There is a the special pain that exists in limbo, that eternal state in between, where time reaches infinity.
Today, that experience is especially true for people who strive to join Raya, a members-only dating app. Getting a Raya account requires an invitation from a current member, and even after applying, you can’t log in until your application is approved. The process creates a bottleneck like a queue outside a nightclub, where a select few wind their way inside while others are left waiting. Beyond the velvet rope are about 2.5 million people waiting to enter Raya—many of whom have been idle for years.
“My application is stuck in purgatory,” Gabriela Mark, a 23-year-old law student and model in San Diego, tells WIRED. “Like, he never runs away.”
Mark has been on the waiting list for five years. “I don’t know what their deal is, but there’s a reason I’m stuck on this waiting list and I need to find out what it was.” In January, having reached his limit, he decided to send an email to Raya. “I’m starting to believe that you really hate me or abuse me,” Mark wrote in a letter with colorful words. “Is my request floating in the abyss somewhere or is it a criminal running from you???”
Mark didn’t get an answer, but his story is growing. The people WIRED spoke to about this story—who, despite their professional tenacity, waited anywhere between two and seven years to join—have watched friends get accepted, separated, and cycled through the app while their own status remained unchanged.
Originally marketed as a sort of SoHo House for people in the creative industries, Raya launched in 2015 as an app built for aspiration—but has transitioned into a platform where many people in those industries find themselves unable to participate at all.
Jennifer Rojas, who was working as an actress when she applied in 2020, says: “It’s a good idea. Now a 40-year-old UGC creator in South Florida, Rojas is going on the sixth year of the waiting list. “I have 17 referrals on the unusual application.”
There is no exact science to making it past the waiting list. According to a previous report, the app—which charges users $25 a month, or $50 for a premium membership once approved—receives up to 100,000 requests a month. For potential users, the biggest benefit comes from referrals by current members, who each receive a small stash of “friend passes” to share. The list is not first come, first served, which partly explains why some people have stayed on it for so long. It changes based on things like how trendy your city is on the app or whether you’ve crossed off a referral.
(Raya declined to comment. After an initial call with Raya’s communications team about setting up an interview with Ifeoma Ojukwi, the vice president of global membership who oversaw the application process, the company stopped responding to requests from WIRED. As is often the case with online dating, we were dead.)
Like many wannabes, Raya’s uniqueness initially attracted Mark. He wanted to join because he had heard it was full of “cool people who seem out of touch.” Known as a celebrity dating app, everyone from actors Dakota Fanning and Channing Tatum to Olympian Simone Biles have had varying degrees of success on the platform. (Biles met her husband at Raya.) Mark had tried his luck on the app: Hinge was “good.” Through Tinder, she kept meeting guys who “seemed like they wanted to tie up anything with a hole in it.” As for the others, “there’s nothing but trapping guys and creatures,” he says.
