Close Friends, Distant Lives, and The App I'll Never Build to Fix It
At least in my corner of the world, loneliness feels like the new cigarettes. It's the topic that shows up in my podcast feed, the Atlantic article I read, and as I approach 30, it's palpable in the air. One friend has two kids, another just graduated from med school halfway across the country, and another goes out three times a week. The physical and metaphorical distance grows as people follow their own paths, and by thirty, those paths can look a lot different. You can't just text someone with four hours' notice anymore.
We know this, but we don't do much about it. We watch friends drift apart, and when we hear someone's name, we know two things:
- We should reach out.
- We likely won’t.
Scheduling and communication difficulties drive #2. If we're lucky, we get texts throughout the week about getting together, leading to the classic ping-pong:
Sunday
Person A: When are you free?
Person B: Thursday could work?Wednesday
A: Shoot, I'm busy. How about Sat?Saturday
B: Sorry, just saw this. I'm meeting my parents for dinner. Maybe next week?Sunday
...
We've all been there to some degree. This is why workout classes, book/run clubs, or networking events can be so powerful as we leave our twenties. These set an indefinite cadence each week or month, and whoever is interested shows up. These are "third spaces," which are also in vogue but that's another blog and/or bad startup idea.
The gap I'm seeing is a planning cadence with those I don’t share an explicit activity with. These aren't my hiking or running friends; they're my close friends I want to see regularly. For many of us, these are our high school or college friends we were simply around, without a common shared activity outside of hanging out. What’s missing is a flexible cadence with these people—we don’t want seven book clubs each week, and we want some flexibility in our schedules. Just because Tuesday is open doesn't mean I want to hang out every Tuesday.
This problem seems like something an app could fix. It’s a problem with steps that technology could accelerate and affects a large group of people. In my head, the app is called "Close" (as in close friends). Each week/month/whatever, you have "meets." A meet can be a group or 1:1. For each meet:
- Schedules are checked to find common free times.
- Set a base "no-meet" time (e.g., 9-5 or prefer weekends).
- A list of suggested times is provided.
- Events from Meetup, Facebook, etc., that fit these times could be suggested.
- E.g., "You're all free Friday, and this festival is happening."
- For really close friends, you could schedule times that appear without confirmation.
- Requires good calendar updating and confidence in mutual interest. This wouldn’t be the default.
- CRM-like elements could be included.
- E.g., remind you if you haven't seen a "bestie" in the last week.
A criticism might be that this app is overkill. A simpler version could be a weekly text you schedule in iMessage that uses an LLM to understand if you've hung out that week based on your texts, encouraging a meetup if not. However, a scheduled weekly text might be awkward if you hung out Saturday night and get a text Sunday morning to set up the next hangout, which could seem clingy. Also, that first automated text after a breakup would sting: "Dinner tonight? You both are very free this week! 😗"
If you’re in tech or VC, please don’t email me; I’m too insecure to hear the 100 reasons this wouldn’t work.