launched IMG_0001, which surfaces the roughly five million videos uploaded to YouTube through early iPhones' 'Send to YouTube' feature under default IMG_XXXX filenames, filtered to clips under 150 views, five to 150 seconds long, and posted before 2015, played back at random.[13][25][14][3]
• factIn 2025, IMG_0001 was exhibited at the Kunstkerk in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, in collaboration with the Dordrechts Museum.[45]
• factLooksMapping scored about 2.8 million Google Maps reviews across 9,834 restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco by running a CLIP vision model on reviewer profile photos, mapping which restaurants' clientele rate 'hot' on a 1-to-10 scale.[11][27][4]
• factWeather Watching pointed a person-detection model (YOLO) plus Google's Gemini at a Manhattan street camera, tallying what passersby wear — sleeves, pants, umbrellas — as a crowd-derived weather report.[5]
• factPanama Playlists went live July 30, 2025, publishing what it called the real Spotify accounts of public figures — JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Sam Altman, journalists — scraped since summer 2024; a New York Times reporter said his listed data matched his real history and five named listeners confirmed accuracy to The Verge.[28][7]
• factOn September 23, 2025 he launched Find My Parking Cops via his X account, which exploited predictable sequential citation IDs on the SFMTA payment portal to map all 325 parking control officers near real time, with a revenue leaderboard; the agency obscured the data within about four hours and the site died the same day, after his launch post passed a million views.[29][30][31][32][9]
• factIn July 2025 he organized about fifty people to order Waymo robotaxis simultaneously at dusk to San Francisco's longest dead-end street — billed as the 'world's first WAYMO DDOS' — revealed publicly in October; the cars left after about ten minutes with $5 no-show fees, and Waymo disabled rides within a two-block radius until morning.[34]
• factOn November 21, 2025 he and Luke Igel launched Jmail, a faithful Gmail parody rendering the roughly 20,000 pages of Epstein estate documents the House Oversight Committee had released on November 12; built in about five hours using Cursor, with AI optical character recognition, and each email linked back to the government's source documents.[35][36][37][18]
• factJmail recorded at least 18.4 million visits by late November 2025; the Columbia Journalism Review later reported more than 25 million unique visitors and 450 million page views, funded by donations after Igel's initial roughly $10,000 outlay.[46][39]
• factJmail grew into a parody suite — JPhotos, JDrive, JFlights, Jamazon, Jacebook, Jmessage, Jotify, and 'Jemini' search — plus a second inbox of Epstein's Yahoo emails obtained via Distributed Denial of Secrets and redacted with Drop Site News, maintained by more than ten volunteers.[46][39][44]
• factAfter the December 2024 killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, he posted Citi Bike trip-data analysis of where he believed the shooter fled by bike and said he shared it with police; some users called him a 'snitch' and 'bootlicker' and threatened his safety.[26][40]
• factIn February 2026 he joined OpenAI's OAI Labs, a team led by research leader Joanne Jang tasked with inventing and prototyping new interfaces for how people collaborate with AI; an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the hire.[40][45]
• factIn early 2026 he, Patrick Hultquist, and Theo Bleier bought a foreclosed, unnamed Sunset District alley — known as 'Dirt Alley' — for $26,000, paved it, let the internet design a 1,280-tile mural for its surface, and auctioned the naming rights; Notion won at $140,000 in April 2026 and it became The Notion Way.[41][43][8][17]
• factIn March 2026 he launched Payphone Go, a scavenger hunt built on the list of roughly 2,200 still-licensed California payphones he obtained through a public records request to the state Public Utilities Commission; players claimed phones by calling a toll-free line from them, and the contest ran through March 15, 2026.[42][1]
• factHis non-technical pranks include posting 'Coming 2026, Chick-fil-A' signs overnight on a vacant burned-out building and 'stolen items must remain under $950' placards outside Louis Vuitton, mocking a since-overturned California theft threshold.[33]
• factWith friends he produces an annual San Francisco scavenger hunt called Pursuit, brainstormed on a wall of Post-it notes in his living room.[33]
• stated beliefHe resists the 'artist' label: 'Just engineer is fine... I don't really like labels like that. I feel like I'm just a guy who knows something about technology who just wants to see something cool.'[13]
• stated beliefHe says he builds each project for himself first — 'Even if no one looked at this website, it would still be worth it for me to make for myself' — with virality a side effect rather than the goal.[13]
• stated beliefHe describes the early-iPhone uploads on IMG_0001 as 'unedited, pure moments from random lives' — an authentic, pre-viral genre of video he believes is effectively extinct now.[13][25]
• stated beliefDespite naming Bop Spotter after ShotSpotter gunshot-detection systems, he says he is 'not trying to make a political point'; his own site calls it 'culture surveillance... about catching vibes.'[24][2]
• stated beliefHe frames LooksMapping as deliberate satire — 'a mirror held up to our collective vanity' that puts reductive numbers on the superficial judgments people already make — while conceding on the site that the model 'is certainly biased. It's certainly flawed.'[4][11][27]
• stated beliefHe says he is neither 'pro or anti parking cop' — he doesn't own a car — and built Find My Parking Cops because he found the citation data interesting, planning to release it as a spreadsheet for others to analyze.[30][31]
• stated beliefHe calls Payphone Go 'a love letter to a disappearing piece of infrastructure.'[42]
• stated beliefHe says the Andrew Walz stunt was a test of whether Ballotpedia and Twitter would verify a completely nonexistent candidate, and that he was surprised neither asked for identity documents or checked FEC records.[10][19]
• stated beliefHe announced Jmail on his X account with 'we cloned Gmail, except you're logged in as Epstein and can see his emails'; Igel describes the goal as making the files 'hyperlegible' to anyone who has used a phone.[35][39][9]
• patternThe recurring method: find neglected or unwieldy public data, wrap it in a pixel-faithful parody of a familiar product (Gmail, Find My Friends, a Shazam feed), and ship within hours — the interface itself is the joke and the journalism.[35][29][1][24]
• patternInstitutions repeatedly react to him within hours: Twitter suspended the fake candidate, the SFMTA rewrote its citation portal the day Find My Parking Cops launched, and Waymo geofenced the dead-end street overnight.[19][29][34]
• patternThe projects are cheap and fast: Bop Spotter cost about $100 and two weekends, IMG_0001 took four or five hours, and Jmail was built in a single five-hour session — a practice Igel summarized as 'high effort, shockingly good.'[24][13][37]
• patternThe press converges on prankster framing: The New York Times dubbed him 'The Tech Jester Who Pranks San Francisco,' The New Yorker placed him in 'a lineage of prankster art that used the Internet both as a medium and as a venue,' and Wired profiled his 'nostalgic sites.'[33][14][13]
• speculationWhether the Bop Spotter hardware still operates is unclear — the project page persists with a running count, but independent coverage dates to its October 2024 launch window.[2][22]
• speculationPanama Playlists' account attributions are probabilistic inference ('near-certainty') from public signals; some named listeners confirmed their data while most accounts remain unverified.[28][7]
• speculationWhat he is building inside OpenAI's OAI Labs is undisclosed; how a portfolio of civic pranks translates to shipping AI interfaces is open.[40]
• speculationOnly his birth year (2002) is published; profiles variously describe him as 22 in October 2024 and 23 in September 2025, consistent with a mid-year birthday but not confirming it.[45][22][31]

