Finding love in hopeless places: Grindr

Grindr is a mobile app for gay men that shows you a grid of other gay or bisexual men in your vicinity and lets you chat and exchange pictures with them.

Can you find love on the website?

Hardly. Rarely.

For the unfamiliar, the primary use of Grindr is to find a man to hook up with.
After that hookup, if you try to reach out to someone, you’re often met with, at best, confusion, and at worst, hostility.

When most men on these apps do not show at least the decency of replying to emails, texts or phone calls after hooking up, how could you possibly find love with them?

At the same time, there are arguably a few good men using the app alongside the jerks. But in those cases, Grindr itself causes misunderstandings through its randomly “dropped” messages, which function like dropped phone calls.

You send the first “hi” message to someone. No reply. You send another one, this time maybe with your name to show that you’re not using the app just for entertainment, but are instead seriously looking to meet someone.

No reply. Again.

You try this another day, and after more silence, you have a few options: Block that person’s profile on Grindr, write yet another “hi” message, or send a more pointed message.

I often choose the third option if presented with this problem. “You know it is rude to ignore people,” you could say, or “It’s polite to respond when someone says hello — they probably teach that in school,” or something to that effect.

Responses to this message take two forms.

The first often reads, “I thought you would take the hint that I wasn’t interested.”

But the second, just as common type reads, “What? You never wrote to me.”

How can one separate anonymity-fed rudeness on Grindr from the people genuinely seeking love when Grindr drops messages just like bad cell phone service calls?

What’s more, for love to happen, two people need to actually interact and get to know one another. On Grindr, even when using the chat function, there’s a slim chance that two users will chat continuously even for five minutes, and an even slimmer chance of two compatible people being online at the same time.

More often than not, the users hesitate from meeting in real life any time soon. If they do, it’s usually only for “fun,” which brings us back to the complicated games  mentioned above. It’s a vicious cycle.

Gay and bisexual men might want to explore other options if they’re looking for real love, and not just a lover for the night.