I spent 48 hours on a celebrity dating app

Two weeks ago I was sitting with my friend in a Monday afternoon tutorial, buried knee deep in a data analysis report we were yet to start. It was 5:30pm, our tutor was yawning and I could hear my neighbour checking the train times for the Revesby line and groaning about what their strategy would be for the Redfern Run. These were uninspiring circumstances for an even more uninspiring conversation –- my dating life. 

My friend had freshly left the perils of singledom — having had his own success story found on Hinge (congratulations guys, you seem truly happy, please don’t rub it in) — so all we were left to muse about was the lack of prospects of my own. 

Dating apps like Hinge have become one of the most tried and tested ways to find a relationship nowadays, and many stories substantiate this claim — including my last relationship. Personally, it feels barren and horrifying when I think about all the potential “so what’s your favourite movie?” questions, or the nauseating pick-up lines, or the build up of unanswered messages, or the inevitable match with someone you know and wish you didn’t. 

Rattled and deterred by my laughable romantic propsects, another friend across from me laughed and said, “Zen, you should download Raya.”

Raya is a private, membership-based dating app released in 2015. Originally modelled as a “celebrity dating app,” the app boasts a mixed fodder of “professional and social networking” where you make “connections” with the latest and greatest on the single scene. I thought this was a ridiculous option, however given my dire dating outlook there was no choice but to give it a go. Despite these heavy apprehensions, I decided to download Raya right then and there as an experiment.

But there were two problems. One — this app is members only, and the only way to get onto the app is through a lengthy application and referral process which can take multiple months. To be referred for the app, you need to know someone already on there.  Two — in theory, you need to be a “celebrity,” or at least established in your professional field. Now it’s not news that I love Honi Soit, but I didn’t know whether being a niche StuJo microcelebrity held enough social capital to get me anywhere. 

Luckily, I had the contact details of a friend I met while on exchange in Copenhagen last year. By some miracle and perilously phrased text, she gave me a referral and supported my application (thank you, Helena). 

There was so much work to even sign up for the app that downloading it felt like a feverish farce. I was curious if I made it onto the app, would I even see any “celebrities”, and could I even hold my own as a “non-celebrity.” 

A week later and by some stroke of luck, I got the text to set up my account and get started. Well, almost.

You have to pay to be on Raya. If it wasn’t enough that you had to polish and embellish your personal and professional career within an inch of its life, and find someone to willingly refer you, you are now faced with a paywall. So, I waited and wondered if this was all worth it — given this idea was only birthed out of the absurdity of a boring tutorial and stationary love life conversations.

After a week of umm-ing and ahh-ing, a fellow Honi editor encouraged me to go through with this indulgent, but rare, opportunity and suggested to me that I think of it as more of an “experiment” or “field work”, something I could blame on my job if it were to go wrong.

So I paid for a month. Or so I thought. I accidentally paid for the annual subscription and $179.99 was charged to my card. Except it wasn’t my card, it was my Mother’s amex. After an embarrassingly awkward call explaining why this happened and dodging any probing about why I would want to be on the app in the first place, I did in fact blame it on my job, refund the purchase and then changed the payment services. 

Finally, I was in fellas!

I added a few basic interests, picked if I was after “friends” or “connections”, attached my current song of the week (‘Something Has to Change’ by The Japanese House), a country I’d like to visit and I was ready to take on the wonders of my maiden voyage on a celebrity dating app. My first prospect — drum roll, please — Thomas, an investment banker and entrepreneur from Avalon, Northern Beaches. 

Sigh, tapping through Raya is an interesting experiment to say the least. There are professions and “interests” that I didn’t know could exist outside the borders of my ‘For You page’. I kept on flicking through. I came across podcasters, A&R specialists, CEO’s (so many CEO’s) , freelance filmmakers, more entrepreneurs, photographers, writers, wealth management specialists (what is that?), musicians and actors. 

To no surprise, a lot of these prospects were international. Or international matches temporarily based in Australia, or localised almost entirely in Bondi beach. I did come across the occasional Stranger Things actor (I don’t have evidence just yet) and maybe one too many micro-influencers which sparked temporary dopamine hits. 

It is important to note that even though your location may be set to Australia, Raya includes prospects from all around the world and justifies this through its “social and professional networking” marketing. More often than not Gstaad from Switzerland or Maybel from Ireland, or Carlos from Spain, are in and amongst the options — an exciting, but largely unrealistic feature of my experience.

I decided to interview a friend about their experience on the app. Dan, an aspiring actor, spoke to me about a similarly feverish and surreal time on this revered app — although his perspective was interesting given he definitely fit the prescribed criteria a lot more than I did.

I asked Dan what his most noteworthy experience on the app was, to which he noted he was “surprised by how many football players were coming up” and also “a lot of celebrities that [he] had believed to have been straight.” 

He said it made him question if Raya was “putting straight celebrities on gay people’s feed just to start a stir and create a kind of buzz around the app, especially since you can’t screenshot and have actual evidence.” 

Queer relationships found from Raya are a whole new conversation with a noticeable lack of match preference diversity which may merely be a guise for the heteronormative model of the app. Also, in my experience the app felt  more  focused on fostering soulless “social connections” than romance.

And the screenshotting was another thing. I learnt quite early on that when I tried to screenshot the aforementioned Stranger Things actor, a menacing pop up message reminded me that “this is a private community and repeated screenshots may lead to the suspension and/or removal of your membership.” I found other ways to document, but the lesson was well and truly learnt.

Dan also noted that “the people you match with are hardly ever local to you so it kind of just became a game of “can I match with this celebrity/mega CEO” and said “nothing ever felt realistic.” 

Decidedly, Dan told me that this app didn’t do much to debunk the mystique of the world of celebrity dating, and when asked if he would recommend Raya to a friend said, “if you’re willing to sacrifice $25 a month for a slightly more interesting dating pool, go for it! But honestly, I’ve been off it for 3 months now and I’m not dying to get back on it.”

I couldn’t agree more with Dan. 

As I was scrolling through investment bankers, aspiring musicians and property developers with the salmon shade linen shirts and suspiciously popular Bali trips planned, I realised that this app was very insular and self-serious, something that I couldn’t treat as a social experiment in the way that I hoped.

To me, this app felt kind of inert. And much like the uninspiring circumstances of that famed tutorial that started it all, my dating life is still one to be bemused by. I guess that’s a testament to the hyperbolisation of being single, and of dating in general for that matter. I find dating can be a lot of moments of miscommunications, spooky situationships, and questions left unanswered.

So, if you’re wondering what I took from my foolish “48 hours on a celebrity dating app,” the experiences in and around the periphery of Raya have taught me that dating can be life-altering and intriguing. 

But — it can also be a harrowing and exhaustive cycle of your hopes and dreams being ruthlessly squashed by a prospective lover ghosting you, or a collision of intentions. It can also be a fun dinner table story to share with your friends, just as long as you make sure not to select the annual payment option when you decide to give it a go.