While the couple described their meeting as “straight out of a fairy tale,” friends of the couple described it as “straight out of an episode of Black Mirror.”
Photo by: Daniel Clinton
First impressions matter, and if you spend most of your time with your laptop, chances are the first impression of your laptop matters too. This was the idea that inspired UCSD students to develop a new smartphone application designed to match students based on their laptop stickers that express their interests. The app, “LoveTop,” unveiled just in time for
Valentine’s Day which was created with the vision of “connecting the campus together, one stickered laptop at a time.”
The dating app’s co-developers are Mark Zhou and Steven Garfield, sophomores and roommates hailing from Warren College. Zhou and Garfield have described laptop stickers as “quintessential to expressing yourself” which is why they have decided to redefine everything about dating site profiles. Instead of posting semi-flattering pictures of oneself with a weird Snapchat filter, users will upload photos solely of the condition of their laptop case while showcasing every sticker to explain which pop-culture reference it makes.
When asked whether students without laptop stickers would be eligible to participate, Zhou and Garfield exchanged a glance and let out nervous chuckles. The app developers did not appear to believe that those kinds of people existed, and Zhou replied, “Well, I guess there are some losers out there. I don’t think our app would even help them out. Who would they match with? Themselves?”
Garfield, looking especially perplexed, added, “How would people project their personality if their interests aren’t plastered on the casing of a rubberized, plastic hard shell case purchased off of Amazon for a couple of bucks? What we are proposing here is rudimentary and fundamental to how people connect around the campus. We are just facilitating this connection through our app.”
The app also lets users distinguish between people who have stickers placed on the actual laptop rather than on a case. The app also lets users further filter the methodology behind the placement of stickers, so they can meticulously place each sticker so it occupies its own sphere of space, give equal consideration to the color coordination and juxtaposition of each sticker in the larger picture, or if they were placed haphazardly with tons of overlap, the result is an amalgamation of stickers which give off the “effortless cool” persona.
After extensive beta testing, there have already been some success stories. Rosa Murphy, a freshman from Warren, has noted that just by having free stickers handed out on campus, she has been able to match with her current boyfriend, Jacob Sarkissian. The app matched them together after assessing that both of them received a free KSDT Mystery Machine-looking sticker from Welcome Week festivities.
Speculation has emerged saying that big-name technology companies in Silicon Valley are interested in this app. The developers noted that they could “neither confirm nor deny” any of the rumors, but they could verify that they will always have a date for “those lonely Friday nights.”
Mishelle Arakelian is a third-year Political Science major and Law and Society minor. One time she rejected an internship with the Obamas due to a scheduling conflict.
