Grindr: The LGBT Community

Every human being deserves to have some sense of community with a group of people who share similar beliefs and lifestyles. This feeling of fellowship allows a person to become more comfortable with who they are through interactions with others who are going through—or have gone through—the same triumphs or hardships. The absence of this sense of belonging could drive a person insane. Feelings of isolation and desolation could run rampant through one’s mind because of the loneliness that comes with a lack of community. For most members of the LGBT community this feeling is no stranger. Coming to terms with one’s sexuality is not an overnight process, and because it is a solely psychological journey, it’s very difficult to find others who can …show more content…
Seeing someone new within walking distance stimulates more than just mental curiosity. The app, Grindr, is notorious for its close connection and embracement of ‘hookup culture’. Upon joining the app, one could be inundated with dozens of messages from random men asking for sexual favors. Hundreds of appointments with “No Strings Attached” are made every day through Grindr’s messaging services. Because of this, some users even save the trouble of setting up a full profile and keep it minimalistic—stripping their profiles back to simply just their age and a picture of their headless torsos, like an advertisement for casual sex. Over the years, Grindr has become a dark but ironically embraced aspect of gay culture, adding to numerous stereotypes for gay men. One lingering generalization supported by Grindr was the hypersexuality and promiscuity of gays. The notion that gay men only want to have sex with each other has been around for decades and devolves the community down to primitive levels, and Grindr has not done anything to reverse this perspective. In an article for The Huffington Post entitled “Xtra, Xtra: The Grindr Chronicles”, Evan Ross Katz writes “Grindr ended up making [users] more loveless” (Katz). He goes on in the article to discuss the stigma surrounding with gay men who actively search for long-term monogamous relationships using Grindr. He compares the experience to ordering wheat toast and getting white. Though he wants the wheat toast, which is assumed to represent a long-term relationship, he receives white toast, and he ignores the mix-up for a while. But eventually he grows weary, and longs to have the bread he ordered. And this is a perfect representation of being gay in a society with apps like Grindr that discourage