Grinding Everyone's Gears
It's time to delete Grindr.
Everyone’s got an opinion on Grindr, the world’s largest “gay” hookup/dating app. From social conservatives who accuse the app of promoting sexual degeneracy to the uber-woke who agree with the company’s controversial filtering decisions, Grindr has been a hot-button issue on X in recent weeks.
One of the main criticisms of Grindr is that it perpetuates hookup culture and discourages commitment. While Grindr’s location-based service does lend it toward such use, it’s also often used for actual dating. The gay men I see lambasting the prevalence of hookups from Grindr/Scruff/Sniffies fall squarely on the right politically, but this is a more nuanced issue than simple left vs. right politics. Why do some gays hate hookup culture so viscerally?
In the above poll, ~60% of male respondents said they didn’t need to have an emotional connection with someone to have sex with them. While this sample is of all males, let’s assume data for gay males is the same (though I have a suspicion the “Man-No” number would be higher.) The anti-hookup gays are in the 40% and find casual sex unappealing.
Much of the discourse surrounding Grindr and gay hookups stems from this disconnect - a 60% guy and a 40% guy look at sex from fundamentally different viewpoints. For the 40%, it’s something emotional and meaningful to be shared with someone you deeply care about. Some among the 40% also believe casual sex is immoral based on their religious beliefs. For the 60%, it’s just fun and doesn’t necessarily have inherent meaning or morality.
The 40% have been telling the 60% to delete Grindr, blaming the app for why some gay men don’t want to date anymore, and spouting condescension and sanctimony. The 60% have been calling the 40% incels, which is inaccurate - the 40% are looking for an emotional bond more so than sex. Both groups missed the real issue at hand: it isn’t that the 60% are hooking up to be subversive or degenerate and the 40% aren’t only seeking monogamy out of prudishness, it’s simply that they have different perspectives on sexuality.
Trying to force the 40% to have the same sexual attitudes as the 60% is wrong, but it would do the 40% well to recognize the inverse is also wrong. Not everyone wants - or is even capable of - monogamy or commitment. Same goes for random Grindr hookups. Instead of recognizing each other’s stances and the underlying reasons behind them, people started flinging mud at each other on X.
I can understand the 40%’s dislike of hookup culture from their perspective; being the minority among gay men, they likely feel a degree of alienation because of it, hence why some lash out. But trying to force the 60% to share the same sexual values in an attempt to remake the gay world to fit your own mores is misguided at best. It’s not feasible, just as it’s impossible to turn every gay man into a Grindr aficionado. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to sexuality or relationships.
Grindr also isn’t the sole reason for the prevalence of casual sex among gay men. From cruising in parks and gym locker rooms to bathhouses and private clubs, gay men have always found ways to connect sexually. The advent of a tool to make quick encounters more accessible does not change the fact that many such encounters were already happening, albeit in different locations.
However, the 40% are right about one major part of this discussion: it is time for the 60% to delete Grindr, albeit not for the reasons they say. While the CEO, George Arison, is allegedly conservative, the app recently changed its filtering settings, angering many gay men. You can now search for all trans and nonbinary users, but can’t screen them out. You can search for “men,” but that search will include trans-identified females. Grindr said that being able to remove trans-identified people from your search would “further perpetuate discrimination and harm for the trans and nonbinary community.”
In addition, Grindr affirmed its adherence to woke gender ideology: “You can speciify that you want to see men or women - but this will include all men or all women - because trans men are men and trans women are women.” Especially for app where people often greet each other by showing their genitals, not being able to filter out the opposite sex seems counterproductive.
Grindr has also promoted “gender-affirming” surgery to its largely gay male userbase in recent weeks. Scruff is no better, often featuring trans-identified females on its social media platforms and banning men who assert their exclusive same-sex attraction on their profiles.
It’s time to ditch these apps and meet guys the old-fashioned way - in person. The apps have betrayed gay men by siding with an ideology that seeks to erase our sexuality. We should erase them from our phones.