Everyone in This City Is Waiting for Someone

There’s a particular kind of loneliness specific to a city like Berlin—surrounded by millions of people whose names you’ll never know, navigating the same U-Bahn routes, the same bars, the same cold November mornings. Im Gegenteil ("on the contrary") is a small online magazine started by two women, Jule and Anni, that tries to do something about that disconnect—one honest portrait at a time.

The concept is simple: each week they profile a Berlin single, photographed in their own apartment, no filters on who they are or what they want. Karl from Friedrichshain, 28, whose favorite animal is the alpaca—specifically for the hair. Sarah from Prenzlauer Berg who’s into pillow fights. Luisa from Kreuzberg who subsists on vodka, olives, and quark and seems completely at peace with this. All vetted, all presented as actual human beings rather than optimized dating profiles.

What I like about it is the anti-algorithm energy before "anti-algorithm" was even a phrase people used in this context. No swiping, no gamified rejection—just a photograph, a few paragraphs, and the knowledge that this person exists somewhere in the same city, probably also watching American TV series back-to-back, also waiting for something to happen.