On one of the coldest nights in New York this year, I bundled up and went to a trendy tourist trap to meet up with five people who also felt that the pull to make new friends was stronger than the windchill. I didn't know anything about my matches aside from a text I'd received that told me that two of them also like reading, that several enjoyed the same irreverent TV shows I do, like "Arrested Development" and "Broad City," and that one had bungee jumped in New Zealand.
We were meeting as a group curated by the app , which asks users to fill out questionnaires with info like their birth order among their siblings, the economic class they grew up in, and how spontaneous they are. I was delighted to see I was paired with other people in their late 20s and early 30s, so I wouldn't have to be the aging millennial at the Gen Z table.
There was a collective sigh of relief on this point. Despite the freezing cold, everyone showed up β no doubt given extra motivation by the app's strict no-show policy that not only involves added fees but kicks out people who don't cancel with notice.
The app, acting as a sort of virtual host, gave us prompts to get the conversation going, such as "If you could pick another name for yourself, what would it be? I didn't find them particularly enlightening. We read through some but decided we didn't need generic prompts to chat. The people who had bought into this experience by paying a small fee to and by opening themselves up to strangers were friendly and eager to meet someone new. Founded in , is one of several apps that launched in recent years with the aim of fighting loneliness and finding people real, in-the-flesh friends.
Bumble has for years had a friendship setting for swiping. There's also Clockout, Timeleft, and Pie. Timeleft says it has brought more than , people together in more than cities. While social media algorithms are often blamed for entrapping people and isolating them as they spend more of their time on screens than with friends, apps like say their algorithms can pair us up with our new besties or potential romantic partners, sussing out similarities and determining compatibility.
