Dinner with complete strangers

Timeleft is a new service that's been used by 10,000 Angelenos to meet new people. Last week, I decided to try it out.

Just before the holidays, I received an email alert of a Los Angeles Times article by Kailyn Brown on Timeleft, a new service for meeting new people. According to Brown’s article, this service had been tried by 10,000 Angelenos since its launch in Los Angeles in May last year. What I understood from this article was that Timeleft is a startup started in France with a simple business model: by paying a subscription fee and reserving a time, you are matched with a group of people in your area for a dinner in your area on a Wednesday night. The service has now spread into 280 cities. According to Los Angeles Times, LA is one of its fastest growing markets.

I decided to try it out.

Screenshot of Kailyn Brown’s article in Los Angeles Times.

But before that, a bit of context.

Just last year, the (then) Surgeon-General Vivek Murthy published an Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. According to the advisory, approximately every second American report experiencing loneliness. Only 39 percent of Americans say that they feel really connected to others. Americans spend on average 20 hours less per month with friends than just twenty years ago. Every third American lives alone.

Source: Office of the Surgeon-General

But as Derek Thompson points out in a brilliant article in The Atlantic, the trend needs a sharper and more critical analysis. What is clear that we have seen a rapid rise in time spent alone. But that does not always mean a rise in loneliness. A lot of people are choosing solitude - Netflix and chill - over meeting friends for dinner or having them over, even experiencing relief when plans are canceled. At the same time, according to sociologist Eric Klinenberg, we have seen a decrease in public spending on public spaces, like parks and libraries. While the quality, convenience and offering of things done at home, we have not seen a similar level of innovation in public life.

Sociological interest, sure, but not only

I do research and consultancy on friction, public spaces, and social isolation. The idea of having dinner with strangers seems quite aligned with my focus on convivencia, the capability to coexist across differences. I could justify it as research.

But to be honest, my interest was not only professional. On a personal level, I moved to Los Angeles with my husband in January last year. Most of my family and friends are in Finland. I have met some wonderful people here but distances in LA are long so meeting up is always a heavier lift. While my work is social (read: Zoom marathon), I work from home and the engagements are often very focused on getting things done and in many days the only person I really engage with is my husband. I spend a lot of time by myself, often willingly, and most times enjoying it. But at the same time, as we as a middle-aged gay couple do not have kids or pets, we don’t easily make friends at the Parent-Teacher conference or at the dog park. While I travel a lot and see people and engage with hundreds of people, if a pollster would knock on my door right now and ask if I experience loneliness, I probably would answer: sometimes.

Man in Politics Looking for Company

So, fairly impulsively, I decided to download the Timelef app and create an account. The app required me to answer a couple of profiling questions, which did not feel overly intrusive. It was questions like the field I work in, my gender and age, where I am from, and whether I like to talk politics (just guess!). It also asked to choose a sector I work in and I chose, well, politics.

After building my profile, I had to choose the area where I would be open to having dinners. While my assumption/stereotype is that the people interested in my interests (read arts, politics, nonprofits) are more in areas like Echo Park, West Hollywood and Silver Lake, I did not want to drive for an hour across town and chose LA Westside.

After finishing my profile, I was taken a page like the one below to book a Wednesday that works for me. It took me several weeks to book a dinner. Eventually I decided to go for a dinner on the 29th of January.

Am I Too Old and Other Anxieties

As the date was approaching, I got notifications from the app guiding me to fairly well-written articles on how to talk to new people, how to keep yourself safe, and what to do if you freak out at the last minute. Especially the last one seemed a bit excessive. But having now gone through the experience, I do understand why it was written.

In general, Timeleft did expectation management fairly well. It informed me that on the day before, I would get a message describing the group that I'm joining, and I would find out the name of the restaurant on the day itself. (On a side note, it was slightly odd that while the app was clearly communicating that this is NOT a dating service, on the same day this was the add I got on Facebook.)

As the dinner was approaching, I talked about this experiment nervously with friends and my husband, making jokes about how strange and terrible it might be. On a very personal level, I was reminded how convivencia has its exciting and intimidating sides.

On the Tuesday before, I received an email notification that my group had been assigned. I learned that we were seven people with four different nationalities. I also learned that we worked in five different disciplines, like technology and sales.

(To respect the privacy of the other people, I will not disclose details on the other people or what they said during the dinner but will focus on my own reactions and behavior.)