Sources

1. Riley Walzwalzr.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   The subject's own project index; lists his works with his own one-line descriptions.

2. Bop Spotterwalzr.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Live project page; his own framing calls it 'culture surveillance' for music.

3. IMG_0001walzr.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
4. LooksMappingwalzr.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
5. Weather Watchingwalzr.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
6. Jmail — Jeffrey Epstein's Emailsjmail.world · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
7. Panama Playlistspanamaplaylists.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
8. Bid to name a street in San Franciscopaintastreet.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   The naming-rights auction page for the alley co-owned by the subject.

9. Riley Walz (@rtwlz) on XX · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
10. This Candidate Does Not Existwalzr.com · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    The subject's own write-up of the fake-candidate verification stunt.

11. Methodology of LooksMapping: Quantifying Superficiality via Neural Networkswalzr.com · first person · pdf · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Self-published methodology paper describing the LooksMapping pipeline.

12. Numerous.ai - Use ChatGPT in spreadsheetsAppSumo · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Self-authored product listing in which the founders describe starting Numerous.ai in December 2022.

13. The Guy Behind the Most Nostalgic Sites on the InternetWIRED · 2024 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
14. The Artist Exposing the Data We Leave OnlineThe New Yorker · 2024 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
15. Training the Idea MuscleSF Alexandria · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    A profile by a longtime friend covering his early projects, MSCHF internship, and move to San Francisco.

16. Peter Thiel Gets Apocalyptic, The Myth of AI Millions, X Timeline ReactionsTBPN · 2025 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Live tech talk show segment in which Walz explains the Find My Parking Cops scrape the day after launch.

17. Tokenmaxxing, SF Street Name Auction, Corporate Retreat Gone WrongTBPN · 2026 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Segment on the alley purchase, the crowdsourced mural, and the live naming-rights auction.

18. Oversight Committee Releases Additional Epstein Estate DocumentsU.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform · 2025 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    The official release of roughly 20,000 pages of Epstein estate documents that Jmail renders.

