A Real Story

My first Raya application got rejected within four days, no explanation, just a polite no. I reapplied five months later after a DJ acquaintance from a work event agreed to be my reference, and this time I got the invite. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on my six intro photos and the little prompt questions, convinced some invisible committee was going to judge my entire personality off a photo of me at a rooftop bar in 2021.

Once I was in, the actual swiping was strange. A lot of profiles were people whose jobs sounded impressive in a vague way — ‘creative director,’ ‘brand consultant’ — and a handful of genuinely recognizable faces I won’t name. I matched with maybe six people over three months, most conversations fizzling after the standard ‘what do you do’ small talk. Then I matched with a guy who listed his job as sound design and, in his prompt answer, admitted he’d once spent eleven hours recording someone crunching celery to sound like bones breaking for a slasher film.

We talked for two weeks before meeting, mostly about terrible day jobs we’d both had before this — his was selling mattresses, mine was a call center — which felt more honest than anything else on that app. We met at a diner near his studio, not a rooftop anywhere, and he brought his laptop to show me the celery clip like it was a wedding video. It was the least ‘exclusive dating app’ moment of my entire Raya experience, and it’s the only one that turned into something real.

We’ve been seeing each other for five months now. I still don’t think Raya is what its reputation suggests — the vetting felt like more of a production than the matches themselves — but I’m glad the wait didn’t stop me from finding one person worth the seven months of refreshing my email.