Portfolio
Freyja
An app that connects people on the values they actually hold — for friendship and shared interest as much as for partnership. Two swipes a day, seventeen questions, and nothing designed to keep you scrolling.
Why Freyja exists
Against the governance of social life by profit
The dating industry has learned to profit from the loneliness economy the way an arms industry profits from a war: by selling into a vulnerability it has no interest in ending. What it sells is the fallacy of infinite choice, and what that produces is unreal social behaviour.
Gamifying social life has distorted how we perceive ourselves and each other. We have arrived at a dystopian junction where nobody is special — replaceable at work, replaceable as a partner, replaceable inside the family. Beneath awareness, that drives a steady anxiety: flooded with options, and at the same time running from the recognition that these apps have made us interchangeable. They have dissolved our uniqueness as human beings.
This tyranny — social relations governed by capital — is what Freyja exists to undo.
What the machine actually does
None of this required anyone to be malicious. It follows from optimising a social product for attention rather than for the people inside it.
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You become replaceable
Replaceable at work, replaceable as a partner, replaceable in the family. An endless queue of alternatives, presented as abundance, teaches you at a level below argument that nobody — including you — is particular.
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Infinite choice is a fallacy
You do not meet fifty people in a day, and you cannot know anything but surfaces about fifty people. Presented with fifty, you start assessing surfaces — and become superficial yourself in the process.
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Outrage is the business model
We are wired to attend to danger, and that wiring is now farmed. Feeds carry far more negative material than positive because negativity holds attention longer, and division between the sexes widens as a side effect of someone else’s revenue.
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The resolution is always a purchase
The anxiety is manufactured upstream and the relief is sold downstream. You are moved, reliably, toward an act of consumption you did not need.
Values first — and not only romance
Friendship is a first-class outcome here
Freyja is for mindful social engagement, and its solutions mimic how people actually meet in real life rather than how a slot machine dispenses faces. It connects people on the values they share, because shared values are what a relationship of any kind has to stand on.
That includes friendship. Most platforms treat friendship as the consolation prize for failed romance; here it is one of the things you can be looking for, ranked below nothing. People searching for companionship, for common interests, or for the kind of friend you can be serious with are not a secondary audience — they are the same audience, looking for the same thing under a different name.
Relationships built this way are bound to foster real reflection, to leave space for both people to express themselves, and to lead toward the kind of intimacy that actually fulfils a life.
How it works
Three parts, in the order you meet them.
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One
Onboarding, and the questions
The ordinary registration any app needs — and then at least five of the seventeen intimacy questions. They exist to trigger genuine self-reflection: what you want from your life, and what you actually value. In exposing something real, you also find out what that is.
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Two
Matching
Two swipes a day. Matching is built on the human values your answers reveal, alongside the ordinary factors — age, distance, gender, the practical things. The values come first because that is what the relationship will have to stand on.
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Three
Messaging
An open-source messaging layer, adapted to Freyja. Nothing clever, nothing gamified, nothing that measures how fast you reply.
The seventeen questions
These are intimacy questions, and they are presented as such. You answer at least five, and those answers are what matching is built on.
Answering them carelessly produces worse matches, not better ones — the point is to find out which values you actually hold, so there is nothing to game.
- How do you see yourself?
- What do you think of your place in the world?
- If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you like to know?
- Is there something that you have dreamed of doing for a long time? Why have you not done it?
- If you were going to become close friends with your partner, what would be important for them to know?
- Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share …”
- What do you wish people understood about your inner world?
- What does reciprocity in love mean to you?
- How do you show care when words aren’t enough?
- What rituals would you create that make your bond stronger?
- What part of your story do you carry with pride?
- What teachings have shaped how you love?
- What are the responsibilities you feel in a partnership?
- How do you want our relationship to contribute to our families or communities?
- Who are the people who taught you how to care for others?
- What strengths from your ancestors do you bring into this relationship?
- What do you hope our relationship teaches future generations?
There is security in knowing that there is statistically less chance of being shot by an arrow. And there is security in knowing that someone will deeply care, if one gets shot. A Freyja prompt
Three decisions that make the difference
Everything above is a consequence of these three, and each of them costs us money on purpose.
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Two swipes a day
Not a limit imposed to make you pay for more. A limit because two people you might actually consider is the honest daily capacity of a human being.
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€5 a month, or €40 a year
That is the whole business model. No advertising, no data sale, nothing that would make your attention the product. If we are paid by you, we can be answerable to you.
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One prompt a day
A single line, shown once, while you are answering the questions and once a day thereafter — reminding both of us to treat the person on the other side with dignity.
Where it stands
In development
Freyja is being built. If you want to know when it opens — or if you build things and this is the problem you have been waiting for someone to work on — leave your address below.
Note for Prem: add screenshots, a repository link and a real
launch window in src/pages/portfolio/freyja.astro as they exist.
Hear when Freyja opens
One message when there is something to use, and nothing in between.