My reaction on the data provided reminded me of a lesson I got when working as Helsinki’s Director for Youth Affairs. We were the first department in the city to test anonymous recruiting, which is an equity practice where you hide data like place of birth, name, gender and age from applications. That experience opened my eyes to the ways any data feeds or prevents stereotypes. I remember that when I actually met applicants, I realized that I had unconsciously made assumptions on their age and gender, which turned out to be false.

Same thing happened with the Timeleft data. The group profile indicated that I was the only one categorized as ”politics”. The Westside of LA is traditionally, even in LA, seen as more commercial. I found myself was doubting if I would have anything in common with these people and whether I should have broadened my geographic scope to find people interested in the same things. I was hoping I was wrong.

On the morning of the dinner, I received the name and address of the restaurant. It was a well known, high quality restaurant around two miles from my house. I had had lunch there at with a friend once. I was informed to ask for table number one.

As the dinner time approached, I started to get nervous. My husband, an introvert, asked me what I would do if it's really terrible. ”At least it would make a great story”, I answered. Getting ready and choosing my outfit felt a bit like getting ready for a date. (Full disclaimer: This from a person whose last date was 18 years ago.)

As I was about to leave the house, my mind was racing.

Would they like me?

What if people don’t show up?

Would we have anything in common?

What would be my first question?

Was my outfit too casual?

What if it is sad and depressing?

And: what if I am a lot older than everyone else?

I got into my car 20 minutes to the hour for an 11-minute ride. I took a detour to waste a few minutes. I parked four minutes early and literally sat in my car for two minutes to make sure that I wouldn't be the first one there. With one minute to go, I walked to the hostess and a waiter guided me to a booth.

Lesson: People Are Lovely

Without invading the privacy of the other people in my group, I can say that it was an incredibly positive experience, and I would do it again. The people I met were charming. They were all people I probably would not meet in my professional circles. After a couple of nervous first minutes, we talked openly about making friends and meeting people as an adult, without kids or in a new life situation. The dinner did not feel like a support group for Lonely Hearts.

Our evening was a great example of convivencia, the capability to coexist across differences. People asked questions, made room for others, took hints when someone did not want to answer a question and made sure everyone was included in the conversation. When someone dived slighly into a political and potentially divisive issue, their concerns were recognized and validated but then the conversation was redirected to another subject. It felt that everyone could open their lives on their own terms, often not disclosing employer names. The evening was friendly, neighborly, pleasant. As an example, many mentioned vaguely where they live but we did not share our last names. We all burst out laughing when the waiter came over and asked whether we are Timeleft people. The company’s name, maybe translated from another language, really does sound like hospice service.

What I loved was that the dinner was really a dinner with people as people. It did not feel like networking or speed dating. No one was boasting about their impressive resume or trying to solicit new business. There was something truly empowering and validating to recognize that the insecurities in meeting people are completely normal sentiments and talking about them does not make you seem sad or desperate.

Timeleft And Then Some

Social isolation and weaker social connections are a real challenge for democracy, public health and personal wellbeing. As Thompson illustrates with data in his The Atlantic article, it is so much easier to hate and try to topple those who disagree with us when we do not meet them in person around a shared, positive activity.

It is clear, and the company is not claiming, that Timeleft would be the cure-all for social isolation. It goes without saying that the participation fee and having to pay for dinner create hurdles for some people - while the company does tackle this by allowing people to indicate their cost level for a dinner. Probably the service attracts more extroverts like me. It is easy to poke holes on its story.

But I come into this from a place of abundance rather than scarcity. The fact that the service is launched already in nearly 300 cities indicates that they are on to something. The convenience of solitude, the health risks of loneliness and the decline in hanging out time are so serious societal and democratic challenges that we need all hands on deck. Timeleft might meet the need for people who might not be tempted to join a library’s book club, a soccer club or volunteer at a nonprofit. Timeleft contributes to the range of solutions we need rather than being an all-encompassing solution.

My own insecurities and nervousness were an important reminder that convivencia is a muscle that we need to keep exercising to enter new situations and public life, in general, with confidence. Regular exchange with strangers builds assurance that even if this evening or experience is not the best, I will survive. Every experience does not need to be transformative but the cumulation of those experiences can be.

And just like with this dinner, the indicator of success in convivencia is not that we all need to become best friends. Societally and personally, every time we open our front door and join public life is a win.

As we all headed to our cars two and a half hours later, I felt that while was maybe not an experience of friendship, but an experience of neighborliness, or just shared humanity, which I think we all desire.