Presence, Practiced on Purpose

I used to think going out and downloading an app were the same instinct in different outfits, one just happened in heels instead of on a screen. Somewhere in a year of watching men perfect the choreography of wanting nothing in particular, very badly, I figured out the actual problem was never the apps. It was that everyone had quietly agreed ambiguity was safer than showing up.

The one app I do believe in is a members-only one, with no swiping and no algorithm. It’s a place for people who are hiring, or just trying to make friends, to find each other.

So I started throwing the kind of events I actually wanted to attend. Not another rooftop with a DJ and a hashtag, but a room built so you can’t hide in it. The Circle Sessions, where up-and-coming DJs get a real crowd to play to. Dinners with too few seats to disappear into a corner. Meetups and socials with just enough structure that no one has to invent a reason to talk to the person next to them. No app curating who’s worth your ninety seconds. No phone to disqualify someone before they’ve finished a sentence. Just people, dressed with some intention, standing close enough that talking is the only option left, the way conversation used to simply happen, before we decided it needed optimizing.

I’m trying not to be romantic about this. I don’t think a good playlist cures a culture-wide allergy to commitment, and I remain suspicious of anyone who insists their run club is really about the running. But I do think a room can be built on purpose, the same way a relationship can be, instead of something that just happens to you. That’s the whole bet: design the space carefully enough, and people eventually stop performing long enough to actually meet one another.

What I’m building is less an event brand than an argument, one I’m still making to myself most weekends, at DJ sessions, at dinner tables, at whatever socials come next: that presence is a skill, practiced in public, on purpose, with strangers, and it beats scrolling every single time you actually try it.