Current webdev project: a site to find local friends based on common interests

Have you ever thought "there should be a dating app that's like Reddit?" No? Good. That's a terrible idea. I'm doing it anyway.

Well, not a dating app per se. The main functionality of the website (because it's actually a website that I'm making, I don't really know how to make apps) isn't to find romantic or sexual partners. It is, however, meant to be used to make connections in your proximity, so it's like a dating app in that way. There will also be some dating app functionality, but I hope it's more useful than most dating apps.

The reason I compared it to Reddit is that the site I'm building has different topics that one can post to: so, for example, if you're asking for recommendations for musicals showing in your area, you could post in the "musicalTheatre" topic and set the post visibility to a certain radius of distance from you. The main thing that distinguishes it from normal forums is the location settings: I won't be showing people's locations (and they're encrypted in the database), but on the backend, the server will determine what posts someone can see based on their own preferences and the preferences attached to those posts.

I don't know if other people are going to like this at all, but I really hope there's an audience for it. I know personally, I've been struggling making in-person friends since the pandemic started (and kind of forever due to the autism etc), so it'd be great if I could meet people online and still eventually hang out in person. I know that most dating apps support platonic connections, but it's often hard to strike up a conversation with someone when most of what you know about them is what they look like and what pets they have. I could, however, see myself becoming friends with someone I met in an online discussion about the TV show The Good Place. And the use of this program is versatile: someone could also configure their settings so that only people a certain distance away can see their posts, to avoid encountering people they know in person. I hope over time I'll be able to convince people to join me in this, and this is one of those projects that I hope for many consumers of without hoping for profit (although I hope I'll be able to get enough on Patreon or what have you to pay for the server costs etc). I have so many ideas for this I'm having a hard time prioritizing, but I'll figure it out!

If I end up getting any money for this, I'll be offering remote jobs for certain tasks. First of all, I may hire a web designer because I'm much better at developing than designing. Secondly, I'll probably hire moderators if I have more users than I can handle (and I hope I do, because if the userbase remains under the threshold of who I can moderate, there will be very few in-person connections made and possibly very few at all). If you're interested, keep tabs on my dev Mastodon, especially this thread. I'll be posting about it there. Don't expect job offers right this minute, though: I have no patrons on my dev Patreon and I have a wedding to plan!

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