The idea came about when an American student moved to Scotland and had difficulty making friends. The project is being a great success.
Last year, Juliette Sartori decided she wanted to expand her social circle, so she went on a coffee date with three people she didn’t know.
“It was really good,” he said. “We ended up talking for two hours and I still talk to them today. We all keep in touch.”
Their blind friendship date was part of the Dinner With a Stranger (Dinner with a Stranger, in free translation), the society that Juliette and her flatmates started “on a whim” for colleagues at the University of Glasgow who want to meet new people.
Juliette, 21, had moved from the US to Scotland to study business and administration and said she was harder to connect instantly with the others, as he discovered that the people were practically closed within a wall that they had erected around them.
Always well connected to a digital world, these students spend little time interacting with each other in person, and as a result, Juliette hasn’t had many opportunities to expand her circle of friends.
And so Dinner With a Stranger was born.
“We think that originally only 30 people would participate“, says Juliette. “We just didn’t know what to expect.” “It’s an unusual idea and the name confuses people from the beginning.”
But 200 persons — a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, men, women and non-binary — signed up within the first month and the membership has continued to grow since then.
A “friendship society” by Juliette is very different from the culture of swiping right on your cell phone screen using dating apps that dominate the lives of many young people.
The goal is friendship, not romantic encounters. The scheme avoids complicated computer algorithms and relies instead on personality quizzes more traditional ones shared with members at the beginning of each month.
First, potential friends answer questions about certain topics, ranging from their favorite musical genre or Disney film, to their dream vacation destination.
Then, Juliette and five other members spend hours forming pairs or groups and sharing contact details. Then they leave the scene to let the magic happen.
“People are lonelier now”
Juliette’s colleague in the role of platonic cupid, Cyprus-born student Mary Yiorkadji quickly realized that she was not alone in struggling to find friends at university.
“There are many people from different backgrounds and can be really intimidatedr think you’re different and people won’t understand you”, he says.
The 22-year-old believes social media has had a negative impact on friendships.
This happens because more and more people these days compare their lives to other people’s lives online.
“It is very easy to get carried away false ideas from social mediawhich can cause loneliness and expectations that are never met,” says Mary. “People are lonelier now. Our generation is lonelier.”
But Mary says Dinner With a Stranger introduced her to the beauty of the blind date.
“I think one of the most important parts of university is meeting new people,” says the fourth-year economics and philosophy student.
“This way, we don’t emphasize the differences between people, but the things that matter in a friendship, which are the similarities.”
She describes this as a “unique” way of getting to know and connect with other people from around the world.
From the “friendship lottery” to flatmates
Vanya and Hannah, who were paired together by Dinner with a Stranger in December last year, believe they wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for the group.
“Society puts so much emphasis on romance that we forget how important friendships are,” says Hannah, 20.
Before meeting Vanya she was “sad” and spent a lot of time alone, but now her mental health has improved and she is more confident. The two are now best friends and roommates.
Vanya, 19, says he enjoyed meeting Hannah without “preconceived ideas and expectations.”
“People are talking to so many people online that They’re not really talking to anyone“, says the economics student, originally from India. “That way, you’re going in with a completely open mind and getting to know someone as the conversation progresses,” he says.
“You have to show that you are making a genuine effort.”
The future of the “fun experience”
For Juliette, going on friend dates with strangers helped her find her “group.” Juliette finds it strange that many people think it’s not normal to go to friendship meetings to meet new people.
And he says he is sure that there will soon be more opportunities to participate in this “fun experience”.
“It’s another modern way to make friends. It’s taking the idea of meeting someone online on a dating site and turning it into friendships by seeing how well you get along with them.”
Dating apps like Bumble have already started creating similar versions for making friends, which Juliette thinks will become more popular as the idea expands.
“Now that people are working from home and attending college remotely, it’s more common for people to stay home all the time and are less likely to go out and meet new people like you might have five years ago. It’s modern, but I think if will become more popular in the future.”
