I've always been shy. As a kid, just the thought of meeting new people would cause me to throw up or have a panic attack.
Now that I’m nearing middle age, the years have sanded down the edges of my social anxiety enough that I can almost pass as comfortable in social settings; confident, even. But I still found myself nervous as I crossed the Green Valley Ranch parking lot on a recent night, about to do something I’d never done: Eat dinner with five complete strangers.
The dinner had been arranged through an app called Timeleft. The process is simple: You sign up, rate yourself on a scale by answering questions such as “How extroverted are you?” or “How creative are you?,” and then you’re notified that you’ve been matched with five other people and would you like to meet them for dinner this Friday? The app picks the people and the restaurant. You just show up.
The only thing I knew about my fellow diners was that they were the type of people who voluntarily paid an app $15.99 to set them up with unknowns from the internet. And it wasn’t even with the promise of romance afterward — this was purely about making friends, or, as the Timeleft marketing materials stated, “the magic of chance encounters.” These people had to be super-extroverted, I’d reasoned. As a recovering shy person, I worried I wouldn’t fit in.
“The app is really popular in Las Vegas right now,” one of my friends who’d dined with Timeleft had said. He knew others who’d used it to expand their social circles and make new friends. With so many people coming and going, Las Vegas is an easy place to meet new people, but lasting friendships are harder to come by. I’ve lived here more than 10 years and had literally hundreds of acquaintances, but few real friends.
The hostess at Bottiglia Cucina & Enoteca didn’t bat an eye when I blurted, “I’m with Timeleft,” leading me to the table where my group was seated: two women and three men, all appearing to be in our late-30s to mid-40s. I sat down and introduced myself.
As we shared what had brought us there, one man revealed this was his 25th dinner through the app. He was somewhat of a known figure within the app’s world, frequently attending Timeleft afterparties in bars around town. He even moderated a 180-person Timeleft group chat. He held out his phone to show it to me, scrolling until a picture appeared of a recent pole-dancing fitness class that members of the chat had attended. I squinted at a blurry photo of a partially clothed man hanging from a pole in what appeared to be a dance studio. They were planning to visit a shooting range next, he said.
As I sipped my beer, the conversation bounced from topic to topic, from the superficial, like where everyone was from, to the surprisingly deep, such as someone’s struggle to parent their teenage son and another’s recent breakup.
I studied the group, trying to tease out a common thread. Other than our similar ages — apparently the app groups diners by age — we didn’t appear to have much in common. We all worked in different professions, from tech or healthcare to the arts or beauty — and had varying political beliefs, religious affiliations, and sexual orientations.
“Are you all extroverts?” I asked.
Two of the men said they scored high on the extroversion scale. “I’m 99 percent extrovert,” one said with a grin. But the guy who’d been to 25 dinners shook his head.
“I’m an introvert,” he said. “If it wasn’t for this app, I’d probably be sitting here like this.” He folded his fingers together on the table, hunched his shoulders, and looked down shyly.
“Really? I would have never guessed that about you.” This guy had been so chatty.
He told us how he’d often struggled to meet people, sitting alone at bars playing poker and wracking his brain for ways to start conversations with the regulars beside him.
Timeleft gave him a way in.
“You don’t have to try to figure out if the other person is up for meeting people,” he explained.
“Because we’re all here to meet people,” someone else said.
“Although I think this” — he gestured to the table — “has made me more extroverted.”
“Yeah, I read an article about that recently,” I said, nodding. “You can change your personality and make yourself more extroverted … simply by interacting with people more. Like, if you act more extroverted, you can become more extroverted.”
After we’d paid our checks, he turned to me. “So. What did you think?”
“It was fun! I thought it would be awkward,” I admitted. “But it really wasn’t. Not at all.”
As we headed to our cars, a few of us exchanged phone numbers and hugs goodbye. Our introverted leader added me to the group chat and made me promise I’d try Timeleft again. The next day I awoke to invitations for a hookah party, a Sunday church service, and a wine tasting. “I hope we all continue to build the friendships,” someone had written.
I hoped so, too.
