Social media has eaten itself. What was once designed to connect us has, in many ways, left us more fragmented and isolated in our real lives. We get absorbed by the dopamine hit of the scroll, the suction of the algorithm that promises the next post will be 'the one', and the illusion of connection. And then we (finally) put our phones down and return to our real lives only to find them a little emptier, a little quieter than we’d like.

And some people find as they move beyond the structure of teenage years and early adulthood, life starts to fracture at different speeds. Some friends move overseas, some friends get partnered up, some have children, some take on demanding jobs. Suddenly, the person you always did that thing with - mid-week spur-of-the-moment dinners, morning jogs, midnight Macca's runs - can’t be that person anymore.

On top of our social lives fragmenting, our inner lives change too. As we evolve, we find our old friends don’t always match our new interests. The group you formed around one chapter of life isn’t necessarily aligned with the next — leaving you feeling stuck.

So where do we go from here? Is my inner circle stuck in this formation? Am I missing out on experiences simply because I don’t have the right people to do them with?

These are the questions that Sam Richardson grappled with. Instead of returning to the numbness of the scroll like many of us would, Sam set out to solve this modern conundrum. During the pandemic, she taught herself to code and created Butter — an app that addresses the gap between wanting connection and actually making it happen.

"The biggest barrier right now isn't that people don't know how to make friends. They do. They know how to connect. But because we've lost the spaces — and therefore the tools — to do that, we're simply out of practice," says Sam, the CEO and founder of Butter.

After relocating several times throughout her 20s, Sam personally felt the struggle that comes with finding community in new places.

"The environments we have now just aren't built for it, and that's through no fault of our own. People are re-emerging from this insane era of synthetic connection and artificial intimacy, and they want to actually connect in real life. But A, they don't have the spaces to do that, and B, without prior practice, doing it organically without a fear of judgment — or even just knowing how to approach it — can be genuinely hard."

Her drive to create Butter was personal. It stemmed from her own pain point, but she also realised it was also a symptom of a larger crisis of disconnection combined with a lack of other workable solutions at the time.

"Bumble BFF didn't really solve my needs. It's essentially a dating app, and I didn't want to spend hours swiping on profiles to get into a doomed chat cycle, maybe meeting offline at some point."

"[Butter] is built around getting people offline first and as fast as possible…to just grab a coffee with someone or go to dinner with someone. Everyday plans. That's the gap, and that's what Butter was built to fill…[it] really is that place to go and do things with people who want to join you. That's the core of it."

Butter has set out to do something different. It isn't a social media platform - it's a connector. It's the conduit to find new people over a piqued interest. It enables you to tag along on something new and exciting, or host your own catch up. Ultimately, it gives you agency, allowing you to actively shape your social life.

For those who are hosting an event, it's totally in your control. You set the time, date, place, capacity, and mood, and open it up to anyone who's interested. From there, you narrow down the guest list and make it happen.

"Right now, especially in the new year, we've seen a lot of hiking plans emerge. Food plans will always be the most popular — going out for dinner, breakfast, coffee — but we've also been seeing a lot of new subcommunities forming around things like book clubs and more specialty, activity-led plans. At the core though, it's morning walks, morning coffees, morning swims if you're lucky enough to live near Bondi, and weeknight food-led plans, whether that's heading to your local restaurant or hosting/joining a dinner party."

"I think one of the most exciting events was a Halloween house party — about 100 people RSVP'd… It was completely organic — just a girl who wanted to host a house party to celebrate Halloween, and over 100 others joined. That really is the magic of the platform. We give normal people — people who don't have platforms of their own — the ability to make plans and genuinely hone that experience of getting people together offline."

Butter also helps to alleviate falling into the ‘catch-up trap’, a symptom of the throes and chaos of modern life. We live our separate lives…we catch up to talk about them… and no new memories are made in the process. Rinse, and repeat.

"...we end up defaulting to catching up with our core friends over coffee or dinner, going through a laundry list of updates. There's nothing wrong with that, but the systems around us have made it feel like the only option."

"And then there's the barrier of planning itself. Because of all of that, every plan carries this real admin cost — figuring out when everyone's free, what everyone wants to do, whether that's actually what you want to do. That's ultimately why you end up seeing people once in a blue moon, doing the same thing every time, struggling to schedule anything new."

Dinner parties, coffee catch ups and supper clubs are proving popular on the app, speaking to the enduring power of food as the ultimate unifier.

"What's so beautiful about connecting over food is the amount of shared experience, knowledge, and story that comes with it. …it just naturally invites deeper conversation, and intimate connection, especially when someone's cooking the food themselves. I think we have our ancestors to thank for that one."

And as part of Food For Everyone’s February issue on Butter, of course we had to ask how she chose the app’s name.

“I wanted something completely unrelated to connection and friendship,” says Sam. “There's a stigma that already exists around going online to find connection, and I didn't want to exacerbate that by picking something like Friendly or Besties or BFF — that would only make it worse.”

As for advice from the founder on anyone feeling nervous on attending an event, she says to remember that "everyone is there for the same reason...everyone else is just as keen to try new things together."

Currently, Butter is currently live in Sydney and Melbourne, with waitlists building across other Australian cities. If you want a bit of Butter near you, launches are prioritised based on demand, so joining the waitlist in your city is essential!

CLICK HERE to download the app and find your next catch up!