Speed dating for friends

Friendship: can ‘speed-friending’ cure my post-lockdown need for companionship?

Over lunch and thrift shopping in Toronto, Shara Singh marked her one-year anniversary in May, not with a partner but with three new friends. The four came upon each other in an unexpected way, at a speed-dating event not technically meant for dating but for women seeking new friends in adulthood. Single people are fed up with dating apps and returning to the real world to meet their match. They talked about wresting back time for themselves in the face of constant demands. The four are daughters of immigrant parents, and aging and caregiving weighed on their minds.

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Friendship is hard. Friend speed dating is for awesome women who are interested in platonic friendships with other, similarly badass, ladies! I printed and cut out groups of ice breaker questions and placed one chunk of questions in front of each seat. I found the questions here and here. I used yellow sticky notes with arrows to direct people on where to go after their time was up. Then I printed out this star and this arrow for the trickier moves. See the librarians site above for details on movements!

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Friend Speed Dating is a low-key social event designed to help new adults make new friends. Every attendee spends two minutes talking with each of the other attendees; the "matching" period is followed by time for coffee and a casual activity, like card-making. This event was part of our ongoing program series aimed towards the 20s and 30s crowd. I decided to run this program as part of our It's On series for new adults because I regularly hear from and somethings in the area that they have trouble meeting new friends after they leave university. The goal was to provide a low-stress, fun environment for them to meet new friends, and to draw new patrons in their 20s and 30s to the library. In heterosexual romantic speed dating, the men sit on one side of the table and never move, while the women shift over one seat each time or vice versa.

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Fast Friends - It's like Speed Dating, But for Friendships

As I tousle my freshly-curled hair and apply the last slick of lip oil, I feel the sharp tug of nervousness in my stomach. I nibble at my lip, the synthetic strawberry taste of the lip oil catching in my throat. I hope I look okay. These events are an increasingly popular way to make new friends, and allow for people to make real-life connections in an increasingly isolated digital world - in London alone, hundreds of speed friending events, such as Gurl PWR, Gofrendly and Bumble BFF have cropped up. Nicole was inspired to create Gurl PWR , a girls-only events collective that offers speed friending, after two incidents that took place last year.

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