Weekly Seeds | October 27, 2024 | About That Question

This email is mostly focused on the Plura app experience. If you don’t care for this, please scroll to the bottom for some light entertainment.

Thank you for your feedback

Last month, we asked you, “Why are you on Plura?” and “How can we make Plura better for you?” and you told us. We read through all ~550 answers and learned SO much about what you are looking for, what you love about the app, and what you want us to build.

Plura's job: Enabling connection

We learned that you are looking to meet people: friends, partner, partners, folks, and community. Phew! Imagine how awkward it would be if you were here to organize your taxes.

How are we doing?

I’d give us a B+ on meeting your needs for finding connection.

 finding the right kind of events to meet the right kind of people.

 community-level connections made on Plura Topic chats

 1:1 budding, matching, and ways to stay in touch

DO MORE: Meeting the right kind of people at the right kind of events

We believe events are an incredible path to finding partners, friends, and community. I will continue to share this data point: your success rate of matching with people is 10x higher if you go to an event and meet people, vs. if you sit on your app and like/swipe profiles. We plan to continue building our events platform: we’ll do better at helping you identify the right events, meet up with buds IRL, and eliminate missed connections.

DO BETTER: Improving your daily profiles

We see an opportunity to improve the “dating” experience in the app and designing more ways to connect directly with people. We’re working on some fun ideas and I’d love to connect and get your feedback on some early directions! Reply to this email and we can set up time to connect. Side note: check out this visual showcasing the rise of dating apps as a core mean of meeting people (which is fairly sad given how bad dating apps are at getting people to actually meet).

 BRB: Question of Today is going on winter break

As part of this work, we’ll be making the “for you” tab more focused on 1:1 connection, and removing the daily question from there. The daily question will be back after a short break, likely in a different execution, and in a different location.

Celebrating a year of vulnerability

We are wrapping up a full year of questions! The Daily Question sits in the heart of the venn-diagram between community-meditation, hot-seat, and self expression. I love knowing that these chats led to tens of thousands of reflective moments, and tens of thousands of comments and likes. I’ve emailed the members who replied to at least 100 questions, so check your email for a thank you note from me. Here’s a word cloud of what you had to say in the past year!

And with that… Non-Plura news

5 gay DJs save the day

I loved reading this story from Them on the queer community relief efforts that took place (and still is) in Asheville, NC. According to the article, way before FEMA had any presence in NC, Pansy Collective distributed six truckloads, two trailers, and a box truck filled with non-perishables to remote communities in NC.

Plura donated $$ directly to Pansy Collective as part of our Spooky Feelings Symposium! We hope the funds will go to one of Pansy’s programs, like their SW4SW hurricane relief fund, which supports sex workers and service workers who were impacted by Hurricane Helene.

Speaking of Spooky Feelings, last week we collaboration with Jessica Fern, David Cooley, Misha Bonaventura, MarciaB, Danielle Harel, and Celeste Hirschman and offered Plura members 3H of free relationship, and personal growth education. For every person that attended the workshop, we donated funds to the Hurricane Helene relief funds. Didn’t catch the workshops live? Here’s a link to watch 3H of amazing content.

Want to join our donation to Pansy? Check out Pansy Collective on IG, LinkTree, and Venmo.

I know Victoria’s Secret..

If you have an average body and you spent time in a large US mall, you might have experienced body shame while passing by Victoria’s Secret. I have personally tried to buy things at VS’s in the past and have always ended up feeling overweight, misshaped, too short, not-enough. This month, in its first runway show in 6 years, the brand tried to address the feedback on lack of inclusivity by adding plus-size and openly transgender models to its runway.

I doubt this is indicative of shifts in VS’s company culture and guiding principles. Why? b/c She was made up by a dude.

The real evil- nice progressive people

The Bachelorette’s participant Josh Seiter announced that he pretended to be transgender for the last 6M as an experiment “to expose how gullible and how delusional the left is” specifically calling the liberals out on being nice to him. Matt Bernstein posted this spot-on carousel showing how Josh tries to social-shame some people for supporting him.  

Speaking of shame. Another powerful post by Matt Bernstein highlights how deeply homophobia is integrated in our society's language and behaviors. 

Note: This newsletter represents my personal opinions and thoughts. I understand I may have unexamined views and I appreciate when people point them out so that I am made aware and can start thinking about them. When I make mistakes I am committed to learning about my impact on others and repairing. 

Contact me anytime: noa@heyplura.com