That's what social demographer Michael Rosenfeld suggests.
It's likely the hookup-focused culture that helped gay apps flourish has long existed, and simply made more visible with the emergence of smartphones. In his book Classified, Harry Cocks, history professor at the University of Nottingham, implies that gay apps represent a modern development of the personal ad, a form of mating that's at least a century old. From public cruising to "secret languages" like Polari, gay people have long used a variety of means to identify fellow queers, both out of sheer necessity and as a means of facilitating sex. Is it a fundamental shift in gay dating, or lipstick on a pig?Ī certain line of thought runs through many of those complaints about gay dating apps: The apps themselves have made hooking up so easy that they've created a dating scene all but defined by casual sex-one that's possibly losing its luster.īut that view doesn't jive with the historical facts of LGBTQ relationships. What's not immediately clear is what's behind the evolution toward more dating-, event- and platonic-focused networking. "We look at our role in our users' lives as the center of an ever-growing ecosystem," he said. These days, even Grindr seems like it doesn't want to be Grindr anymore, having recently repositioned itself as a "gay lifestyle brand." "Grindr has always been a way for our users to connect to the world around them," Peter Sloterdyk told me as he summarized a list of new features he says builds on its core functionality: INTO, a new content feed with former Out.com editor Zach Stafford at the helm a kinky " Gaymoji" keyboard and ongoing initiatives from Grindr for Equality, the company's social good initiative. On Hornet, new features include a Facebook-style activity feed, designed to shift the app away from a purely location-based cascade of profiles and more toward a traditional social network SCRUFF has launched a Tinder-style swiping interface for relationship-minded folks and a gay events and traveling platform. More established gay social platforms like Hornet and SCRUFF have recently charted a similar course, with a plethora of new features that spokespeople for both apps said are meant to introduce new ways to interact beyond hooking up. "Gay dating apps have huge potential to shape gay culture there's space in the market for brands such as Chappy to change some archaic perceptions of our community."Ĭhappy isn't the only app trying to distance itself from the stigma of so-called hookup culture. "The gay space has developed and evolved enormously," said Locke. Right Now," allowing users to more easily weed out guys whose preferences don't align with your own, whether one is looking for dating or sex (or something in between). With a Tinder-esque swipe-left-or-right interface, it has garnered investment from dating app Bumble what's different is that Chappy lets users toggle between categories called "Mr. That discontent inspired Locke to co-found Chappy, a dating app made available earlier this year to men in London, New York City, and Los Angeles. By no means is this all exclusive to Grindr, but Grindr pioneered geolocation-based gay dating apps in the first place as the first and one of the largest, it has had an outsized role in perpetuating the culture behind the apps.
Then there's rampant spambots and frequent glitches to contend with, which can sometimes make users' lives a living hell.
That dissatisfaction is reflected in Grindr's 2.5-star rating on the Apple App store, where many comments echo the lament of one blunt one-star reviewer: "There are a lot of guys who use it for hooking up." Reddit, too, is rife with threads by gay men complaining about gay dating apps in general, and the culture pervasive within them-flakey conversations, rude users, rampant racism, and attitudes that reinforce negative self-esteem. And it only takes a quick scroll through these apps themselves to encounter guys who express dismay with them statements like "deleting soon," "no hookups," and "no unsolicited nudes" are common in user profiles. For some users of gay dating apps, a daily ritual can verge on addiction. "It became obvious this wasn't reflective of our community." "While there were guys looking for real connections, you also had to deal with the huge majority of guys that were there for a hookup," Locke said. But those experiences made him think the queer community needed a new kind of app, telling me that the status quo seemed "outdated and disheartening." Over the years, Locke would turn to gay social and dating apps like Grindr to meet other queer guys.