Celebrities, they’re just like us! Friends star Matthew Perry is the latest A-lister (is that too generous?) to find himself involved in salacious Raya news after a conversation he had with a 19-year-old influencer was shared to TikTok.
Unless you exist in the TikTok/celebrity gossip milieu, Raya is probably a foreign tongue to you. Let’s do a little TL/DR below.
What is Raya?
It’s essentially a dating app for celebrities and celebrity-adjacent folk (influencers, etc) billed as a “community” of people interested in “dating, networking and making new friends”. It’s super exclusive, and difficult to access — with New York Times reporting that 92 per cent of membership applications fail.
Applications require you to include your Instagram handle and a referral from somebody who is already a member of the app. Though you can make an application without a referral, unless you’re bumping shoulders with the likes of Fred Durst, it’s unlikely you’ll be let in.
Should you find yourself welcomed into the economy of sexually available celebs, you’ll put forward USD $7.99 a month for a membership.
Privacy is at the forefront of the app, with terms of service banning taking screenshots and disclosing the identity of users. Obviously, these policies have not stopped people from sharing their juicy encounters with celebrities on the app.
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Earlier this week, sexy Boston boy and Dunkin’ Donuts zealot Ben Affleck made headlines after one of his Raya rendezvous went viral on TikTok.
Actress Nivine Jay took to the app to share an anecdote about the time she matched with Ben Affleck on the app, and subsequently unmatched after thinking it was a fake account. “Thinking of the time I matched with Ben Affleck on Raya and thought it was fake so I unmatched him and he sent me a video on Instagram,” she wrote.
To prove that Ben Affleck was in fact the real Ben Affleck, the actor sent Jay an Instagram video, “Nivine, why did you unmatch me? It’s me.”
@nivinejaySorry Ben 🥺🥱 #raya #benaffleck #dating #fyp♬ original sound – Amir Yass
Now, another middle-aged celebrity has been hung out to try by a TikTok influencer. TikTok user @kittynichole aka Kate Haralson, has shared screen-recorded footage of a FaceTime conversation she had with Friends star Matthew Perry, which saw the duo play am (innocuous) game of 20 questions.
“When you match with Matthew Perry as a joke on a dating app and he FaceTimes you and plays 20 questions with you,” she wrote.
The video is kind of cringe-inducing, but ultimately benign. Perry asks sauceless questions like, “Do you always touch your hair this much?.” You know the vibe.
The conversation was recorded back in May 2020. In an interview with Page Six, Haralson revealed that she felt compelled to share the video after seeing the Ben Affleck debacle unfurl.
In the interview, Haralson claimed that she released the video to expose how older Hollywood stars are “taking advantage” of younger women on dating apps.
“A lot of people were saying I’m a bully and mean for posting this, and it made me feel kind of bad, but at the same time, I feel like a lot of guys in Hollywood are talking to all these young girls and it’s something that I think a lot of people should be aware of,” she said.
Haralson, who was 19 at the time her interaction with Matthew Perry, 51, took place, said the actor asked to Facetime immediately. The influencer insists that none of the questions were sexual in nature, but she felt uncomfortable due to their age gap.
“I don’t think he minded that,” she said. “It kind of felt weird talking to someone my dad’s age and it just felt not right, especially when he knew how young I was.
“Honestly, it’s not really OK for these older guys to be talking to such young girls.”
I think it’s universally agreed upon that a 50-year-old man going for younger women is a little pathetic and sleazy, though there’s something a little off-colour with the “predatory” framing of this Page Six article. It feels patronizing and insincere but whatever!
