1 week Ago By Sophie Butcher
It has been ten years since dating app Raya launched. For those of you who aren’t well-versed in niche showbiz gossip, it’s famously exclusive – and allegedly it’s harder to be accepted on Raya than to secure a place at Oxbridge. This makes it the dating app of choice for celebrities looking to find love away from prying eyes.
It is how Lily Allen and David Harbour met (it’s also, apparently, how they split – after Harbour was caught using Raya). Rumoured users include Andrew Garfield, Jude Bellingham and Paul Mescal. And for two months last year, me.
I was not expecting – or wanting – to start dating celebrities. Instead, I was burnt out by conventional dating apps, and emotionally drained by yet another Hinge situationship. I had made a decision to stop dating to meet someone, and instead date for fun – and to collect juicy stories to tell my friends over a glass of wine.
Whenever I told people I had Raya, they would always have lots of questions. So, here I am to answer them – and tell you why it is not worth the hype or the cost. if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }The most common question was: how do you get onto Raya in the first place? What distinguishes Raya from other apps is that you have the option to get referrals from anyone you know who already is a member.
It is rumoured that you need two, but this has never been officially confirmed. I did have two referrals as coincidentally a couple of hours after I applied, I met an acquaintance at a party who had Raya. You also have to give your Instagram handle – and I think my application was more likely to be accepted because I have a public profile.
As someone who has lost years of my life to worrying I wasn’t skinny or conventionally pretty enough, it admittedly was a bit of a confidence boost to know they had checked my profile and accepted me. Then you have to wait to be verified and screened. From submitting my application to being accepted, it took three months.
However, some report being accepted within days – and others wait years. But unlike other dating apps that are free for most with the option to pay for extras, everyone on Raya has to pay. In the UK, it costs £20 a month – or less if you pay for several months or a year upfront.
For someone on a journalist’s salary, this wasn’t an insignificant cost – and was more than my phone bill at the time.if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }Did I see many celebrities? Honestly, no. I’m London-based and spot A-listers out and about semi-regularly, so I was surprised at how few I did see – and how debatably famous they were.
I’m conscious it is not in the spirit of Raya to talk about the famous faces you see – you can’t even screenshot on the app. I won’t name them. But the two most famous people I saw were an ex-Love Islander and someone from The Only Way Is Essex.
So, who is then on Raya? From my experience, it is mostly conventionally attractive people with vaguely interesting job titles. Think lots of influencers, investment bankers and media types – all with impossibly glossy hair and perfect teeth. My own surprise that I – a mere un-famous mortal – was accepted in the first place is telling.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t join an exclusive dating app that would accept me as a member. It makes me think Raya is becoming oversaturated and losing its niche. Ultimately, exclusivity can be hard to monetise – and dating apps are profit-making businesses.
#color-context-related-article-3576175 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square SOPHIE BUTCHER Not even the Meghan haters could begrudge her thisRead MoreThe app interface is similar to Tinder but with a separate map feature which spotlights people by neighbourhood (the equivalent of ‘Standouts’ on Hinge). It is supposedly designed to promote quality over quantity of matches and I matched with people at roughly the same rate as on Hinge (although you can’t see who has liked you). But after matching, I had only one real conversation.
He did ask me out on a date, but I cancelled on him because he kept asking me about work (the dullest dating-app chat) and I realised I had mainly been planning to go on a date so I could say I had gone on a date from Raya.The lack of meaningful chat and dates seems to come from an odd quirk in the app itself – where there is almost no way to filter prospective matches in your main feed by distance or location. This means I was regularly shown people from outside even the UK.
I presume Raya think their target audience is sufficiently wealthy or jet-set for this not to matter, but surely most people no matter their bank (or Avios) balance would think twice about dating someone on a different continent.In fact, I’d pin the absence of chat on a more fundamental problem with dating apps that Raya crystallises: far too many people use them as an ego booster than to pursue connection – or even to actually go on dates. The exclusivity of Raya worsens this phenomenon, as being a member is considered a status symbol.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }So, after two months, no dates, and no standout conversations, I decided the £40 I had sunk on Raya was enough. I cancelled my membership – and didn’t even get any fun stories to tell my mates..
