Each week in “Love Apptually,” Daily Bruin staffers Nico Correia and Natalie Green will take turns attempting to find love in all of the wrong places: dating applications. To help thousands of loveless students, but mostly themselves, Correia and Green will test run and rate five dating apps over the course of one quarter.
“Let’s make Happn happen,” Nico texted me last week.
We’ve been hitting an app dry spell, so luckily my roommate researched dating apps at her hip advertising internship and made the recommendation.
Happn is the new happening dating app – ha ha – that hit Los Angeles in 2014.
The app’s home screen fills with tiny faces of the people that “cross paths” with the user throughout the day. Users can “like” or “charm” each other and two mutual likes open a chat window.
Clicking on a tiny face garners the typical dating app information: name, age, photos and bio. But Happn also gives the map location of where users’ paths intersected, including very precise time and distance markers, like “Joe Bruin, crossed three hours ago, 850 feet between Kelton and Gayley avenues.”
I’m regretting not having this app when all of my roommates were at Coachella weekend two, and I had to the apartment to myself for the first time since summer. The app seems perfect for jumping someone’s bones, but all I ended up doing that weekend was working, sleeping and air drying after my showers.
While I squirmed a little bit at the familiar faces around UCLA – including a friend’s ex and an old teaching assistant – I enjoyed gazing on all of the new, diverse faces I passed on the bus while commuting downtown for my internship.
But for the most part, I was too creeped out by the app to use it all that much, and its location sensing drained my iPhone battery for nothing.
Instead, I caught up over text message with a now-ancient Coffee Meets Bagel suitor and went on a real life date.
Because he is a former newspaperman, I was committed to an off-the-record meet-up. When he asked my about post-graduate plans and I spoke about a “real” job to support my freelance writing, I forgot I was speaking to a newly graduated freelancer. I really didn’t deserve the kind farewell he gave me of “I’ll see you soon.”
As much as I’m trying to put myself out there, my stomach still seizes in fear before each encounter. But it quickly un-knots after the awkward introductions when I remember what a great conversationalist I am.
By the end of the date, I feel that I’ve established yet another successful friendship with someone who understands my deep love for “Freaks and Geeks.” (Shout out to my dates’ excellent tastes in TV shows and me.)
Just like my (slim) dating experience pre-dating applications, it’s hard to find someone assertive enough to tell me what to do for a change. At this point, I really need a man who convinces me to try romance – or at least plans the first date.
Here’s to a few more weeks of trying to stop my own head from putting men into the friend zone and actually getting some action. Because, let’s be honest, that’s what we’re all waiting for.
Has Happn made your love life happening? Email Green at ngreen@dailybruin.com.