This is how I found Facefeed.
JOIN FACEFEED. I ran out of faces http://t.co/oD91Wp0ZQ8
— Veronica de Souza (@HeyVeronica) February 28, 2014
Having no idea what the tweet meant, I downloaded the easy-to-use app. It was quickly apparent that it’s a dating app thinly veiled as a way to easily meet new people, which I guess is the same thing. And not meant as a criticism.
The tagline? “FACEFEED is like a giant party.” Sure. A BYOB party where you only get to meet people based on a still photo and whether they like whatever icebreaker you use to start the “conversation.”
Signing up is as simple as typing your name (or any name, I presume – who’s going to stop you?) and taking a selfie. The problem with the latter step is you don’t get much of a warning that your first photo sticks until you message someone. First impressions haven’t been this complicated since you the days when you introduced yourself face-to-face.
I guess that’s a cool way to encourage people to take another photo, but since I had no idea I was taking the final version of my first photo, I deleted the app, re-downloaded and went through the sign-up process again from the beginning. (Same name, new face!)
I thought that solved everything, and it kind of did, except as I was scrolling “faces,” I soon ran into mine from about five minutes before. It looked as bad as I imagined, me in my white T-shirt after eating some chicken pineapple fried rice from Tuk Tuk, but probably not much worse than my second final version.
When it asked for my age, I selected the middle of three options, which was 18+ to 30- or 40-something if I remember correctly. Quite a wide range, but alas. I also said I was a man and interested in talking to “Anyone!” because who doesn’t like new friends? But I quickly ran into some weird photos of other guys…
…and switched to only wanting to talk to “Women.”
But the weird guys kept coming. (UPDATE: About 20 minutes after publishing this, I only got women.)
Who knows – maybe I’m one of them!
Before long I, too, ran out of faces, just like Veronica. I’m not sure from where these faces came – I was never asked to allow the app to know my location. And I sure as hell don’t know how old a lot of these people were, but I used a +/- seven-year rule and swiped up (I guess the equivalent a of a Tinder left-swipe, because once they’re gone, they’re gone! Unless they, too, take a second, first photo. But I digress.) on any girl who looked 24 or younger. Not that I’m actually trying to meet anyone on here because honestly have you been reading my description? (And I don’t do online dating, anyway.)
I only sent two messages. The first said, “Nice glasses” and the second “Nice eyelashes.”
If there’s a character limit, I can’t tell. There’s even more text here than you can see.
(There are, however, duck- and kiss-faces aplenty. If you’re into that.) A drawback of the writing feature? When using an iPhone, you can’t hold and hover (you know, when the magnifying glass pops up) and move your cursor to any part of the text you want. You just have to backspace from the end until you get to the part you want to change. Then again, if you’re spending too much time editing messages on this app, you should probably get outside, polar vortex be damned.
By the time I finished my first draft of this post (about 15 minutes ago) and went back to the app, there were already more faces for me to ponder! I wonder if I’ll ever again see those of the people to whom I reached out, or if I’m destined to remain…
Social Meditation 