No. And the fact that so many people ask is itself the reason these apps have to exist.
Twenty years ago people were embarrassed to say they met their partner online. Now it is the single most common way couples meet in most of the western world, and nobody blinks. Friendship is roughly fifteen years behind on that curve, and the embarrassment is following the same path out.
The more useful question is not whether it is weird. It is whether it works, and what it works for.
Overwhelmingly ordinary people at one of a small number of turning points: they moved city, they changed jobs or went remote, they came out of a long relationship, they had a child, their friends moved to the suburbs, or they arrived in a new country. In every one of those cases a working social life disappeared through circumstance rather than through anything the person did.
It is not, as people quietly fear, a room full of people nobody wanted. It is a room full of people whose situation changed.
The honest framing. A friendship app is not a replacement for having friends. It is a way to meet more strangers than your daily life will produce on its own, which is the actual bottleneck for almost everybody who feels stuck.
Kindred was built against that list. Friends and dating are separate modes and people in one are never shown to people in the other. Matching is on interests and a few lines in your own words, with photos unlocking on day 3 for both people at once. On day 7 the app asks for a real plan with a date, and when you meet you scan each other's code to confirm it happened. There is no advertising and no tracking anywhere in it, which is why it costs a small amount instead.
It does not verify anyone's identity and does not run background checks, and no app that says otherwise should be taken at its word.
No. It is the same shift that happened with online dating, roughly fifteen years later. The people using friendship apps are overwhelmingly at ordinary turning points: a move, a new job, remote work, a breakup, a baby, a new country. In each case a working social life disappeared through circumstance.
They work at supplying more candidates than daily life produces, and at removing the awkwardness of admitting you are looking. They fail when nothing in the design pushes two people to actually meet, since a conversation with no reason to advance typically dies within a few days.
Check whether friendship is separate by design rather than a toggle on the same pool, whether anything in the app pushes you toward meeting, how much it demands before anything useful happens, and how it makes money. An advertising funded app profits from your loneliness lasting longer.
Treat them as you would any meeting with a stranger. Effectively none verify identity or run background checks, whatever the marketing suggests. Meet in public the first few times, tell someone where you are going, arrange your own way home, and never send anyone money.
Kindred keeps friends and dating completely separate, matches on interests, and asks you to meet in the first week. Join the launch list and you get Kindred free for good, plus three months of Kindred+.
Kindred does not run background checks and does not verify that anyone is who they say they are. No app does, whatever it implies. Meet somewhere public the first few times, tell someone where you are going, sort out your own way home, and never send anyone money. The safety section is honest about exactly what we do and what we cannot do.