I did not expect a conversation about an app to land on me the way this one did. We were talking about neurodivergent friendship, and Jamie Pastrano said something that stopped me cold: there is no milestone for loneliness. You get one for a first job, a first apartment, riding the train alone. There is not one for having somebody to call on a Tuesday night.
Listen or watch
The full conversation with the three founders of Synchrony is below. Press play wherever you already listen.
You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or watch it over on Facebook.
Why this one got under my skin
I am late diagnosed. I masked most of my life without knowing that is what I was doing.
What hit me was not the app itself. It was realising I never had a room where I got to stop performing. Not at home. Not in sports. Not anywhere.
I am good now. I just sat there thinking about how much easier things might have been if something like this had existed when I was twenty. If you are somewhere near the start of working out how your brain runs, my start here page is the shortest route in.
Meet the founders
Jamie Pastrano is a licensed social worker and a mom. She watched her autistic son age into the gap this episode is about and could not find him a solution.
Brittany Moser is a former teacher who holds a master’s degree in Autism Studies and has spent years in New York City schools. Rebecca Matchett, who everybody calls Becky, spent two decades in fashion and holds a patent in women’s sizing.
Not the backgrounds you would expect behind a social app, and that is exactly the point. They are three people, not a tech company.
They built Synchrony, a social app for neurodivergent adults who want to make real friends. The website carries the download links for both app stores.
Find Synchrony at:
- Website and downloads: joinsynchrony.com
- The founders’ own origin story: The Story Behind Synchrony
The support stops and nobody tells you
For a lot of us, the scaffolding ends the year we graduate. School programs stop. Services stop. That built-in group of people who were around every day stops too.
Nobody hands you a replacement. Your social life quietly becomes your own problem to solve.
“I don’t think there’s a milestone associated with loneliness. Like with my son, I was like, he took the subway for the first time, or he had a playdate with a friend, or that’s all cool, but you don’t think about the feelings.”
Jamie Pastrano
If nobody measures it, nobody plans for it. I have written before about the difference between being alone and being lonely, and this is the version nobody warns you about.
Why a neurodivergent friendship app asks you to prove who you are
This is the part that surprised me. To get into Synchrony, you upload an ID and a selfie. Then somebody who knows you vouches for you.
My first thought was that it would scare people off. Becky calls it the virtual velvet rope, and her reasoning flipped me.
“We’re not trying necessarily to keep people out. We want the right people in.”
Rebecca Matchett
Jamie put it plainer. How do you expect somebody to make a friend somewhere they cannot trust anybody?
I always figured you make the friend first and the trust catches up later. They flipped that. If you do not feel safe in the room, you never get to the part where you make the friend.
Masking, and what it costs
Brittany described masking as going to a party where you know nobody and having to be fully on for three hours. Then imagine that being every day, from the moment you leave the house.
She talked about what that does to a body over time. I am reporting her account here rather than citing it as settled science, because I could not verify a specific study behind that mechanism while writing this.
If masking is the part of this you recognise, the episode with therapist Calial McCarty on autistic masking and your mental health goes deeper on it.
The AI question, asked directly
There is an optional coach inside the app named Jesse, after Jamie’s son. I know a chunk of you check out the second you hear the word AI, so I asked them straight out whether this quietly teaches neurodivergent people to sound more neurotypical.
“We don’t want a member becoming friends with Jesse. Jesse wasn’t designed that way. Jesse is designed as a social coach.”
Jamie Pastrano
Their answer is that it exists to make you need it less over time, not more. You decide whether that lands. It is worth sitting through either way.
Key takeaways
- Loneliness has no milestone, which is why it goes unplanned for rather than unnoticed.
- Trust comes before friendship, not after it. A space you cannot trust will not produce one.
- You do not need a diagnosis to belong somewhere, and plenty of members arrive self-recognising in their forties and fifties.
- You do not have to be ready to talk to anybody. Seeing that there are a lot of you does something on its own.
Episode timestamps
- 00:17 What this episode is about
- 08:33 What Synchrony actually is
- 18:19 The verification process
- 22:07 Masking, and what it costs you
- 26:40 The AI coach named Jesse
- 31:35 You do not need a diagnosis to join
- 43:13 Ky on never having a room to unmask
- 49:23 Ky’s takeaways
People also ask
Why is it hard to make friends as an adult?
Most adult friendships used to form through structures that did the work for you: school, clubs, services, a daily group of the same faces. When those end, nothing replaces them automatically. You have to build the opportunity yourself, on top of a full life, which is a different skill than being likeable.
How do you make friends as a neurodivergent adult?
Start with shared interest rather than shared small talk, and pick spaces where you do not have to explain yourself first. For a lot of us the exhausting part is not the friendship, it is the performance around it. Somewhere you can be direct without it being read as rude removes most of that load.
Are there apps for autistic adults?
Yes, and Synchrony is one built specifically for neurodivergent adults rather than adapted from a mainstream platform. It uses interest-based matching, an identity and reference verification step, and an optional communication coach. There is no swiping and no likes.
Do you need a diagnosis to join a neurodivergent community?
Not for Synchrony. Becky described members in their forties and fifties who are newly self-recognising and finally have language for a lifetime of experience. Self-recognition counts, and nobody is asked to produce paperwork.
Before you go
Becky said the line I keep coming back to: it does not have to be as difficult as it is. Sit with that one for a second.
If you want to look at what they built, everything is at joinsynchrony.com. Their launch announcement is here on PR Newswire, which is the company’s own account rather than independent evidence, and there is outside trade coverage of the launch if you want a second read.
If this episode helped, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts genuinely helps other people find it. And you can follow me @TheVibeWithKy wherever you already are.
One thing worth saying plainly, and the founders say it themselves: this is not therapy, and it is not a replacement for real support. I am a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience, not a clinician, and nothing here is medical advice.
Much love. Good vibes. – Ky.
Full transcript
The full conversation, lightly cleaned for readability. Click to open it.
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