The restaurant's neon sign illuminates the evening downpour. I jump over the ponds in front of the entrance. The rain doesn't give me much time to change my mind.
I walk in and anxiously ask which is my table. I arrived first, at dinner with five complete strangers.
Suret organized a relatively new application on the domestic market, Timeleft, which offers socializing with unknown people and in the foreground points out that it is not dating app.
How it works?
Without a mandatory photo and accepting or rejecting people on a click, this app first offers the user to complete a personality test.
It starts with the usual set of questions: age, occupation, sexual orientation. It starts with a little more demanding ones like "do you form an opinion based on logic and facts, or emotions and feelings?"; "if your life was a fashion statement, would it be classic and timeless, or modern and expensive?"
The question "on a scale of one to ten, how much do you enjoy politically incorrect humor" already made me think about what I can expect from such an experience.
After the test, the algorithm connects you with five other people with similar interests. Then a dinner is organized in one of the Belgrade restaurants, in accordance with the budget chosen by the cornisik.
Mosquito, dolphin and snow
When I arrived, I ordered tea. It was cold, that evening the first snow fell in Belgrade.
"If you could be any animal, what would you be" is one of the "ice breaker" questions at the beginning of the evening. The group of people the algorithm matched me with, it turned out, didn't need them. They are all from Serbia.
Respecting the organizer of the dinner, everyone answered the first question. Some in the group had already been to such dinners several times and decided to repeat that experience, and had prepared and thought-out answers.
So we got a lion, a bird, a gorilla, an antelope, a dolphin and a mosquito at the table!
The group was motley, four women and two men, all in their thirties and early forties. Before we met, we got information about who is what in the horoscope.
I ended the evening with a cocktail that I tried on the recommendation of one of the girls, and the conclusion of those present is that a better filter than a horoscope would be information on whether those present consume alcohol and tobacco.
Dating without strings attached
According to the "stranger from the train" principle, dinner with complete strangers exuded a liberating feeling. We very easily fell into the exchange of childhood anecdotes, personal stories and deep thoughts. They discussed appearance without prejudice, vices, daily routines...
As it usually happens, it led to too loud a conversation, laughter echoed through the restaurant, so we were asked to quiet down from another table. In the same organization, joined by a different algorithm, several foreigners and our people were sitting there. They spoke in English.
I asked the people at my table what made them embark on such an experience and how their environment reacted to it.
Everyone mostly wanted to meet new people, without any strings attached. With the desire to potentially meet foreigners in Belgrade and hear their perspective on life in Serbia, they get to know new customs and cultures.
Most of the time, we were laughed at by the people around us because we were engaging in unpredictable encounters with unknown people.
Rich menu in real life
New technologies have brought with them new forms of communication. One of the abbreviations IRL (in real life) in the translation "in real life", has taken root in the jargon of young people all over the world.
Perhaps it best describes this experience, which surpasses "small talk", i.e. casual chatting about obvious things.
The Timleft app says that in an increasingly digitally connected but emotionally distant world, the importance of meeting new people in real life is being overlooked. They indicate that human connection is not just a social formality, but is crucial to our well-being and personal development.
They point out that engaging in conversation with new people has numerous health benefits, and new friendships simultaneously enrich our lives with shared experiences, joy and a sense of belonging.
Not everyone's experiences are good, apart from quality interlocutors, sometimes disappointment, boredom and wasted time are on the menu.
However, anything is better than loneliness, which, according to research, is as harmful to health as 15 cigarettes a day.
