Love Apptually: Not much going on with dating app Happn

Each week in “Love Apptually,” Daily Bruin staffers Nico Correia and Natalie Green will take turns attempting to find love in all of the wrong places: dating applications. To help thousands of loveless students, but mostly themselves, Correia and Green will test run and rate five dating apps over the course of one quarter.

Life is good and it’s ruining my column. I love my major, I secured a fun and rewarding job for the summer and I’ve been dating someone remarkably understanding of this glorified diary. This column was supposed to be my gay “Girls” triumph of ego and narcissism.

At least the dating app Happn has succeeded in making my life more uncomfortable. Marketed to me by Natalie as the “new happening dating app,” after I couldn’t convince her to do a Grindr week, Happn turned out to be a service on which I found fewer than 10 UCLA undergraduates. Instead, I found a majority of men in their late 20s and more than a few balding gentlemen either approaching or full on living out middle age. Though I should have unresolved daddy issues caused by my lack of a father that would attract me to these men, I just don’t.

Even though I’m not interested in meeting up with anyone I’ve encountered on Happn, the app has been sure to let me know every time I “cross paths” with someone using map location tracking that shows where and when a meeting occurred. I crossed paths with Justin 14 times, Ocean 11 times and George and Ricky 13 times.

The scary thing is I don’t remember passing any of them, which brings up the unsettling question of whom else I’ve been passing. What if I’ve been passing Tupac and Bigfoot every day for the last year and simply didn’t notice? This could be a major news story.

I do take note when I pass the ghosts of Tinder dates past that I occasionally see on campus. I have created two classifications for run-ins with these strange beings: dinosaur run-ins and dementor run-ins. Dinosaur run-ins occur after a good amount of time has passed since dating, and they feel anachronistic but nostalgic. Dementor run-ins occur either shortly after things have ended or especially if they ended poorly and have the potential to make you feel like your soul is being sucked out – not to be dramatic or anything.

Given the existence of dementors, Happn’s creepy technology can yet be used for good. Many more students would join if someone could reverse engineer an UnHappn app that alerted users to the location of people they didn’t want to see. UCLA is already small geographically compared to other UC campuses, so why not give me some extra room to steer clear of awkward interactions with former floormates and flames alike? Here’s looking at you, UCLA computer science department.

While I’m in the process of getting UnHappn developed, I am also in the process of recruiting applicants for my last “Love Apptually” experiment. For students interested in partaking in the last week of what was supposed to be a much bigger mess, please email yours truly.

Would you use UnHappn?