Aditi’s first year was quiet. Most of it happened at home, and for a while that suited her. Somewhere in second year it stopped suiting her, and she noticed.
She found Blind Fate through a post on LinkedIn, which is not where anyone goes looking for a date. In the middle of the app sits a big orange button marked FATE. Aditi pressed the button.
What came back was a ticket. A pub, café or restaurant in the city. A time. The first name of the person who would be sitting across from her, what they study, and the things the two of them had in common. No photo. Just enough to know it was real, and not enough to talk yourself out of it.
“I felt very human reading it,” she says. “You actually have to put yourself out there and go.” There was time to cancel. Plenty of it. She didn’t.
So she went. The opening minutes are the bit everyone dreads, and then they were over, and the two of them were talking about work and music and the things they turned out to share. Nobody swapped numbers at the end. She counts that as a kindness.
“Here you don’t have to stay in each other’s DMs,” she says. “It gives you freedom, actually.”
Later that week she pressed it again and went somewhere else in town. By then she had worked out what the missing photos are for.
“That’s the whole point. It brings people together despite whatever beauty standards are thrown on us, which we can’t even control.”
“There’s no pressure to impress,” she says. “It’s very casual.” Next she wants to try a mates table. Asked whether she believes in fate: “Everybody’s meant to be with someone. This app’s a good way to actually make that happen.”
Nobody knocked
Blind Fate was built by Jay Berry, who arrived in Exeter from Stroud three years ago knowing no one, and graduated this summer. A mate of his spent his whole first year barely leaving his room. “He was shy. Nobody knocked.” By third year his room was where the pre-drinks happened. “Same bloke,” Jay says. “Somebody had just eventually bothered to go and get him.”
It kept happening, to people he liked. “I kept seeing my friends spend hours alone in their rooms on their phones. One night I forced them all out together and we had a great time.” It’s the part he comes back to. “It’s not the people’s fault,” he says. “It’s that nobody’s knocking.” So once his degree was done, he built what he calls “the thing that goes and knocks”.
“Showing you people is easy,” he says. “Getting two of them into the same pub on a Tuesday is the hard part.” Most apps want you to stay on them. Blind Fate would quite like you to leave. “We don’t make a penny until you’ve got your coat on.”
Press FATE and the app picks somebody it thinks you would get on with, finds a pub, café or restaurant nearby, and tells you when to turn up. No photos, no swiping, no three weeks of texting. “Meeting someone new always starts with somebody having to ask,” Jay says. “This takes the asking away. You press a button. All you do is turn up.”
FATE is the main event, but there are other doors. Double Fate means bringing a friend and meeting another pair. The Dates tab shows a handful of people, words only, and you can say yes to anyone whose words you like. The Mates tab lists tables of up to six around town that you can simply join. It is free, with nothing to upgrade to, and open to anyone in the city, student or otherwise.
The rules are short. Everyone is ID-checked and 18 or over before they can meet anyone. Every meet-up happens in a public venue with staff around; homes are never on the list. Nothing is fixed until both people have said yes. Age gaps are kept sensible, and it is the younger person’s age that sets the limit. Give someone a considered no and the app will never put the two of you together again.
Exeter first
Blind Fate launched on 11 September, in Exeter and nowhere else. The first dates happened within three days. Eleven pubs, cafés and restaurants in the city have signed up so far. “Make Exeter busy first,” Jay says. “Then take it everywhere.”
He has a small test for whether any of it is working, and it is not the download numbers. “Somewhere in Exeter, two strangers will sit down at the same table because they each pressed a button. If either of them walks out with a friend they didn’t have that morning, I’ll take that.”
Blind Fate is free on the App Store and Google Play.
