It’s a Tuesday night in San Francisco, and of course, I’m late. Running from the Chinatown Muni station, I hurriedly notify the app of my arrival time, since I can’t text the five strangers I’m about to dine with, nor can I predict if my chronic tardiness will offend them when we all become good friends. I also didn’t want to get banned.
When I arrived at the cozy Nob Hill pizza restaurant, I didn’t know who to look for. Luckily, the server at the front knew exactly why I, and several other confused heart-on-sleeve app users, were there: 222.
222 is what my dinner companions called a social experiment; the company prefers to define itself by what it’s not on its website:
“this is not a dating app. this is not a friend-making service. this is not networking. this is not mindless scrolling. this is not random. this is not the metaverse. this is not a distraction.”
I call it an algorithmic event planner. Users are prompted to fill out a questionnaire and are grouped with supposedly compatible people for activities ranging from dinner and drinks to yoga and a cold plunge.
The Gen Z Meyers-Briggs-esque questionnaire is a necessary (and intrusive) first step. On a scale from 1 to 7, I ranked my alignment with certain statements such as “I enjoy politically incorrect humor” and “Humans are born with an innate purpose.” I told the app how attractive I think I am, my favorite movies, and how well I did in school. It asked me about my stance on abortion, consumer responsibility in the climate crisis, and put me between a rock and a hard place by asking, “Would you rather listen to Taylor Swift or Kanye West?” At the end of the questionnaire, it categorized me as a “searcher,” oddly on the nose considering my journalistic intentions. I was intrigued, fatigued, and a little afraid. And out a $17 curation fee.
At dinner at Back to Back on Taylor Street, I learned that most of my dining companions had been living in San Francisco for at least a few years. Two were already friends with one another, one was married, and some even grew up here. One was a bartender at a popular dive bar, a few worked in tech. None wanted me to use their names.
It was some people’s second 222 event, others their fourth or fifth. I was grateful for the more seasoned 222-goers (the founders call them “super members”) for taking the reins in the conversation and the ordering. The meal was pleasant and polite, like a decent date, albeit with five people. We discussed our neighborhoods, our music tastes, favorite venues, etc. Opinions were sparsely wielded — not even during wine selection — and when they were, it was done with palpable caution and intentional vagueness.
Our server, in an unprecedented move, split the bill six ways without us asking. Then, the six of us walked down the hill to North Beach for the second 222-selected venue of the evening, April Jean on Grant Avenue, to mingle with other 222 groups who’d gone out to dinner that night as well. The bar was very loud, and each 222 group generally kept to itself, eyeing one another nervously. It felt like the first few weeks of college, when everyone wants to befriend one another but are unsure how. I left quickly after arriving at April Jean, without new besties but also without a bad taste in my mouth.
Dinner cost me a curation fee plus the $40 I spent on shared pizzas and a bottle of wine. (222 collects a “curation fee” of $17 per event.) In the case of gatherings like yoga, there’s an additional “event ticket” cost paid to the host. A monthly subscription of $22 waives curation fees and encourages more sign-ups. But unlike your typical night out with friends, 222 users don’t get to choose the restaurant or bar — venues pay an undisclosed amount to “partner” with 222 — so you need to be prepared to dole out some cash or weather the awkwardness of abstaining.
My social media feed recently has been littered with ads for these same-but-different friendmaking services like 222, Timeleft, RealRoots, and Kin. Each of these companies set users up with strangers with the intention of building IRL friendships. Many of the people I met at 222 events had used these other services, too. But founder Keyan Kazemian says 222’s real competitors are “anything that competes with the leisure time that you have and helps you escape and be entertained endlessly.”
“The real competitor, from my perspective, is: When I'm sitting at home, do I choose to scroll on TikTok and watch Netflix, or do I trust [222’s] recommendation and go and interact in the real world?”
The pandemic played an obvious role in exacerbating our tendency to stay inside and scroll. We’re the most alone we’ve ever been. The whole thing sounds awfully depressing, except, for better or for worse, people are feeling less lonely, partly because we’re comfortable living online. This isn’t an acceptable fate for Kazemian.
“I think the problem's going to get a lot worse and we're doing everything we can to build a tool that, yes, is digital, but it's a digital recommendation for an in-real-life interaction,” Kazemian told me. “It's not a digital entertainment product that removes you from the chance to have real life interactions.”
The biggest social apps on the market happen to be mostly for dating. Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, and others throw a wrench into the ways humans typically form relationships: through mutual friends, schools, workplaces, third spaces, and shared hobbies. Digital-based connection apps randomize users, save for a few age and demographic parameters, in a way that can be interesting and awkward.
222 started as a backyard research project among friends. Before there was an algorithm, it was Kazemian and his cofounders Danial Hashemi and Arman Roshannai vetting the personality tests from acquaintances and trying to curate groups for dinners that they’d cook and serve in their backyard at 222 N. Shafer St. in Orange, California.
Los Angeles became their first city, then New York, where the current team of 17 is mostly headquartered. They launched in San Francisco in May.
The company is reluctant to share numbers, but Kazemian said they have “hundreds of thousands” of users across their nine current markets: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, London, Toronto, Orange County, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and recently, Austin.
Before 222, Kazemian worked as a product management intern at Match.com, parent company of Hinge and Tinder, which made him “really hate dating apps” and vow to “never build a product like that.” Hashemi focuses on 222’s partnerships with local businesses and experience hosts. And Roshannai, who interned at DeepMind, oversees the company’s data science and machine learning arm.
I went to my second 222 event on Saturday morning. Forty-odd people, many of whom I learned have well-established social circles and hobbies, had dragged themselves out of bed for guided journaling, yoga, and an ocean dip at Chrissy Field Beach before 10 a.m. in the pursuit of something different. That morning, we were assigned groups by letters. The host, David, led a guided journaling session with prompts like “Who or what has inspired you recently?” and “What do you hope to get out of this experience?” Following each prompt, we discussed our entries among groups.
Some of the folks I met on Saturday had tried other friendmaking services. Two of the women met each other on RealRoots, a six-week “guaranteed” friendmaking program. Others had tried TimeLeft but said the range of personalities at one table felt like roulette, and no repercussions for no-shows could turn a six-person dinner into a blind date very quickly. Luckily, 222 encourages communication: If you’re running late, you must notify the app why and for how long. No-shows are banned entirely.
After every experience, users give their feedback on their matches and the experience itself. Did you get along with this person? Would you see them again? Would you go back to this restaurant? Users can also check their "compatibility rating,” displayed as a percentage, with their assigned company after the event. If romantic interest is mutually expressed to the app, 222 will let both parties know. And while there’s intentionally no internal messaging offered on the app, users can invite one another to events after meeting. The founders say users should attend and provide feedback on at least five events for the algorithm to truly work its magic.
Unlike the dating apps, which claim they’re “meant to be deleted,” 222 wants to be a mainstay in its members’ social lives. And from what I’ve gathered, it’s working: People sign up for the membership, go many times, form group chats like “Girls of 222,” and are essentially creating their own social scene of people connected for no reason other than socializing itself. I didn’t get the impression that many people have formed deep friendships, but I also didn’t get the impression that they necessarily wanted to.
I’ve lived in San Francisco for about three years and have always considered myself uniquely lucky to have the friends I do, most of which I’ve made in analog ways like school, mutuals, jobs, music and art scenes, hobbies, etc. After the guided journaling and yoga, I deleted the app, but for people new to a city or new to friendship, 222 could be their lucky number.
