Now there’s finally an app for that:
Salon’s Tracy Clark-Flory, who would sooner leap to her death than cuddle a stranger, interviews the insane person who created this app:
Why did you decide to start the app?
The app idea came from our designer, Jeff Kulak. We talked about it initially as a joke, the name being a play on the common “-r” trope for apps. But then we both quickly decided that there’s a real need for this, that we’d both actually use that app if it existed, and that it was technically feasible for us to make it happen. I sketched out some screen flow ideas and shared an early demo with Jeff. He gave it the design look that you see, and then it was all about fit and finish, and making sure people could go from downloading the app to finding people to actually cuddling with them as seamlessly as possible.
Do adults really want to cuddle with strangers?
I think we do. Not all strangers, of course. But, as I talk about in my Medium piece, we don’t get enough touch in our daily lives. And there’s a lot of space between the portion of people it might be nice to have a casual, PG-rated cuddle with and the smaller set you’d want to date or sleep with. I think as a culture we’re ready to consider cuddling as more than just something that happens before or after sex, but as something worth pursuing in its own right.
I suspect we’re being punked/trolled. But just in case: No sane adult wants to cuddle with a stranger. Period. And non-ironically downloading this app to your phone—regardless of whether you ever got around to using it—is something you should have to disclose to a potential new partner before becoming intimate, like an STI, an extreme kink, or a parasitic twin.