Grindr is the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people. Download Grindr today to discover, connect to, and explore the queer world around you. Grindr is so well-known as a gay dating and hookup app that even straight people have heard of it. We all know how it works; the home screen shows you a grid of guys near your location, you can. In this Grindr review, you will find out whether it is the most reliable gay dating platform for singles of non-traditional sexual orientation: gay, trans, bisexual, queer people, etc. The Grindr app appeared in 2009. Its owner is Grindr LLC — the biggest niche-based dating service for gay people in the world. Gay, both Grindr and Blendr were selected as Official Honorees of the Webby Awards for award-winning work in the Social handheld devices category. In August, Grindr released an updated version of the app which requires apps to create backpage philadelphia pa account. Grindr says grindr was done to other spam and other portability.

Grindr gets a bad reputation from a lot of gay guys but I think a lot of good can come from Grindr. Today, let’s look at is there any good in Grindr and other gay hookup apps or is Grindr toxic? How you can use Grindr for friendship, and my own story of how a Grindr hookup turned into one of my best friends.

I recorded this video from a Grindr hook-up’s bed. But not one that I met last night…

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Over the past few years, this particular drunken Grindr hookup as become one of my best friends. So today, I want to explore the good parts of Grindr and other gay hookup apps, and share some tips on how you can (hopefully) avoid some of the traps and toxicity of them.

Grindr sometimes gets this reputation that everyone on there is superficial, that people are looking for sex, that they aren’t looking for relationships, that it’s a bunch of flakes, and if that’s what you think, you’re not wrong. That is definitely a part of the Grindr experience, but I don’t think that’s the whole experience.

I’ve met some of my best friends on the apps.

I met my boyfriend of 10 years, Peter, on Connexion.org (with an X!), which no longer exists. I met my boyfriend Matt who I’ve been with for 2 and a half years on Grindr. I met other good friends on sites and apps like Adam4Adam, Scruff, and Recon… and of course I met this friend that I’m staying with on Grindr a few years ago.

I hear from some folks that if you meet someone on Grindr it’s just sex and it can’t be a relationship, or that if you have sex with someone right away, or if you have a one night stand with someone, or if you have a drunken hook-up with them, then that’s all it can ever be. That there’s is like no fluidity between hook-up and relationship, or hook-up and friend, or friend and a relationship. And that’s just not been my experience of how my relationships have worked.

For many years I had the idea that if a relationship was going to be meaningful and long lasting, if they were husband material, then it had to start and look a certain way.

I couldn’t sleep with them right away…

I had to be sexually conservative…

We had to go on “real dates”…

As queer people, we’ve been told that our sexuality is something bad, devious and something that we should keep hidden and that’s really easy to internalize that, and keep it, try and wall that off from other parts of our relationships, other types of relationships. But I think that sex can be a fun and fulfilling part of a friend relationship and it can also serve as the foundation of a solid long-term romantic relationship.

So here are some tips that have worked for me in navigating Grindr and other hook-up or dating apps, with a little bit more ease and a little bit less stress…

Get clear on what you want, and be clear about that with people you’re talking to.

If you know that you just wanna fuck, own that.

And if you know that you’re looking for dates and ultimately a long-term partnership, that’s okay too.

The first step is to know that within yourself and then the second step is to share that with the people that you’re talking to. And that might change from moment to moment.

Often times I’m open to a wide range of options and I get nervous that I’m gonna say the wrong thing. That I’m gonna come across as too needy, too aggressive, too eager, too horny, and I’m gonna turn off the person.

What I’ve been trying to practice recently is to trust that it’s okay to scare some people away by being direct with what I want and what I’m looking for. That way I don’t end up endlessly scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…

If you’re willing to let the people who are never gonna meet up with you fall by the wayside, being direct will help you find out the ones that do wanna meet up, who do connect with you, who are clicking with you faster.

Let go of expectations about what this relationship will be.

I know that when I was single, every time that I met someone that I thought was cute, it was like, “I wanna hook-up with you so that I can be as close as possible with you, so that we can start dating as quickly as possible, so that we can get married and be together forever.” I was so desperate to find that “one and only” who would “be my other half” and “complete me” and lead me to eternal happiness.

For me is was helpful to loosen up my grip of exactly what I was looking for, exactly what that person was supposed to look like, exactly what that persons personality was supposed to be like, where I was supposed to meet them, the way that our relationship was supposed to progress. To be open to the people that were already in my life, paying attention to the energy that I was exchanging with people and being willing to follow that even if it didn’t follow this narrative of a Hollywood love story that I thought I was looking for.

Let relationships evolve

People that I started off hooking up with that I thought maybe were going to turn into dates, but actually we became just good friends. People that I’ve been friends with for years and years and years that I thought I would always be platonic with, to them finding a sexual connection with later.

And also remember to honor that sometime, the relationship isn’t right for you right now. You’re not gonna click, you’re gonna be good partners for each other, maybe you won’t even be good at being friends, maybe you won’t even hookup in the first place.I

I’ have for sure gotten my heart broken more times than I can count while dating… that’s just part of the game.

Grindr, Scruff, Recon, Adam4Adam, and all those other gay hookup and dating apps have brought so many amazing, wonderful people into my life that have become dear, dear, dear friends.

Some of whom are part of my chosen family. And I couldn’t have let that happen if I had relegated everyone that I met with or everyone that I ever had sex with to this category of, “oh you’re just a hook-up and you can be nothing more.”

By opening up my heart and making space for these people, I’m letting those relationships be what they want to be. And that has enriched my life in so many ways.

