Blue skies, sunshine and the start of counting down to the end of senior year.
That was the expectation for spring break. Instead, we started practicing social distancing and USC officially announced that online classes would be extended from April 14 through the rest of the semester.
I already began to miss my USC community and the goodbyes that I never got to say. Would I ever see all of my friends again? What about the rest of senior year? This was supposed to be our last semester, the final episode of our own version of Friends: “The One Where We Make Our Last College Memories.”
In the time that all of these questions were swirling around my head like cloudy dishwater circling the sink drain, my roommate, Briana, shared a link in the group chat to a website called MatchSC. Little did I know the website had just gone live that same day and would accumulate 3,000 sign-ups within 24 hours from the same way I had found the link: word-of-mouth alone. Here’s the landing page that I saw:
MatchSC turned out to be a matchmaking program made for USC students by USC students. The founders, who also referred to themselves as our SCupids, were brought together by their love of entrepreneurship and community-building. As described on the homepage, it was created for Trojans who thought they would “have the rest of the semester to find [their] perfect match at the 9-0.” The match would “pair USC students with [their] SC soulmate (platonic or romantic!) they never knew they had.” Factors considered by the matching algorithm were mutual friends, physical proximity, shared experience and psychological similarities. The idea only really started taking shape around February.
“All of us had different hypotheses that we wanted to test about community...We all felt there was some sort of disconnect in terms of the way people were brought together,” Markie Wagner, one of the four founders of MatchSC who recently transferred to Stanford and studies computer science, recollected.
Wagner’s passions lie at the intersection of data science and psychology where she focuses on the science behind meaningful relationships and community. “A lot of the conversation came around, ‘If we were to build more habitats, how would we do it? How would you cluster or match people?”
Ding! Ding! Notifications crowded my phone screen. Mere minutes after Briana had shared the MatchSC link with us, my friends and I were flooding the previously quiet group text with excited chatter about the funny quiz questions. We compared answers and laughed about each person’s explanation for their answer choices. One of the questions asked, “You see someone across Trousdale and immediately fall in love with them. What did it for you?” Answers ranged from more niche options such as, “They’re laying on the grass reading French nihilist philosophy,” to simply, “The vineyard vines and high socks.”
After taking the quiz, the applicants received an individualized summary of how they scored for certain qualities, such as altruism, relative to other users. MatchSC also followed people on Instagram, reposting their stories about taking the quiz, and shared humorous statistics about the student body in general. These data analyses included how USC schools ranked against each other in terms of how many times a week they drink and how 42% of students said that their pet peeve was calling a fryft at 2:01 am. As Anika Kwan, a sophomore studying design in Roski, said, “[The stats] were definitely something people were talking about. So many people were tagging me in the posts or screenshotting it [to tease me about Roski].”
This was the first time in a long while since I had seen the USC community come together for a fun reason, a purpose not related to coronavirus.
“I’ve seen some Instagram stories where it’s a screenshot of people ‘Zooming’ each other and, in the background, it’s MatchSC,” Wagner shared with an excited laugh. “It’s really nice that we made this activity that you can socialize over and talk about...The statistics [were] also super intentional because you’re hoping that people will like and share them.”
All of it was comedic and indulgent escapism, the perfect cocktail for what we desperately needed now that we were all stuck at home, thirsty for human interaction. MatchSC offered an entertaining excuse to reconnect with friends. It seemed like perfect timing after an essentially nonexistent spring break filled with worrisome COVID-19 updates. Above all, MatchSC gave us something to look forward to together, a reason to roll out of bed and get excited for the days left until matches were emailed out.
“After all this [planning for MatchSC] happened, coronavirus pops up and everyone goes home...We were [thinking], ‘Oh well, no one’s going to meet their matches. None of it is going to happen,” Nat Redfern, another founder of MatchSC and a USC junior majoring in Cognitive Science, recalled.
Redfern brought his love for studying the psychology of community to the MatchSC team. “But now, everyone’s really bored and people are lonely. This is actually a really great time to bring people together. Even though they’re across the country and across the world, we could actually make this happen.”
