Friending App: Make Friends Without Dating Apps, Scam Profiles, & Digital-Only Connections

Today, I sit down with Gabor Kadas, co-founder of Friending, to talk about one of the biggest modern struggles people face: making real friends in a digital world full of fake profiles, bots, scams, and shallow online interaction. We break down why friendship can feel easier to search for than ever before, yet harder than ever to actually build. Mr. Kadas shares how moving across multiple countries shaped his understanding of loneliness and why he became part of a platform designed to help people connect more safely and intentionally.

In this episode, I walk through the Friending app with Mr. Kadas so listeners can understand how it works. We discuss identity verification, interest-based matching, activity cards, real-time meetups, and safety-focused features meant to reduce catfishing, fake accounts, and other common online risks. We also talk about how the app is built to encourage genuine effort and mutual investment in friendship rather than one-sided convenience.

I also push into the bigger cultural issue behind all of this: loneliness, isolation, and the growing habit of replacing real relationships with screens. Mr. Kadas and I talk about how technology has made people more connected digitally while often leaving them more disconnected in real life. We address the discomfort of meeting new people, handling differences, and having awkward first conversations, and why those things are still necessary if we want deep, lasting friendships.

https://friending.com/

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode, a couple of nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today we are going to be addressing a subject that. We haven't really touched upon before in the show, so I'm excited to get into it. And it is making friends in this digital age, it can seem so easy, yet so impossible among the realms of fake profiles, AI, bots, catfishing, and a variety of other factors people wanting to date and not actually be friends.

There's so many things stopping us. From being able to make friends efficiently online until today, we are gonna be reviewing an app that was made that streamlines this process to get rid of all that junk in the way we are here with the man who made that gaba Orta. So great to have you here, and could you please give us a little background on yourself and what got you into this whole journey of trying to make getting friends easier?

Thank you having me. And basically, just to clarify, I'm only the co-founder of the app. And I got involved because I grew up in several countries. I was born in Central Europe, in Hungary, went to school in the uk, moved to Canada, spent half of my life in the us. So during this progress, I've been a lot alone and realized that it is an issue for myself as well as 60 million others.

About four years ago, I met up a friend of mine who I have known for a while, and he was saying short, who is the CTO, that he's doing an app called Friending. We started chatting, and of course the app has changed somewhat since our initial discussions or since the initially started. Finally, today we go to the stage where a third party app called Persona verifies all users.

This month it's optional, but from April 1st, it's compulsory to have yourself verified with a driver's license or other government issued id. And why is that important? Because as you have mentioned yourself, so many fake apps, so many fake profiles, and this totally avoids that because you need to be a real person to, to pause the verification and it came to mind.

There was a movie done years ago called Clickbait. I recommend that for everybody who hasn't seen it. Done not going to spoil it, do watch it. Then you will have a better understanding why verification is so important. Right, and I really am surprised that dating apps don't require it because we have seen a lot of cases of underaged, you know, of minors, you know, lying about their age.

On these apps, we see people as young as 14, 15, and 16 saying that they're 22 years old. And so that alone, the age verification aspect on top of the identity is so important. For those dating apps, yet we don't see that. And here you've gone ahead and made it for the friending, which I think is amazing because like you said, that make sure you're meeting real people.

We've seen a lot of people who are talking to fake profiles that want to scam them for money or to blackmail them or to solicit a product. And so it's truly sad, unfortunately, that we have people abusing these platforms for their own malicious gain. But. Fortunately we can combat that through means like this.

And so I want to go back a little bit to your personal journey. You talk about living in so many different places and obviously that creates a very difficult environment to maintain friendships, especially before technology was really booming. Can you tell us a little bit about that? My age, I'm 62, obviously.

Internet didn't exist. So moving around in the countries from one continent to the other, you lose touch. It says now you can connect through various social media platform, but then there was really. The occasional phone call or perhaps the postal mail, and nobody actually bothered to do that in their busy lifestyle.

Let, let's be honest about that. So, today technology is interesting. We are the most connected generation, but we're also the loneliest generation. It seems to be a conundrum in some respect, how that can be, and I think it's because technology is. Also used for the wrong reason. Technology is great. I can connect with you, I can talk to your listeners, but when is the time to leave technology and go back to the traditional meeting people in a face-to-face environment rather than a virtual environment?

