After two years of resistance, I’ve become ensnared by TikTok. The process of being algorithmically pinpointed leads to nostalgia at times; the app’s efforts to create a feed so enticing that I’ll never look away means I’m served a mixture of content that reliably has the present version of myself clicking “save” (eyeliner tips) and clips that a past, more wobbly me would have lapped up. Now, I hastily swipe past instead.
Yet even quick fingers haven’t stopped me noticing the prevalence of a curious little card game with a distinctive red and white design. I’ll be swiping and a dreamy video, soundtracked by Bon Iver, will pop up encouraging me to “play WNRS with ur bestie.” I’ll skip past and be offered a comedy clip, captioned: “When he thinks you’re about to make out but you force him to play WNRS instead.”
WNRS, it transpires, stands for We’re Not Really Strangers. Launched by model Koreen Odiney in 2018, the game requires participants to ask each other a range of questions, organized in three tiers. The early stages keep things light. Think queries like: “What’s your favourite color? Why?” The third is akin to a therapy session, posing probing inquiries such as: “Are you missing anyone right now? Do you think they’re missing you too?” It’s a shortcut to intimate, sometimes difficult conversations. Or, as Odiney says, “[With the cards], instead of feeling bad about asking questions, you’re given a prompt. It creates a separation between yourself and what is being said.”
Immediately, I recognized the cadence. Odiney might have “invented” WNRS (which has expanded into a daily text service and merch), but it was preceded by similar vehicles that serve the same function. Take 36 Questions That Lead to Love, a quiz I became obsessed with for a while. Originally part of a 1997 psychological study of intimacy (the scientific merits of which I won’t dedicate any time to debating; that’s been done enough over the years), 36 Questions gained popular appeal in 2015 after a viral first-person piece published in the New York Times’s famed Modern Love column. The concept is the same as WRNS: 36 questions of increasing intensity, designed to create an immediate connection.
In my early 20s, I heeded this seductive promise and ran with it. Just spat out of university and longing to unlock a lonely city’s secrets, I adopted 36 Questions as a party game. It was a ritual I sometimes played with my small group of burgeoning friends but—more often than not—players were made up of small clusters of strangers I’d encountered in a bar and lured back to my house in the wee hours. I would be ringmaster—multiple players in a game designed for two people meant a moderator was required to direct questions (and allowed me to dodge answering them myself). Familiarity meant I knew which queries to skip depending on the atmosphere, and how to call it if proceedings were lagging.
Which they often were; approximating emotional intimacy, it transpired, could be very boring. Most of the time people don’t want to pull down their walls in front of someone they’ve just met. They find it—shockingly—weird. And, of those who did get real that fast, I cannot remember a single detail, except a slight sense of unease, an awareness deep down that I should not be privy to such things about a person whose surname I didn’t know.
I didn’t make a conscious decision to retire 36 Questions, but at one of these little gatherings, someone—whose identity I’ve long since forgotten—taught me a new game. The premise was simple. Everyone sat in a circle; one person whispered a statement to the person next to them, such as “Who here do you think has the nicest hair?” The listener would then point to whoever fit the bill. If the person on the receiving end of the accusing finger wished to know what question they were the answer to, they had to drink. It seemed more dangerous than 36 Questions, but it was more immediate too, and so usurped my former go-to.
Playing the Whisper Game is one of my few regrets in life. The spicier the questions were—which I encouraged, with the view that they would lead to greater knowledge of one another—the more devastating the outcome. Feelings were hurt and offense caused. A fight broke out on one occasion between two participants, and, while they screamed at one another, the rest of us hurriedly shuffled out the door, party over.
Still, I decided to wheel it out once more on my 25th birthday, encouraging strangers to sit in, even though by now I was surrounded by solid, real-life friends and had a loving partner. “This is horrible,” the latter said quietly, after one round that saw me identify the friend “most likely to cheat.” “Why are we playing this?” I felt indescribably grubby. There was no good answer to his question. The round petered out—the last gasp of my obsession with these sorts of games.
Recently, I have been re-remembering that period. In my mind, my university years and early 20s were a lonely time, defined by a yearning for rich, rewarding connections. I felt my striving, my games, the work I put into the business of building emotional intimacies paid dust. But that is not true, not by a long shot, otherwise I would not have the honor of having the deep, loving friendships I have today. When I look back now, after years of growth and change, step by painful step, I can see with clarity that it was not others who were unable or unwilling to connect with me—it was me, myself, who would not let them in, trapped behind walls I did not yet have the life experience to dismantle. I was not ready to answer the 36 Questions I posed to others.
Do you know what true emotional intimacy is? It is mutual vulnerability, without artifice or performance. It is coffee with a friend on a quiet morning, when laughter turns briefly to tears and then back again, and neither of you think it odd. It is trust, built over many years, through familiarity and time, by showing up for one another, again and again and again. It is work and effort and the peeling back of layers to show the raw, red skin underneath, knowing that if you show them yours, they’ll reveal theirs. It feels wholly safe and as comfortable as a pair of sheepskin slippers. You can’t fast-track it, I don’t think. It only comes with time, consistency, and perspective. We long for there to be quick ways to fill large voids, inventing ever more apps and card games and diagnosing modern-day crises in connection as dysfunctions.
Disappointed reviews of We’re Not Really Strangers speak to this. “Used it with my girlfriend,” reads one. “We liked playing the game but it wasn’t game-changing.” Another, titled “Meh,” states: “The questions were not as unique as I expected them to be, and they were a bit repetitive. They didn’t really spark interesting conversation.”
You can’t fake it. Nothing from my many rounds of 36 Questions has stuck with me, not the answers of my fellow players, nor what I said. I wasn’t listening, and I certainly wasn’t really talking. All that remains is a lingering sense of embarrassment, which I am also trying to let go of—shame, I have found, impedes bonafide vulnerability.
Here is my real recipe for building solid connections with people: go slow and steady. Reach out to them. Spend time with them in the cold light of day. Take it by degrees; small talk leads to big talk if you invest in it. And look at what you already have: Do your feelings of lack stem from an actual scarcity of confidantes and potential soul bonds? Or are your own fortifications making you an island?
I don’t begrudge those turning to WNRS in an attempt to find connections. Those players, for whom it is far more than just a game, will eventually discover what I did: To create true emotional intimacy, at some point you have to stop hiding behind your cards and show them.