So the other night I was at a party, talking to a friend of a friend—one of those special types of New York artists who never actually make any art. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, that sort of thing. The Artist laughed condescendingly. The consensus seems to be: Why go to a party that lets everyone in, when you could go to the party that accepts only a select few?
But do we really believe that exclusivity makes something better? The problem, of course, is that whenever something is defined as being elite or exclusive, it tends to attract status-conscious douchebags. Last weekend, while drinking vodka from a water bottle on Fire Island beach, I was complaining about the pervasive Raya worship to my friend Alan, a year-old filmmaker.
Alan has been in an on-and-off relationship with Raya for more than a year now currently off. Alan rolled his eyes. To me, it felt like more people were trying to connect professionally, but in a way that felt really gross and not transparent. My experience has been somewhat similar.
And Raya is the only app on which a match has asked me to tweet a link to their Kickstarter. Obviously, part of the reason we all want to be successful is so we can fuck better people. Work and sex are inextricably linked. But to institutionalize sex-as-networking is pretty disturbing. The minor-Internet-celebrity struggle is real. Besides its exclusivity, there are a couple of additional things that differentiate Raya from other dating apps. While most apps are location-based, Raya shows you users from all over the world.
Another distinction: Raya profiles are displayed in a video—a slideshow of your images plays along to a song of your choosing. Unfortunately, literally no one looks fuckable in a slideshow. Raya has a lot more to do with class than with other stratifications like attractiveness. And this is what really irks me about the app—it confuses wealth and status with creativity and coolness.
