For me, a 23-year-old girl-woman in Los Angeles, dates don’t just fall into my lap. I’m not the type to go up to some quietly handsome grocery shopper at Trader Joe’s and give the ol’ standard: “Purchasing that cheese, huh? How Gouda you! Ayuck yuck yuck, please date me.”

That being the case, I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve used the occasional dating website or app. I’ve been pretty absent on them lately, but only because the results haven’t been very…satisfactory. However, I keep my accounts active because the emails and notifications I receive are too hilarious to miss and, honestly, make me feel good. So when my friend (who I met on a dating site years ago, coincidentally) told me about a new app called Hinge, I leapt at the opportunity to receive more “hey baby, your brain is wild, let’s travel the world together!” messages.

Fortunately, if you really want to land a date and not just amuse yourself, none of those messages are in sight on Hinge. The app works by pairing you with friends of friends and introducing you out-of-app if you’ve both chosen each other (so you only talk to people who you want to talk to and who want to talk to you—no unwanted in-app messaging). Now, it is only available on the East Coast at the moment. But it’s not like I haven’t lied about stuff on my OkCupid profile before, so I downloaded it and faked a New York zip code.

Instantly, I was presented with five mildly attractive dudes. The premise, from what I gathered, is that I am offered up five people that are friends with a random Facebook friend of mine every day at noon. No hunting or reading obnoxious ‘about me’ paragraphs, just showing me the babes and letting me take my pick. The idea is genius. Rather than be set up with my friends’ friend IRL and go through the whole awkward ‘Hey, hey, so this is pretty crazy right? Ha…ha…ha…’ I can just see their face via my lovely iPhone screen and instantly decide to pass based on my own ridiculous standards. I passed on one particularly good-looking bro only because he was friends with some random ‘popular-girl’ from high school (whose want to add me as a ‘friend’ on the social network still baffles me).

If I do see some hottie-biscotti and favorite him, Hinge sends a generic ‘Hey, hello’ message for me if the feeling is mutual! No need to come up with some useless greeting where I painstakingly attempt to come off as calm, cool, and collected—or the opposite, depending on the guy. One time, I accidentally favorited someone. But luckily there is an option to delete it with one happy little swipe. So when I’m home drunk and alone with this app, there’s the chance to fix my stupidity the following hung-over day. More apps—nay, more everything—need this safety net.

I’d also like to point out that there’s an option to see who has viewed my profile. However, I’d have to acquire certain ‘statuses’ in order to do so, medals and all for inviting more people to join Hinge. I’m not embarrassed to say I have an account, but I’m not brave enough to go that far.

Given the fact that I am about 3,000 miles away from all these potentials (although apparently it’s slowly opening in more cities), I’m not really taking the app seriously. Which is the key to love, right? Not taking it seriously. Having fun. Being spontaneous. Sending nudes.

Overall, I’d recommend Hinge. It’s still my first day of usage and who knows, maybe I’ll get a sweet long-distance relationship and I can cry-blog about it on some other iPhone app. Have you guys seen the LDR hashtag on Tumblr? Fascinating stuff.

Thanks, pagedooley, for the image!