I Tried Bondee so I Can Finally ‘Live’ With My Friends

I don’t have high expectations of social media. Between trash comments from troll accounts and different platforms copying each other instead of coming up with new stuff, the arena’s been bleak for quite some time now. 

But over the past few weeks, my social media feeds teased a possible respite. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone was posting OMG-that-looks-just-like-you avatars posing in toy boxes, sitting in customized rooms, or doing some other mundane but frustratingly cute activity in a vague virtual reality. 

The less gatekeep-y of those posts told me what was going on—Bondee. 

Bondee is a social media app created by Singaporean tech company Metadream that launched earlier this month and seems to have taken no time gaining smartphone users’ good graces. It invites people to “live with your friends,” and according to its description on the App Store, is a “virtual plaza for you and your closest friends to hang out authentically.” Basically, you make an avatar that you use to do a host of things, like chat with friends, decorate rooms, and show people what you’re currently doing. One person said it was like a mix of The Sims, Facebook, and Telegram all in one app. Another said it was like Yahoo! Messenger on steroids. Do you remember Audibles?

If that seems like a lot, it’s because it is. But, like my other favorite “Plaza” (Aubrey), the app can be confusing at first, then chaotic, and finally just charming.

Bondee’s defining characteristic is perhaps its metaverse-y feel. Instead of another feed that only moves up and down, we get a (dare I say) world through which we can move in what feels like all directions.

The app’s homepage shows your friends’ avatars enacting whatever “status” they’ve set. Some of these statuses are moods, like an earnest “Happy” or a sarcastic “Thrilled,” while others are activities like working overtime or clubbing.

I have muted every person I follow on Instagram who has used its new status feature. But something about seeing a Bondee avatar of my friend crawling through my screen like a zombie, with the status “Off duty,” makes me want to check in on him.

Users can also upload quick snapshots to appear with their statuses, kind of like a BeReal but without the time pressure. On Bondee, it seems, you can be both virtual and real any time. 

Bondee has been compared to The Sims because each avatar gets its own “space,” or room to decorate with furniture and even photos from your camera roll. Your friends get to visit your space and leave you notes on your wall, reminiscent of posting on someone’s Facebook wall. (If she doesn’t know what that is, she’s too young for you, bro.) You even get to see all your friends’ spaces next to yours in your own little virtual commune.

Decorating my space was infinitely more interesting than figuring out what to put in a bio and felt so much more satisfying than, say, carefully archiving and unarchiving my Instagram posts to curate my feed. Giving users a “space” to land on, instead of a profile, also just feels more social and less… media. 

There’s also a chat feature where you can, well, chat with your friends while your avatars do things like sit by a fire, dance under a disco ball, or throw down some canned bevs. Instead of emoji reactions to messages, the avatars act out reactions like pouting, falling in love, or, uh, farting. 

All this is to say that the app has a little bit of everything, but not in a conglomerate-coming-for-every-other-new-app kind of way. More in an I’ve-got-all-that-I-need, passenger’s seat kind of way. 

Perhaps the two most toxic things about other social media platforms right now are their endless designed-to-doom-scroll feeds and their hate-that-it-matters-but-it-does follower counts. I am thrilled to report that Bondee has neither. 

The closest thing it has to scrolling is “floating.” Here, your avatar boards a dinghy and floats through the sea. The weather changes every day and sometimes there are water plants and fish. There’s also ambient background music. It’s really quite relaxing… almost meditative. When you float, you can also get more items to decorate your space with, throw and pick up messages in bottles, and meet other avatars. 

Aside from not showing your current and ex-situationships who you’re friends with, Bondee also puts a cap on the number of friends you can have—50. Call me romantic, but that kind of makes every Bondee friend you have more special. Sure, you might be Facebook friends. But are you Bondee friends? 

After losing a good chunk of the past few days and nights to the many nooks and crannies of Bondee, I think I understand its appeal.

It has relics of the internet’s past dusted off and polished for today’s taste, some new social media features that people haven’t gotten sick of yet with no social media features that people have gotten sick of, and a little look at the future without the scary bits. 

Every shiny new social media platform has its few minutes of favor before it fizzles or is bought out. I can’t predict the future for Bondee, but I do like hanging out there—at least right now. 

Follow Romano Santos on Instagram.