Very Specific Dating Apps For Single People on Valentine’s Day

Posted in Miscellany by Traci

Congratulations, people in love. Today’s a day for you to celebrate the romance you’ve cultivated over the past ::insert amount of time here:: and show how much you care with a greeting card and a 3-course dinner special at your local favorite restaurant.

For everyone else, congratulations, you’re single. If you feel the need to spend today not entirely by yourself, here are some super niche dating apps that can narrow down the field for you and possibly fill that void of #foreveralone-ness. At least for now. But who knows how this could turn out? Maybe you’ll be telling your kids the story of How I Met Your Mother on Spoonr.

Wingman

Are you a frequent flier? On the road for business a lot and don’t get a chance to go on real dates? Wingman is the app for people on the go looking to scores some points in the mile high club. In addition to the usual info, you also add your flight number and airline to your profile, and it shows you a list of people on your flight that you could be paired up with. Seat-to-seat chatting is gonna get a whole lot sexier.

Bumble

Bumble is a giant Sadie Hawkins Dance version of Tinder. Once you’re matched with someone, the lady has to message the guy first, but if they don’t within 24 hours, the connection disappears. And for all my LGBTQ homies out there, either one can make the first move.

Happn

Happenstance (noun) : a circumstance especially that is due to chance. We always are stunned to find out what small a world we really live in, and with Happn, it sets out to prove that to be true. using GPS functionality in your phone, the app shows profiles of other singles in your area and pinpoints the last place and time you were close to each other. All prospective matches are people you’ve crossed paths within 250 meters, and it’s definitely NOT creepy at all, right?

Spoonr

Aside: why are all these dating apps missing one vowel? Is there a real reason? Please respond in comments. Anyways, Spoonr is not for folks who enjoy the round utensil, it’s for people who just need a cuddle. Unclear whether there’s an option to set a preference for big or little spoon.

Tindog

Have a fear you’re going to become an old dog lady/man with no human significant other? Well Tindog not only sets you up with other dog lovers, it sets up your dogs too. Puppy love, AMIRITE?

Seeking Arrangement

SeekingArrangement is a very generous phrase to describe what this dating app is – a way for sugar daddies to find young women to shower with material items, companionship, and of course, sex. If Hugh Hefner doesn’t already have stock in this, he really should.

SaladMatch

This app was created by New York-based salad eatery Just Salad, as a way to connect customers with other salad lovers. Like Tinder, it allows you to swipe left or right on users based on their salad prefs, Just Salad location and what time of day they usually go to Just Salad. So if you get matched with someone, do you get like free salads for life, or something? Because I could be into that.

Sizzl

Like SaladMatch, Sizzl is powered by Oscar Mayer, but a little less serious than Just Salad. The app matches singles based on their bacon preferences – crispy or tender? Pork or turkey? etc. etc. Again, I feel like if you get properly matched there should at least be a voucher for free bacon at your local grocery store.

Luxy

Luxy is for rich snobs. No, really. One time their tag line was “Tinder, minus the poor people.” And in the ad above, the slogan “Over 40,000 people have been kicked out” is not a misprint. Luxy is a dating app for the 1% – millionaires, CEOs, celebs, etc. Apparently, users even select their fave high-end brands like Cartier and Prada, so potential suitors know what to get them as a casual gift.

Raya

Speaking of the 1%, Raya is a similar dating app, but used by a lot of celebs. It’s super exclusive and very secretive, and referred to as the “Illuminati Tinder”. There’s an intense vetting process, and after users submit their application, an anonymous committee assesses their social media presence and decides whether you’re cool enough to join the app. Stars like Sharon Stone, Diplo, Joe Jonas, Rayven Symone and even Matthew Perry are all rumored to be looking for love on Raya. The fact that it’s so elusive is why it’s so fascinating – but all I really want to know is what do these celebs put in their profiles??

12Feb2016

Meme-ntine’s Day

Posted in Miscellany by Traci

It’s ~~Anna Howard Shaw Day~~ ~~Single’s Awareness Day~~ Valentine’s Day this Sunday, which means a few things:

Single folks are ignoring the holiday by drowning in alcohol
Those with significant others are forced to talk to each other at some kind of romantic outing
Kids are handing out paper valentines and candy to brown paper bags taped to desks at school

But what happens when single and taken adults want to hand out paper valentines to their friends IRL? They create memes that look like old school valentines using their favorite fictional characters and comic sans and post it on the World Wide Web. This time of year is one of my favorites to monitor on the Internet to see what kind of kooky things people come up with. Here are some of the best fandom valentines from the Internet’s virtual brown paper bag. Consider it our gift to you.

after years circulating online, maybe this will be the year this card becomes irrelevant.

just because bill nye was part of your childhood doesn’t mean he doesn’t have sex. or is a badass.

paula’s cutting down with the unsalted butter

history isn’t the only thing that has its eyes on you, AMIRITE

whatever you say, groffsauce

not willing to wait for it

jokes aside I MISS JIM HALPERT

CLASSIC MATTHEWS

roflcopter

the life of pablo album cover v. 3

who doesn’t love a good lisp joke?

memes collide

a truly heartwarming sentiment, tbh

get in the cage

michelle’s a lucky girl

11Feb2016

It’s the 90s: Let’s All Decorate For Valentine’s Day!