And unfortunately, the projections for the next 10, five to 10 years, it's just going to. Highlight this problem even further. Mm. Even a higher percentage of people in the US is projected to be 65% of the US population saying that they're alone. So unless we do something about it the psychological and physical effects of isolation is going to be even worse today.

And really all I'm asking, it's less do that. Things that people did 30 years ago before the internet. Right in prehistoric age, you know, the tribal people were in caves, in groups, in tribes. So, you know, it's nothing new. Humanity is encoded to meet with people, with real people in the real world. And we're seeing not only the loneliness, but a shift towards people actually befriending AI chatbots.

There are applications where you can just make your own virtual friends, and we actually see people running from real connection to have these virtual connections because they don't want to deal with people's differences in personalities or cultures. They just wanna make everything to their liking.

And I think one of the skills we're losing. As we continue to move into this digital age, is the ability to work with others, to understand and appreciate our differences in one another, and to have those real connections where it's not always easy. You know, people are looking for the easy way out with being alone or being talking to these AI robots or other, you know, virtual friends rather than.

Having to face the hardships of life, which is every relationship you're in, whether it's a friendship, whether it is a mentorship, or you know, a relationship with your parents or a partner, you're going to have conflicts. You're going to have difficult conversations and people, or being avoidant of that when we need it more than ever before.

And so that's one thing that is definitely being addressed by this. And so you talk about the app, I'd love for you to walk us through how it kind of works. Like if I was a brand new user, I just downloaded the app, what does the process look like? Yes. The app is only iOS at the moment. So you, you did download it from our website, friending.com, or you go to the app store and search for friending.

And once you download it, I am going to skip the march. Version where it is not a hundred percent necessary to verify yourself so you can skip it, but from April you cannot, sir, we'll go with that because that's going to be the general version. Basically, it asks for a few general questions in terms of age ally and basically your likes, and then, once you go through that, you need to verify yourself with a driver license, passport, or any government issued document. And that should take more than two minutes. And all it is, is taking a picture of it, it scans it in and you do a selfie and it compares the selfie and the government issued photo to match it up.

Once you register, I think the most fun part. Is creating what is called, are you in cards? Meaning are you into an activity? So you basically, there are a list of activities, but you can also set your own. Let's say you are into rock climbing and it's not listed, so anybody in your neighborhood will see all these activities and can actually say, Hey, I am into that as well.

Let's do it together. In the next version, sometimes in April. There is also going to be a very fun feature, which I think many people will enjoy, is the real time version of this. Meaning let's say you are jogging and in the middle of your drug you realize, hey, it'll be nice to jog with somebody else.

So in a few tab you say, Hey, I'm jogging. Here is where I am. People basically can follow you like your luggage tag or, or a car or the map thing real time so they can join you in a three blocks down the road or whatever. And you can meet up with people there as well. And it's great because you can just suddenly think of something to do with somebody and it's going to happen real time.

Another example later on when there will be more users on it is that. Let's say you're playing volleyball. And at the, I don't know, somewhere, and one of the person didn't show up. So instead of at the beach, let's say, so one of the person didn't show up previously, you would shout out, Hey, is anybody interested in playing volleyball?

Now you just type in, Hey, I'm looking for a pickup. Anybody with the friending up nearby? Would get a push notification and hopefully somebody shows up in five minutes. And in the long run we have lots of plans. One of the things that we really appreciate is true friending, or at least an attempt to make friends.

So let's say you are bit further from each other and you went fishing and you offered to host. The person overnight to make even, I guess, better friends. Initially, everybody will start off with, let's say free credits, but if you offer to host, then it's been verified by the other person. You increase your credits and of course, once you use it up, when you actually stay at somebody's place, you cannot buy these credits.

The only way to increase these credits is by hosting a potential friend at your place. So it is really about. Real people real activities. That's the key. And it's safe because it is verified. And there are other safety features that's going to happen. Let's say especially female. Let's say you met in a coffee shop and you feel uncomfortable If you tapped your app three times and you have a Bluetooth device, like a bracelet which would sell separately or a key chain.

That Bluetooth actually communicates with the app and lets either the police know, a friend know, or anybody in the neighborhood with a friending app saying, Hey, I need some help. And one other important things you would need to meet. Because the only way you can become friends is if your phones are next to each other.

So enough of the virtual Bs, likes and whatever, you can only become friends if you actually met. Mm-hmm. I wanna go back real quick. You mentioned if you're hosting earning credits, what are those credits used for? Basically the credits are used for if you're out of credits that means that you're not going to be.

