Grindr: Welcome to the World’s Biggest, Scariest Gay Bar

by Matt Kapp

Vanity Fair features Grindr Social App "Grindr: Welcome to the World’s Biggest, Scariest Gay Bar "

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smart, attractive, chronically single friend of mine had been feverishly fidgeting with his iPhone for half a dozen blocks, somehow navigating the crowded sidewalks without once lifting his gaze from the screen. “Here’s one … 1,127 feet,” he muttered. And then, “Oh, 413 feet!” Sensing my annoyance, he showed me his phone: dozens of little thumbnail pictures of guys, with little blurbs about themselves, organized from top to bottom in order of proximity. Suddenly, it became clear to me what his excitement was about. Could this crude little iPhone app be every single gay man’s dream: to be able to cruise anywhere, anytime? Shopping? Why not! Meet me in Aisle C! Killing time at the airport? I’m sitting at Gate 17. At the gym? A no-brainer. Even at gay bars: cruising within cruising.

Grindr claims its app has more than a million users in more than 180 countries, including Sri Lanka, Djibouti, Haiti, Iraq, and Iran, places where being gay can get you killed. But nowhere is Grindr more popular than in the U.K., where there are more than 160,000 users, which means, after adjusting for population, almost twice as many gay Brits use Grindr as gay Americans do. London tops the list of cities, with 62,000 Grindr users, which the company proudly points out is “1 in every 60 male Londoners.” Users spend an average of 1.3 hours a day logged on. Openly gay celebrity jack-of-all-trades and devout technophile Stephen Fry introduced Grindr to British television viewers on the BBC’s hit show Top Gear, which is about the rather heterosexual subject of cars. “This one may not be quite so up your strata,” he warned Top Gear’ s host, Jeremy Clarkson. “It’s called Grindr.” As Fry showed off the app, Clarkson’s incredulity shifted to enthusiasm. “You can find the nearest cruising homosexual with one of those?,” he marveled. “Imagine in traffic jams!” Grindr downloads spiked by 30,000 in the days after Fry’s appearance on the show.

I’d tried computer-assisted dating only once before, with mixed results, but Grindr seemed so easy—a few taps of my iPhone screen and I was off to the races—that it was impossible to resist. First I needed a profile. Grindr profile photos fall into four general categories: lazy, earnest, absurd, and sexually suggestive. The staple of the lazy category is the lo-res, self-taken mirror shot, which translates into “I don’t give a shit about Grindr or any of you so I’m not gonna try very hard.” In my experience, most promiscuous gay guys—the type I expected to encounter on Grindr—tend to prefer detached, fuck-you types and are turned on by offput-ishness. The projection of apathy is essential to the lazy strategy. Under no circumstances is it ever acceptable to come across as eager. I put on my favorite T-shirt, and a few dozen shots later I had my very own fuck-you, lo-res mirror profile photo, the back of my iPhone in the foreground, my pissed-off-looking mug in the background.

Read more @ http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/grindr-201105