Posted in Entertainment, GSOY (Gratuitous Story of Yourself), Miscellany by Molly

Happy Valentine’s Day season, I guess! Valentine’s Day falls into one of my favorite holiday subcategories: a Snack Holiday. A Snack Holiday is almost a normal day, except there are themed snack foods. Snack Holidays don’t require gift exchanges or elaborate meals, which are entirely optional. Other Snack Holidays include Halloween, Fat Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day, and maybe Lincoln’s Birthday if you swing it right. Snack Holidays are closely related to, and sometimes overlap with, drinking holidays: Mardis Gras (Fat Tuesday + booze), Independence Day, St. Patrick’s Day. I love them all!

You may be thinking that Valentine’s Day is NOT a Snack Holiday because presents and fancy meals are obligatory. However, except for a few couples I know, most people leave these big celebrations behind in their early twenties. You wouldn’t think so, but it’s actually pretty great being single on Valentine’s Day in your late 20s. Most of your friends who are dating, engaged, or married have been together so long that they aren’t into big, amateurish displays of affection. Most of them are spending the holiday ordering a pizza and seeing if there’s anything good on Netflix. Yes, except for a brief interlude from the ages of, say, 15 to 25, V-Day is a Snack Holiday we can all enjoy.

For those of us who grew up in the 90s, our concept of Valentine’s Day as a Snack Holiday was established in our classroom parties. So in this holiday edition of Let’s All Decorate, let’s take it back and decorate that classroom, why don’t we?

Beanie Babies

In the height of the Beanie Baby craze, there’s a good chance your teacher displayed seasonal Beanies on her crowded desk, probably next to the cold cup of teacher’s lounge coffee. It was one of the few attempts at teacher coolness that actually sort of worked, except that you gave her a bit of side-eye for displaying a “rare” holiday Beanie Baby on her desk without a tag protector or clear plastic coffin.

Shoebox Mailboxes

I’m going to go ahead and call this the most highly-anticipated busywork of the year. Sometime before your Valentine party, the teacher would bust out a stash of shoeboxes she had saved from every pair of sneakers, loafers and boots that she, her husband, and her children had bought for the past year. “Wasn’t it nice of her to save those JUST FOR YOU?”… Is a thought that never occurred to me as a child because children are selfish little dirtbags. You would cover the shoebox in plain paper, then decorate with stickers, crayons, and if your teacher was exceptionally chill about classroom mess, some glitter.

The mailboxes served a triple purpose of keeping the Valentines neater than they’d have been in a pile on your desk, concealing who received which Valentine (although you had to give one to every kid, so whatever), and filling up a solid half hour of post-lunch time on a day when kids are bouncing off the walls.

Note: if your teacher’s children didn’t go through as many shoes that year, you may have decorated manila envelopes that you taped off the edge of your desk, instead.

A Bulletin Board Or Door Display Where Every Kid’s Name Appears On A Heart

Sounds really specific, right? But these were actually universal as chicken pox (Stuff 90s Kids Remember: Chicken Pox). Things have gone more high-tech now, but back in the day teachers used to spend a ton of time cutting out construction paper shapes and writing all of the kids’ names on them. How do I know? My mom was a teacher in my school… and she outsourced a lot of it to me. I stapled a whole lot of solid construction paper backgrounds and bulletin board borders in my youth.

For teachers’ sake, I shudder to think what the Pinterest Industrial Complex has done to V-Day bulletin boards.

For a true 90s experience, names should be: Justin, Ashley L., Ashley B., Matthew, Jessica, Sarah, Dave, Katie, Chris, Kristin, and Kevin.

An Art Project Where Things Are Made Out Of Hearts

A tree made out of hearts, a bee made out of hearts; a dog made out of hearts, a frog made out of hearts; a wiggly heart-shaped creature made out of hearts. The heart is a versatile shape, and nobody knew that quite like the elementary school teachers of the 90s. There was probably a wall somewhere during that party that was decorated with the childrens’ heart-shaped crafts. Gotta develop those fine motor skills!

