💸👭 Is Gen Z ... buying friends?

🥧 Here’s a deal that tastes AND feels good. Enter: Community Servings’ “Pie in the Sky” Thanksgiving initiative. Just buy a delicious $35 pie and in doing so, help feed your neighbors living with critical or chronic illnesses. Grab one here!

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

Is the cost of community … literal money? As our loneliness epidemic worsens, paid friendship-making groups are popping up in Boston and beyond.

Here’s what to know:

👭 Pay-to-play friendship-making groups are en vogue. When Ana Baptista started her $20/month community-building network GirlFriends Boston in 2018, “there was nothing like it,” she said. Now? Groups like hers are “trendy.” For $5 per round, Boston-based friendship-making app Livvi will match you with five to eight other women using its specialized algorithm (though the first time is free). For $289, friendship-matchmaking service RealRoots will put you through a six-week program they guarantee will end in friendship.

😢 Why? We’re not doing so hot on our own. “These [groups] are clearly responding to a need,” said Dartmouth sociology professor Janice M. McCabe, who studies young adult friendship. Post-COVID, we’ve gotten lonelier, and “friendships have become a backburner thing,” Baptista said. Similar to paying for a workout class so you don’t skip it, she thinks paying for these groups can act as a way to prioritize making friends, with the added convenience of a hand-picked group and pre-planned hangs.

💌 Paying for connection isn’t a new idea. We've been doing it for years in the dating space. In fact, “spending money on a friendship app probably makes more sense [than spending it on a dating app],” said Kathryn Coduto, a BU professor who studies interpersonal online behavior. Simply from an odds perspective — finding a pal is way more likely than finding the one.  

📲 But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tread lightly. Friendship is one of the things in our increasingly frictionless world that still requires work and vulnerability — something Gen Z struggles with, Coduto said. So even if using these services isn't inherently harmful, “I wouldn't want to get to a world where this is the only way we can make friendship groups,” McCabe said. 

🤝 After all, the real problem isn’t the apps themselves. It’s everything that’s led us to a place where we feel like we need them. Even if these services are able to meet folks where they are, our loneliness epidemic probably isn’t going anywhere until we’re “making a community-level effort” to create free spaces where folks can meet IRL, Coduto said.

💸 Reminder: You can’t actually buy your friends. No matter how much money you spend on a service to pick new pals or set up an IRL hang, “ultimately, it's up to you to make it out of the chat,” said Livvi co-founder Madeleine Cooney. “You can join a fancy club, you can be in a 1,000-person Facebook group, but at the end of the day, how many people are you actually seeing and talking to on a daily [or] weekly basis?” 

🌲 You can thank Mayor Wu for Boston’s holiday tree this year. No, literally. She helped cut it down. Prior to the tree’s arrival on the Common TODAY at 11 a.m., Wu spent three days in Nova Scotia last week. ICYMI: Nova Scotia gives Boston its holiday tree every year (including this year’s 45-foot tall baddie) per a historical connection dating back to 1917. Besides schmoozing with local leaders, Wu became the first Boston mayor to attend its annual Tree for Boston tree cutting ceremony. Reminder: The tree-lighting ceremony is Dec. 4!

✈️ We have good news for Turkey Day travel. On Monday morning, the FAA officially lifted all government shutdown-induced flight restrictions that had been wreaking havoc on 40 airports across the country, including Logan. See: Literally hundreds of delays and cancellations at Logan alone. While this doesn’t mean things will get back to normal immediately (it’ll take about a week for airlines to rebound), it does mean things should be business as usual just in time for Thanksgiving travel (i.e., still busy, but not hellish).

💊 Need a tampon? Socks? A hygiene kit? There’s a vending machine for that. Thanks to NeighborHealth and the Boston Public Health Commission, this fall, Boston launched its first-ever 24-hour public health vending machine in Eastie. The machine offers everything from safe injection kits to sunblock, condoms, blankets, menstrual products, and more — all for free — in the name of public safety and accessibility. And it’s not the only one: Along with four other machines in Boston, Somerville has two. Curious? Here’s how they work.

🌮 Consider your next eight taco Tuesdays BOOKED. Introducing: The East Boston Taco Trail, a new challenge from Taste of Eastie that literally rewards you for eating the neighborhood’s best tacos. All you gotta do is register here and scan QR codes at each of the eight participating taquerias you visit (we’d start with a birria taco from Taqueria Jalisco, IYKYK). If you visit four spots, you get a keychain and entry into monthly raffles. Visit all eight, and you’ll win tickets to the 2026 Eastie Secret Taco Party.

Buckle up, Bravoholics: The trailer for “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island” is here, and let’s just say, we’re SEATED.

ICYMI: Back in May, Bravo dropped the news that Rhode Island would get a “Housewives” franchise. The Season 1 first look premiered at BravoCon this past weekend, which = the cast is finally confirmed(!).

There’s Liz McGraw, Rhode Island’s “cannabis queen,” former Miss Rhode Island Kelsey Swanson, “Bachelor in Paradise” alum (and R.I. newbie) Ashley Iaconetti, former NBC10 anchor Rosie DiMare, and more. Here’s the full list. 

And while we don’t know exactly when it’ll come out (sometime in 2026) or what drama they all have in store for us, as one housewife said: Rhode Island is “the smallest state with the biggest attitude.” Translation: Things are about to get MESSY.

Watch the trailer here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🙏 Thanks for reading! We’re not sure what we did to deserve this AND a Boston season of “Love Is Blind” but … thank you, reality TV gods.

✈️ The results are in: 47% of B-Siders say they like to spend money on travel and vacations the most. One reader said: “Especially foodie experiences while on vacation!” Now THAT’S working smarter, not harder!

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