I know that there are a lot of shitty experiences out there on Grindr but there can also be so much goodness there and so I wanna offer this counter narrative. I know it’s like pretty popular to trash on the dating sites and to say that meeting a guy at a bar, or at a party, or through your friends, or at church, is “the better” way to do it and I’ve definitely met guys that way and I know people who have met their partners that way and those are great things as well, but the apps can be a really great way of connecting queer folks together.

So yeah, I’m really thankful for Grindr and all of the apps in my life. I would love to hear from you. What are some of your Grindr or hook-up app success stories? Share them in the comments over on YouTube.

Want to get those each week (plus some occasional, more private thoughts on sex & relationships)? I’d love to keep in touch. Drop your email address below and I’ll keep you in the loop!

P.S. hit reply to any email from me to start a conversation!

On a typical day, 1.6 million users in more than 192 countries send more than 70 million messages and 5 million pictures to each other on Grindr, the location-aware gay dating app that is now six years old.

While that level of worldwide connection is astounding, not all of Grindr's connections are created equal.

Matthew* — a black, 29-year-old Los Angeles resident — said he remembers a striking moment of racism while browsing Grindr one night. An attractive white guy began to chat with him. He felt the man was out of his league. The conversation quickly became highly sexual. Desires and interests were put on the table.

'He eventually said that he had a fantasy of having his white boi pussy raped by a big-dicked nigger,' Matthew told Mic in an email. He said he blocked the user and signed off, promptly.

Preference or racism? While those who practice sexual racism may see what they do as separate from harboring racist attitudes, recent research disagrees. A study published in the October edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior argues sexual racism 'is closely associated with generic racist attitudes, which challenges the idea of racial attraction as solely a matter of personal preference.'

For Kevin Nadal, even subtle moments of racism indicate deeper attitudes regarding race. Nadal is the executive director of the Center for LGBTQ Studies at City University of New York's Graduate Center. Nadal has published several works on microaggressions, which are subtle forms of bias or discrimination that, while often well intentioned, can be taken in hurtful or offensive ways by those who experience them.

'People who make it a point to state that they have racial preferences, they need to examine some of the biases they have that lead to what they call those preferences,' Nadal told Mic. Nadal said people of color tend to be exoticized or viewed as less attractive due to long-held portrayals painting people of color as inferior and white people as ideal in terms of attractiveness.

Even attention intended to be positive but based on assumed racial traits can be harmful, according to Nadal.

'People who are viewed as the norm in terms of standards of beauty, they may not even recognize that their experiences are different from those who don't fit that standard,' Nadal said. 'People of color who do go on sites and get this attention, they get messages that people are attracted to [them] simply because of their racial features that they view as exotic or something that's different and new — that they can be treated more like objects.'

Many of the gay men of color who spoke to Mic described how they felt being exoticized or expected to adhere to certain limitations of what their race or ethnicity might entail.

Louie, 38, a Latino Philadelphia native, told Mic that he often had to deal with assumptions about his bedroom practices because of his race and appearance.

'White men consistently assume that I am a top because I am brown and have a beard,' Louie said. 'Then get mad and say 'Well do you have AIDS since you're a bottom?'

Louie said his interactions with white men on Grindr have since forced him to change how he operated on the platform. 'I no longer use Grindr, but when I did, I didn't return any messages from white men. And if they messaged me, I blocked them,' he said. 'I get everyone is looking for a fantasy on Grindr, but forcing that fantasy on someone is something different.'

A random user threw a highly racially-charged epithet (pictured below) at Eliel — a 24-year-old, Latino Atlanta native — while he was browsing Grindr recently.

'Because of my ethnicity he, and many other white gay men, deem me to be ugly,' Eliel told Mic. He said he's stopped letting it get to him. 'I believe my ethnicity is beautiful,' he said.

Even worse than outright racial bias is the reactions people of color receive when attempting to push back against it.

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'When people of color call white people out on racist bias,' said Nadal, who co-authored a 2007 paper detailing the impact of white people's reactions to microaggressions, 'or racist dynamics in dating, that can often lead to overt bias or prejudice in that people of color are told directly that their perspectives are wrong or they are being overly sensitive and that their reality is not the truth.'

Getting people to admit to their own biases can be difficult. 'Most people want to view themselves as good people and are hesitant or are in denial that they have racial biases,' Nadal said. 'Whereas, there have been studies for the past 40 years on implicit bias, which connotes that everyone has some sort of implicit bias.'

Evading bias: Larry, a 33-year-old Filipino from New York, told Mic that he has experienced a lot of implicit bias on Grindr, to the point that changing his race from 'Asian' to 'Other' increased the amount of people who spoke to him.

'I can't isolate all the variables, because I also did change my profile picture, but I just know that I got hit up a whole lot more than I had in the past and by guys who hadn't responded to me in the past,' Larry told Mic.

Larry said many of his friends have stories far worse than his. 'Someone hit [my friend] up on Grindr and kept making these terrible references like 'Do you wanna suck on my egg roll?' he said.

Nadal doesn't see a problem with having a racial preference, but it's the way people choose to express it that matters.

'There's a power play happening where they want people to know that one group is superior for them or other groups are not to even talk to them,' he said.

Alternative ways of expression are available, Nadal said. 'There's another way, which is to be silent about who you are romantically or sexually attracted to, and you can tell somebody if asked.'

Nadal stressed that, in the end, the burden to examine these attitudes really does rely on those who perpetuate racist micoraggressions — to reexamine why they feel that way.

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'In terms of romantic attractions, if somebody is not attracted to a certain race in absolutes, then that's something to question in terms of 'Why do you think that is?' he said. 'What does that say about your feelings or attitudes towards that group?'

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*Last names were withheld to allow subjects to speak freely.