Tissue Paper Suncatchers

Yet another example of letting the kids decorate for their own darn party, if it was Valentine’s Day, and it was 1993, and you were 7, there’s an excellent possibility that these were hanging in your window filtering those February afternoon sunbeams.

TREATS TREATS TREATS TREATS

The above “treats” should be read like the thumping bass of EDM music, because when we were children, Valentine’s Day treats were our molly (although I’ve always really been my own Molly). Favorite V-Day treats in the 90s included, but were not limited to:

Rice Krispy Treats with heart-shaped sprinkles in them – OR cut into the shape of hearts if the mom making them didn’t’ mind waste.
Jell-o Jigglers shaped like hearts, because Bill Cosby meant something different to us then.
Heart-shaped Little Debbie “snack cakes” which were the same as the Christmas-tree shaped ones you had two months before, except that I always suspected that the heart ones were a tad bigger.
Sticky, gummy heart-shaped brownies, also from your friends at Little Debbie, courtesy of a kid whose parents didn’t have time to make anything.
Punch made with fruit juice, Sprite, and sherbet, especially if the party was right at the end of the day and the teacher wouldn’t have to deal with you much longer.
Candy Hearts. Obviously.

Valentines!

This is where you let your interests fly – and Kid Code required that you act cool about what the other kids handed out, not making fun of the kid who picked a movie nobody had liked for two years. A few favorites:

11Nov2014

It’s 11.11, Single People, Make A Wish

Posted in Miscellany by Traci

I work for a British-based company, which means we don’t get a lot of American holidays off. Basically if there’s any sort of Columbus Day or Martin Luther King Jr. Day type day, I only am alerted to it when I see Macy’s commercials boasting special three-day sales. So I guess a happy Veterans Day and giant thank you to all who have and are serving for our country.

But did you guys know there’s another holiday today and it’s been a huge deal in China? It’s called Singles Day and it’s basically anti-Valentine’s Day meets Cyber Monday. For all those who believe V-Day is a holiday made up by card companies to sell millions of greeting cards this year – you’ll be interested in Singles Day.

Singles Day, or Guanggun Jie in Chinese, was founded by a group of college kids in 1993, inspired by the imagery of “11.11”, since guanggun translates to “lone stick”. It started off as a “Bachelors Day”, but the day of being single and partying with other single friends spread to females as well. But in 2009, Alibaba, a huge Chinese e-commerce company that owns sites like their own version of eBay, were all like, ‘Hey, let’s start marketing to these sad single people on Singles Day and push them to splurge on one-day sales’. In other words:

Over the past few years, Singles Day has grown into a billion dollar sales day, becoming the world’s biggest online shopping event – last year the day brought in $5.8 billion worth of items, which is almost $2 billion more than the year before. In comparison, us ‘Murricans spent $1.7 billion on Cyber Monday in 2013. This is what happens when we (don’t) spend money on other people.

Besides the fact that Singles Day is one of the best marketing ideas I’ve heard in some time, it’s particularly big in China because of some demographic factors, including the country’s one-child per family policy, which means there are a shit ton of single men in China right now, ladies.

So it would only make sense to celebrate Singles Day here in America, right? There are already a ton of people every year who are against Valentine’s Day (Anna Howard Shaw Day, anyone?), not to mention the fact that about half the adult population in the U.S. (that’s about 124 million folks) are single, which honestly makes me feel a little bit better about my life, but not by that much. Combine that with young people who are looking for excuses to shop online AND at discounted prices, you’ve got yourself a new Cyber Monday. Here’s hoping Singles Day makes its way to the U.S. soon, because these are just some of the possible items that would sell out immediately:

Personalized flask
Wine of the Month
Anything to do with alcohol
A comfy onesie
Gourmet chocolate
A body pillow with Chris Evans on it

A year subscription to Match/eHarmony/ChristianMingle
A Keurig
Gift certificate to a spa
A Batman suit
A box of meats from Omaha Steaks
This poster:

*Update: after I wrote this post, turns out Alibaba announced they hit an astonishing $2 billion in gross sales within the FIRST HOUR of Singles Day.

14Feb2013

Playlist of the Month: Songs for Single People

Posted in Entertainment, Lists by Cookies + Sangria

Welcome to the inaugural Playlist of the Month post! Every month, we’ll present to you some jams that go along with a common theme, but are also top-notch tunes. This month, in honor of everyone’s favorite (least favorite) holiday, Valentine’s Day, we present to you our top songs for single people on this, the day of love.

