I attended Never Strangers’ friends party 🪩

Hi Zesties,

It’s day 83 of life after layoffs.

Today, I went for Never Strangers’ social mixer (friends edition)~ 🪩 This event promises to match you with your new BFF using their algorithm, and my friend and I signed up to see what the hype is about. I’ll be sharing my experience below!

💵 Ticket price

Tickets are priced at $48 each, and each person will be given a free drink upon entry— both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options are available.

📃 Programme lineup

I thought the programme lineup was quite interesting and effective in helping us to know people, except the bingo game where everyone was more focused on getting the cards stamped rather than getting to know people on a deeper level, possibly due to the nature of the game.

The murderer game was quite confusing as well as I didn’t know how we were supposed to put the clues together. They asked us to join a telegram channel to submit answers, but I wasn’t sure what we had to submit, and they sent a picture of a random man there which made me even more confused.

Also, the music was way too loud and even after giving the staff that feedback, he just told us the DJ was in a bad mood and couldn’t do anything about it (I couldn’t tell if he was joking).

👭 The crowd

Even though this is a friends party, it was obvious to me that almost everyone I spoke to was single and on the lookout for a romantic relationship, except that they either preferred getting to know people as friends first or found the “date” party too intimidating.

Two of my table mates went for the date party before and said that it was extremely stressful as everyone was dressed to the nines. The general vibe they got was that everyone was looking for a husband or wife, and one of them said, “You’ll feel like if you strike up a conversation with someone without the intention of dating them, you’re wasting their time.”They also mentioned that people who came for the friends party were dressed more casually, and the vibes were less stressful.

➗ The algorithm

As this is a friends party, your match won’t be limited to a certain gender and in my case, I got this really sweet and gorgeous lady and had fun speaking to her.

I was skeptical about the algorithm at first and wondered if it’s some kind of gimmick, but I was shocked to find out that my match and I had a lot in common, such as:

- Preferring laid back lifestyles and focussing on fitness, nurturing existing friendships and spending time with family;

- Reading fiction books;

- Listening to Jazz in the shower;

- Liking the same type of men (kind, reserved, CUTE NERD);

- Choosing to be single because we met too many weird people on dating apps! 🤣🤣 I go on one date every six months (and it has been 3 years). She downloads the apps once every few months and uninstalls within two hours.

It might be hard to know her on a deeper level from a 30 minute chat, but we were both impressed by the algorithm as we could really

imagine ourselves as friends.

Even the friend I came with, who brought her friend along, got matched with EACH OTHER which was hilarious but speaks volumes about this mysterious algorithm.

🤔 Final thoughts

I do think this was an interesting event to get to know people even though I’m not sure how likely I will continue to keep in contact with them, but it’s worth a shot for the experience. 😊

This sums up fUNemployment day 83, thank you for reading~

#MyLemon8Diary #lifeafterlayoffs #funemployment #dating #relationships