Able to stay at somebody's places because all that means is that you took advantage of being able to stay there, but you have not hosted anybody. Oh, okay. So we're trying, we're trying to balance it. So we start off with free credits. If you host me, your credits will go up to four mangoes, down to two. If I host you in return, I'll get it back.

So you will have free, and I have it free. But if you are only the type of person who takes advantage of being at somebody's place and never return the favor, then I do not think you know, you deserve to be on a one-sided relationships to say right. Right. That makes sense. I think that's a good way to avoid that.

And then I wanted to mention also what I saw on the website was the friending shop, and it talks about these coffee that's kind of made on demand. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, I can actually show it to you. This was an example of the, golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Mm. And there's two.

And that's the backside of the QR code. Both sides have significance in the sense that there's a whole series of cities, which we felt would be representing the places where you are, where you're looking for friends, where you've been or where you want to go. So that is why the theme of for the cities, the QR code on the back is more important in some sense.

Because when you order the copy on our website, which is friending.com, you basically enter a message. So let's say I want to say thank you, Mr. Whiskey for, for the podcast. Oh, and before I forget, if you type in Podcast 10, you'll get a 10% discount on the coffee. So let's say I wanted to say thank you.

I select the coffee, I would like type in my message saying, thank you Mr. Whiskey. Order the coffee, have it sent to you. You would need to download the app to read the QR code, which will be my thank you message. But there's also a birthday message. Birthday version. That's a happy birthday for your Irish listeners.

There's St. Patrick's Day version. As well. So there's a huge variety of, of choices and, but the key thing is able to send a message. This is the only coffee where you can send a message as a QR code at the time of order In this coffee, is it a company that is in partnership with friending or is this friending own original blend?

It's basically, it's a partnership with us. You can get both whole beans, you can get grand coffee, you can get matcha, and there will be other items in the shop in the near future. So it is in partnership with them and we are forming lots of partnership. One of them we started talking about today, so I hope it'll happen at the end of the year, is coffee shop because as I mentioned, the first.

Place you would likely meet with somebody else, perhaps is a coffee shop. And we're talking to a company in Washington State in Bellevue specifically, who are opening a coffee shop in the Q3 to partner with them. So we're trying to build up various partnerships and that would benefit your listeners, benefit people meeting in a safe environment.

Right. And then the last thing I wanna leave us with, because we've gone over the app in great detail here, is what would be your message to people who are feeling maybe shy or hesitant or doubtful about making friends? Maybe they haven't really done something like this before, or maybe they've kind of always struggled with it.

What would be your advice to them? Basically compare your situation where you are now. See how you can get out of it. I know statistically it is difficult to make friends after the age of 28, but the only way to solve this is actually get out, meet people in a safe environment where people have the same interests as you are.

The worst can happen is you know, you don't get on with that person. But the same is true in life. You meet people that they're not your favorites. You just move on. There's no downside other than your ego may be hurt, but get over that and find a solution because nobody can help you if you're not willing to help yourself.

Right. I agree a hundred percent. You know, it's, you never know what friendship is going to lead to. You know, in terms of some people that I met that even some people I didn't like at first, ended up being best friends for quite a while. You know, sometimes we don't always get along right away, but I think it's really important to try and find those events where you can find people with things in common.

You know? That always makes it easier to have conversation. I know, like for me, example. I have a dog, so I like going to the dog park to meet people because they're very easy to talk to because they ask you about your dog. You ask about their dog. Is that. I, you know, when you go to these kinds of things, it serves as an icebreaker, right?

If you go to a volleyball event, for example, you know, people are gonna ask you, Hey, how long have you been playing? What got you into volleyball? It helps make that initial conversation easier, which I know can be very difficult, especially nowadays for some of us who have only grown up. Talking online really.

But you know, Mr. Adas, I want to thank you for what you're doing. I think it's really important that we have more platforms and safe platforms to try and make friends. You know, so many people are lonely whether they recognize it or not. And we see a lot of young people not getting together like we used to, as you mentioned that we did for many, many years.

We're drifting away from that. And it is slowly tearing humanity apart. So I thank you for your role in trying to fix that and provide this opportunity for people to go out and make friends. Thank you for having me. And I was just thinking that I was talking to somebody who said there there's this third, so is his best friends and it turns out that they have never met.

So, and that's really sad that you call somebody your best friend who you have never met. So. Try to live in the real world and meet people in real life, so thank you.