PS: If you want to listen to all these songs, check out the playlist on Spotify HERE!!! Enjoy 🙂

Traci’s Picks

Me, Myself, and I – Beyonce

Queen Bey has a knack for those independent women songs (see: Independent Women Part 2), and this is no exception. If you’re just getting out of a relationship or just plain old single, B reminds us that a lot of times in life, the only person you can rely and trust on is you.

I realized I got Me myself and I, That’s all I got in the end, that’s what I found out. And it ain’t no need to cry, I took a vow that from now on I’m gonna be my own best friend.

The More Boys I Meet – Carrie Underwood

I actually used to hate this song, because it’s a typical country, tractors and beer type of storytelling song. But the more I listened to it, the more I liked it, and appreciated it for its sheer ridiculousness and earnest lyrics. Well of course you’re going to meet your fair share of useless men, so find companionship elsewhere.

It’s not like I’m not trying, cause I’ll give anyone a shot once… And I close my eyes, and I kiss that frog. Each time finding the more boys I meet, the more I love my dog.

Desire – Ryan Adams

For those looking for a good wallowing song, sorry about your life, but here’s a tune to help you out. If you want a real “kick you in the gut – forever alone – crying into your extra large glass of wine” song, this is the one for you.

You know me. You don’t mind waiting. You just can’t show me, but God I’m praying, that you’ll find me, and that you’ll see me, that you run and never tire.

Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work – Solange

We fall in love, we fall out of love, and some things are never meant to be. My motto has always been, everything happens for a reason, because I really like cliches (not really, I’m just a victim to believing it to be true). But Solange puts it best in a very blatant way. Not everything can go your way. Deal, move on, find something better.

I’m thinking of some time off. I’m dreaming of a time that you knew me. So maybe then we’re better off So maybe if it’s all you wanted it. Leave me alone. Some things never seem to fucking work.

Fuck You – Lily Allen

Pretty sure this is self explanatory.

Fuck you. Fuck you very, very much. Cause your words don’t translate, and it’s getting quite late, so please don’t stay in touch.

Molly’s Picks

Marriage Is For Old Folks – Nina Simone

I have married friends and relatives who are (a) not old folks and (b) very happy, but you know what? If they’re allowed to spend all of today talking about how happy they are with their lives, we’re allowed to discuss how happy we are not to be married right now, too. Also, couples get all of the jazzy, old-timey songs today, so here’s one for the rest of us.

Marriage is for old folks/ Cold folks, not for me/ One married he, one married she/ Whaddya got? Two people watchin’ TV

My Life – Billy Joel

I love Billy Joel as much as Billy Joel loves crashing his car into private residences, which he must like a lot because he did it like three times. This is a classic, late-70s, ‘I’ll do what I want and don’t even try to tell me what to do’ anthem (in Billy’s case, what he wants to do is marry much younger women and engage in some reckless driving. Don’t judge).

I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life, Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone

Runaway – Kanye West

The theme of most Valentines-y songs is “I’m so wonderful, you’re so wonderful, let’s be so wonderful together!” But what if you’re not wonderful? And what if you’re single because you think nobody should have to put up with you? Yeezy addresses this sentiment.

Let’s have a toast for the douchebags/ Let’s have a toast for the assholes, Let’s have a toast for the scumbags,/ Every one of them that I know/ Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs/ That’ll never take work off/ Baby, I got a plan/ Run away fast as you can

A Cause des Garcons – Yelle

Every once in a while, my inner 12-year-old isn’t above listening to a good, old-fashioned, ‘boys suck’-themed pop tune. Particularly when it’s a French electropop cover of an ’80s novelty song.

À cause des garçons !/ On met des bas nylon/ On se crêpe le chignon/ À cause des garçons !/ Et du “qu’en dira-t-on”/ On pleure sur tous les tons/ À cause des garçons !

I’m Good I’m Gone – Lykke Li

Lykke Li brought us the messy bun on the tippy-top of her head long before anyone was doing that. As an aside, I had my hair like that at work and everyone treated me very gently, as though I might be hungover. Anyway, this song is all about leaving your haters and unsupportive gentleman friends in the dust, because you’re a hard worker on your way up in the world.

If you say I aim too high from down below, Well, say you’re not ’cause when I’m gone, You’ll be callin’ but I won’t be at the phone

13Feb2013

Conversation Heart Alternatives for 2013

Posted in Lists by Traci

Ah, conversation hearts. A Valentine’s Day staple. Over 8 million of these suckers are sold every year. I can assure you it’s not for the taste, because they taste like chalk with a slight artificial cherry flavor. I assume the allure is the excitement when you pick a random heart and read what your love life has in store for you. ‘Be Mine,’ ‘Love You,’ ‘Call Me,’ etc. etc.