This App Is Like Uber but for Unlicensed Therapists

Not an actual therapist or patient. Photo By BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images

"I'm there for you and I care for you," the woman on the other line says to me in a sincere, serene voice. "I know it might be strange to hear that from a stranger."

I'm sampling Happy, an app launching in December that seeks to connect lonely and distressed people to "ordinary folks with extraordinary listening skills" at the lower-than-your-copay price of 40 cents a minute.

My "happy-giver" suggests that I start by telling her my story and I do. Mostly she listens, but when I run out of things to say, she asks the appropriate questions, leading me over time to hopeful conclusions, which she distills in summary. Happy promises good listeners, friend-sharing, but the service it provides seems conspicuously like a watered-down form of therapy—amateur shrinks—the "sharing economy" taken to its next logical extreme.

Happy was created by a group of Princeton grads whose backgrounds fall neatly at the intersection between psychology, tech, and marketing. Founder Jeremy Fischbach (a psychology BA) explains that the idea came to him when he was going through a rough patch privately and professionally, and found all his best friends unreachable.

"Wouldn't it be nice if you could tap a button and hear a voice," he recalls, over the phone, "and for that person to give me as much time as I needed? For it to be a regular person with extraordinary abilities, who understood what I was going through? And for all of that to be anonymous, affordable?" In pursuit of that happiness, he reached out to his friend Ely Alvarado, with whom he'd already made a gaming app called Myne, which "incentivizes users to volunteer meaningful data that is valuable to marketers," and recruited a team of seven through his alumni network.

Their product, they assure me via conference call, is not a replacement for therapy, but a bridge to it. Happy isn't intended for the entirety of the emotional spectrum, which the founders lay out from 10 "bliss" to −10 "suicidal." Rather they are looking to cater to the −1 to −5, the mild forms of distress, the people going through life changes, breakups, relocations—the kind of person who wants to talk, but wouldn't call an 800-number.

"You've suffered from loneliness, sadness," Fischbach continues. " may find themselves speaking with someone who has suicidal or homicidal ideation. If a person is not trained, he or she will not be able to read between the lines."

Parts of my consultation feel like a first date with the kind of person who wants to fix me. More often, though, I feel like I'm talking to an untrained shrink with liability concerns.

The Happy founders respond to questions about the preparedness of their recruits by pointing to their rigorous hiring process. "We are vetting a huge population for people who are especially good at providing passionate attention—the crème de la crème," Pam Soffer (BA psychology) assures me. In slight contradiction, Fischbach tells me that the customer and the provider are interchangeable—another sharing economy trope. "A lot of these will be the same people," he says cheerfully, "getting happy one day, giving happy another day. Maybe even on the same day!"

This, incidentally, is how I feel after my consultation. Having gotten happy, I now want to see if I have what it takes to give it. On a pure employment level, this appeals to me. As a writer, I'm always looking for more characters, stories, and, particularly, money.

Happy's hiring process turns out to be more pleasant than thorough. I put on my warmest telephone voice and my most reasonable demeanor and try to imitate the slightly concerned, slightly flirtatious spiel of my happy-giver. I tell the interviewer—a contracted recruiter in Texas—that I have experience with break-ups, alienation, loneliness, dislocation, sickness, and feel very comfortable talking to people about it. We proceed to do a mock call. "I don't know you, but I'm here for you," I assure her, trying to mean every word. "If you feel comfortable, do tell me your story." My interviewer does a little spiel about going through a divorce. "Divorces can be so difficult," I say. "You're very strong." My interviewer giggles. She has heard enough. She tells me more about my future employer, which she says is, "basically the Uber of emotional support."

If I weren't writing this article, I might just take the gig. This is an opportunity, after all, to get paid to research humanity, and without having to share my face like an Uber driver. Others may well benefit in my place: lonely people willing to settle for anonymous company, young folks just trying to make an extra buck with an unusual job, or retired folks who feel they have wisdom to dispense—just the accidental poetry that sometimes happens between strangers, even in the drab platform economy.

Happy is on the benign side of our digital deregulation craze, more or less. Unlike Uber or Lyft, its contractors don't have to buy cars that could wreck them financially; unlike Airbnb, its service won't price the poor out of America's inner cities. I'm not worried about shrinks going postal over Happy. Instead, I'm concerned that rich people will continue to get high-end mental health treatment while the rest of us keep ourselves barely hanging on, one phone call at a time.

Follow Leon Dische Becker on Twitter.

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