What MatchSC did for the Trojan community is a perfect example of what Gen Z does best when we are given lemons: we make lemonade. It helped me realize that I could still feel connected to my USC community despite the social distancing from my friends and campus. As Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life Varun Soni wrote in his latest email to students, “Please remember that social distancing must not mean emotional distancing, and that as members of a global Trojan Family, we are not isolated beings, but deeply connected to one another across space and time.”
So, as students pored over MatchSC’s statistical summaries ranking USC schools against each other and made MatchSC memes, Trojan spirit reignited. We all bonded over what seems to be Gen Z’s love language: affectionately roasting each other and everything in sight.
Fast-forward to today: now that all matches have been released, what’s the verdict? Did MatchSC really give us love (and community) at first click?
Well, as Khiem Nguyen, a sophomore studying global health, said, trying to date while social distancing can be too difficult. “If [my match were] still on campus, I totally would be like, ‘Would you go to [the] dining hall with me?’” Nguyen joked. Going long distance from the beginning may be frustrating if you and your match are not even in the same country.
And Nishan Sohoni, a sophomore studying neuroscience, commented on how “just the experience of filling out and comparing your stats with friends” built more of a sense of USC community than receiving the actual match. “At the end of the day, you’re just getting their email.” A meme posted by Nicholas Nuccio in Kedon Slovis Fanclub Incorporated, USC’s student Facebook group, even alluded to how the accountability to follow up with matches still needs work.
But MatchSC is certainly a heartening reminder that connecting with even just one person can make all the difference. “I thought a lot about the psychology of dating apps and how that’s changed the norm in human behavior...when you can log on and endlessly swipe,” Melisa Seah, one of the founders of MatchSC and recent fall USC graduate of business administration, reflected.
Seah contributed her focus on business, communication design and community-building experience to the mix. “[For MatchSC] you get one match and it takes away all of that other side noise. That simplicity? There’s something so magical in a world that’s so oversaturated.”
And overall, the users that I talked to all agreed that MatchSC was a great idea to reconnect with the rest of the USC community. “It’s really easy to get stuck in this very downer mindset of despair and hopelessness. I noticed that I stopped getting excited for the future when it seems so dim,” Cecilia Nguyen, a junior studying psychology, shared. “It made people smile...With what’s going on, it’s a really nice thought. We all can contribute in some way to making life a little better and that’s what they’re doing.”
So what can we expect from MatchSC in the future? Considering how the service was inspired by the Stanford Marriage Pact and Harvard’s Data Match dating programs, MatchSC will likely only happen once a semester or year, if it happens again at all. As a result, expect to bond with your match or matches, if you were lucky enough to receive two.
This potential one-time phenomenon also makes sense considering that MatchSC was “100% a labor of love,” according to the founders. No outside funds were used or raised for the creative project. This aligned with their privacy policy that emphasized not profiting off of user data, which is anonymized anyway. The MailChimp and Typeform website services, for instance, all came from out-of-pocket expenses by the creators themselves.
“It could be a cute idea to ask, ‘Did you end up making the collaborative Spotify playlist?’...I’m really curious to see the stats on how it all worked out for people,” Grant Stenger, the final MatchSC founder and a USC junior studying applied mathematics, said.
Stenger brought his passion for playing with community-building algorithms to the team. “A lot of people are graduating who are using [MatchSC] so it might just be a one-time thing...an ephemeral moment in USC matching history.”
If the MatchSC team does decide to run a second round, however, the founders of Tinder have DMed to offer their help. Tinder also started out and had viral growth at USC.
Most importantly, what MatchSC inspired was the realization that the USC community truly extends beyond physical borders. MatchSC exemplifies the resiliency and creativity of our Trojan spirit despite the bounds given. Our community is more than just what we see on campus. The USC community is the Trojans who created a spreadsheet for resources during the COVID-19 crisis, and the Local USC Moms and Dads on Call Facebook group volunteers dropping off toilet paper and ramen to students still around USC. It is MatchSC creating a matchmaking service that makes us smile and momentarily chases our worries away.
Our future is bright and we are strong. You can blame my optimism for the Trojan Family on the social distancing; it makes the heart grow fonder.