19. Exclusive: A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate. Twitter verified itCNN Business · 2020 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
20. New York's Hottest Steakhouse Was a Fake, Until Saturday NightThe New York Times · 2023 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
21. Made-up New York restaurant goes from internet joke to one-night-only realityThe Guardian · 2023 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
22. 'Bop Spotter' Is a Secret Phone Eavesdropping on the Mission's Music TastesKQED · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
23. 'Bop Spotter' captures the music of one San Francisco street cornerThe Washington Post · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
24. An old phone in a plastic box captures the cultural vibes of a San Francisco neighborhoodNPR · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
25. YouTube is full of old, unseen home videos. Now you can watch them at random.The Washington Post · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
26. Why internet sleuths say they won't help find the UnitedHealthcare CEO suspectNBC News · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Covers the backlash after Walz posted Citi Bike trip-data analysis of the shooter's escape route.

27. The Map Rating Restaurants Based on How Hot the Customers AreThe New York Times · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
28. What JD Vance, Pam Bondi, and Sam Altman Can't Stop Listening to, According to the 'Panama Playlists'WIRED · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Reports partial corroboration: a New York Times reporter's listed data matched, and five named listeners confirmed accuracy to The Verge.

29. For One Glorious Morning, a Website Saved San Francisco From Parking TicketsWIRED · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
30. Viral parking ticket app lasts just 4 hours as city kills projectThe San Francisco Standard · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
31. S.F. pulls plug on 23-year-old's app tracking parking ticketsMission Local · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
32. App that tracked San Francisco parking cops shuts downNBC Bay Area · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
33. The Tech Jester Who Pranks San FranciscoThe New York Times · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
34. 50 Waymos Sent to Dead-End SF Street In Prankster's 'DDOS Attack'SFist · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
35. Pranksters Re-Created a Working Version of Jeffrey Epstein's Gmail InboxWIRED · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
36. 'Jmail' is like Gmail, but with Jeffrey Epstein's emailsThe Verge · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
37. Want to Scroll Through Jeffrey Epstein's Gmail Account? Now You CanRolling Stone · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
38. Welcome to Jmail: The easiest way to read all the Jeffrey Epstein emailsThe San Francisco Standard · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
39. You've Got JmailColumbia Journalism Review · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Reports Jmail's scale (25M+ unique visitors, 450M+ page views) and its volunteer, donation-funded operation.

40. Riley Walz, the Jester of Silicon Valley, Is Joining OpenAIWIRED · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
41. OpenAI's tech prankster bought SF's infamous 'Dirt Alley.' What could go wrong?The San Francisco Standard · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
42. A Game Challenges Californians To Find A Working PayphoneNPR / KLCC · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
43. The Notion Way comes to Dirt AlleyThe San Francisco Standard · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
44. Why data sleuths are archiving the Jeffrey Epstein files: 'We want to provide some clarity'The Guardian · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Covers Jmail's role publishing the redacted Yahoo inbox dataset obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets.

45. Riley WalzWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
46. JmailWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
47. Riley Walz (Q136448953)Wikidata · reference · dataset · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
48. The Tech Jester Who Pranks San Francisco (archived capture)Archive Today · archive · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Capture of the NYT profile; confirms quoted material behind the paywall.

Coverage and method

Scope as of

2026-09-17T00:40:00Z

Coverage supplied by the publisher

• work
• projects
• media
• beliefs
• biography

Method

public-person-index-v1

Tool

soulscrape

Contributors

• Soulscrape research workflow

Assembled

2026-09-17T00:40:00Z

Human review

No review status or review date is supplied. An assembly timestamp does not establish human review.

Open questions

See the supplied open questions

Open questions

• His exact birth date is unpublished; only the year (2002) appears in the record, and profiles variously give his age as 22 (October 2024) and 23 (September 2025).
• Whether the Bop Spotter device is still installed and running is unverified — the site persists, but no coverage after October 2024 confirms the hardware's status.
• Most Panama Playlists attributions remain unverified by the named figures; a handful confirmed their data, the rest are inference from public signals.
• What he is building at OpenAI's OAI Labs is undisclosed beyond the team's 'new interfaces for collaborating with AI' mandate.
• Jmail's traffic figures differ by metric and date — 18.4 million visits by late November 2025 versus 25 million unique visitors and 450 million page views reported later by CJR — and no single current figure exists.
• Whether any SFMTA citation data feed was restored is unclear; the live tracking stayed dead while historical records remain on DataSF.
• Whether map providers actually adopted 'The Notion Way' as the alley's name, as the auction promised, is unverified as of this index.
• His New York period (roughly 2021–2022, the townhouse era behind Mehran's Steak House) is thinly documented beyond the restaurant coverage.