The problem with Grindr

Even if you’re straight, you have probably heard of Grindr, perhaps from when Stephen Fry showed it off on Top Gear that one time.

The app is famous for allowing gay and bisexual men to locate each other based on distance and appearance. The app has been responsible for thousands upon thousands of hook-ups since 2009, with over 5 million users worldwide today. It’s classed as the world’s most popular gay ‘dating’ app.

For many, Grindr is celebrated for inaugurating a new era of sexual exploration among gay & bi men. It’s founder, Joel Simkhai, likes to think of Grindr as the perfect answer to the perennial problem facing a gay man – who else around me is gay?

In fact, in an interview with The Observer in 2010, Simkhai suggested that Grindr is about ‘Being among your peers. Socialising. Being part of your community’. Indeed, he saw Grindr as the precursor to sex, not a gateway to sex itself.

But it’s pretty hard to deny that Grindr is overwhelmingly used for people to find sex. Sure, Simkhai can imply that Grindr simply gives its gay users the chance to connect and that they choose to use it for sex, but we’re not stupid. Grindr is geared towards hook-ups and very little else.

I mean, just look at the gimp mask logo and the grid system showing only the pictures of each guy. Click on one of the pictures and you find profiles focused on body weight, height and looks rather than their personality or interests. It’s hardly a ‘dating’ app, more like an all-male selection box: take your pick for instant gratification with minimal effort and reading.

A rather generous screenshot of Grindr Xtra, with no naked photos or lewdness to be seen

Now don’t get me wrong – this is not an article arguing that men should not be sex positive or that casual sex is a bad thing. Hook-ups and casual sex are often empowering for people, gay men included, not to mention being an avenue for physical and emotional exploration which many of us find hugely rewarding to access. Even if I was, for whatever reason, staunchly sex negative as a gay man, I wouldn’t go around telling others that they have made the wrong choices about how to use their bodies, especially since it doesn’t harm me in any way. Unlike UKIP, I don’t believe that gay sex causes thunderstorms.

But, this article is about the problems which Grindr’s popularity, and consequent association with gay men and gay life, have for gay and bisexual men. For one thing, having a hook-up app which is so strongly associated with the gay male community, and nobody else, promotes the idea that gayness and sex positivism are fundamentally intertwined.

This would be fine were it not for the fact that we are not all sex positive. But Grindr has become so popular among gay men that it is becoming an expected pre-requisite for adult gay life. It’s popularity, high publicity and avid usage all suggest to young gay men, and the rest of the world, that Grindr is the primary way through which gay men date and hook up.

This, I feel, is quite a problematic message to be spreading to young gay adults – that Grindr, effectively a hook-up app which focuses on appearance rather than personality and communication, is the gay dating norm. This is a disheartening message for any young man like myself. We don’t want the gay community to be all about sex positivism and casual sex. We want a community that espouses just as many messages of long-term relationships & committed online dating as we espouse about sex positivism through Grindr.

The problem is that Grindr is becoming so popular that this is the only message that is getting through to young gay men who see Grindr as the way that gay dating works. After all many of us have very little experience of gay relationships before we leave school. Even if your school is not homophobic, chances are that you only have one or two classmates who are openly gay, and chances are that they are not what you think of as an ideal boyfriend.

So when we step out into the world of dating and relationships after school, with very little idea of how being gay actually works, it is imperative that the adult gay community sends us as varied and as optimistic a message of gay sex & relationships as possible.

And here lies the problem with Grindr. It is the most popular gay ‘dating’ app and millions of gay men are using it. There’s nothing wrong with being sex positive, and for many of us it’s a good thing, but it certainly doesn’t suit everyone. But Grindr is popular enough in the gay community that younger men feel pressured into using Grindr as their primary dating outlet. They are thus pushed into an appearance-based sex positive world that we are perhaps not ready for, don’t understand, or just don’t want to be a part of.

I think it’s time that gay men stepped away from Grindr as our primary method dating & communication, perhaps by switching to platforms like Tinder instead. These have a wider and more diverse membership base, so it’s not just something that gay & bi guys do, but an option for everyone. In an ideal world, I’d love it if serious dating and communication apps for gay & bisexual men took a stand against Grindr and gave a new message and a new option for young gay men looking to meet others like them and form relationships.

After all, we’re not all sex positive and it’s time we varied the message of how we date, and why, in order to help us all to find the methods of online dating that suits us best.