Imagine walking into a party where you know almost no one (pathetic) — a party at which I, a stranger to you (probably), have arrived well before you (sorry). Should this occur in real life, it is inevitable that shortly after your entrance, as you are tentatively probing the scene in search of safe ingress into social traffic, I will yank you, abruptly, into the middle of a conversation. I will turn to you and start talking as if you’d been involved in the discussion for an hour. I will lob questions at you that are tailored so that any answer you give can be right. Soon, you will forget I dragged you into this interaction; your easy popularity will seem, in retrospect, inevitable. You will most likely feel at least vaguely friendly toward me, because I so clearly want to be your friend. And the whole time I am doing this — because, despite your rewritten recollections, I am the one doing all of this — I will be thinking: Oh, my God, I’m doing it again. I hate this. I hate this. Why can’t I stop doing this to people?
Of all my bad habits, it is the ruthless desire to befriend that exerts the strongest pull on my behavior. Not that I want more friends — God, no. If anything, I’d love to drop about 80 percent of the ones I have, so I could stop remembering their birthdays. But because I can’t quit — because constantly pulling strangers into my orbit is what stabilizes my bearing in the universe — I have determined to double down. And so, in January, I booked a package vacation to Morocco through a company whose stated aim — beyond offering package vacations — is to help people in their 30s and 40s make new friends.
That millennials are the largest human adult cohort alive; in or about to enter their peak-earning years; less likely than earlier generations, at the same age, to live with a spouse and/or offspring; and highly susceptible to YOLO — a brain condition that makes a nine-day vacation to Croatia sound like a fun and affordable alternative to homeownership, which seems impossible anyway — would seemingly be enough to justify the existence of a travel company dedicated to serving them. Indeed, there is a nascent industry devoted to creating millennial-oriented travel package experiences of the type generally set aside for people much younger (e.g., Birthright Israel) or older (e.g., Rhine river cruises). In promotional copy, these companies’ sleek websites deploy the verb “curate” to describe the work of travel agents. Flash Pack, which aims to lure vacationers who would otherwise be traveling solo and marshal them into traveling bands of up to 14, is one such business.
What makes Flash Pack unusual is its “mission” — “to create one million meaningful friendships” — and a method of execution that it telegraphs with evangelistic zeal: “We obsess over the group dynamics,” its website explains on one page. “We absolutely obsess over the group dynamic,” it states on another. “We’re completely obsessed with it” (“it” being the group dynamic), Flash Pack’s 42-year-old chief executive, Radha Vyas, is quoted as saying on an F.A.Q. page intended to calm nervous vacationers. Another page, titled “How It Works,” opens with the promise that the company “obsesses over the group dynamic, doing everything in our power to ensure you’re comfortable and building friendships within the first 24 hours.”
13 Women, 30 Activities and One Goal: Make Friends
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