Grindr, the “dating” app which moved cruising out of the clubs and saunas and onto the couch, is going public. Sodomy has never looked more corporate.
Valued at a surprisingly $1.6 billion with an estimated post-transaction enterprise value of $2.1 billion, Grindr is the go-to convenience for gay and bisexual men looking for sex in their area. But what does it mean when gay sex becomes big business?
“We have a near ubiquitous global brand in the community we serve” boasted Grindr’s aspirational (and weirdly heterosexual) CEO Jeff Bonforte in a release which also pointed to the app’s “impressive scale” and “best-in-class user engagement metrics”.
Gay and bisexual men have always been sexually adventurous. Prior to the rise of Grindr, hook-ups were found at gay bars, saunas, dungeons or at well known “beats” at beaches, parks or public toilets.
The rise of Grindr is all about less risk and lower effort, with 11 million monthly active users either willing to a pay a subscription or deal with intrusive ads for the sexual convenience.
Whether or not it makes hooking up safer is debatable - Grindr has been associated with its fair share of muggings and sexual assaults - but switching from shared glances to taps and texts has more qualitative downsides.
Researchers have noted that sexual arrangements on Grindr follow a highly transactional script: “metaphors of consumption or ‘meat market’ are pervasive”.
Amorous users flip through profiles with a narrow goal in mind, scrutinising curated images and statistics on height, weight, sexual position and penis size.
The app can be glorious for men able to compete in the sexual marketplace, but rather brutal for those who don’t measure up. Grindr has been subject to critiques of “sexual racism” as well as “body fascism” over user preferences for youthful, trim, muscular physiques.
These critiques are a bit tiresome and wilfully ignorant of the fact that offline cruising is equally cut throat, one suspects because male sexuality is rather unforgiving.
However, there is something to the way real world presence and movement smooth out physical flaws.
Apps such as Grindr lack the wholly “otherness” of spaces such as clubs, saunas or dungeons, which add qualities to sexual encounters incapable of translating to the screen. Beats and sex on premises venues often act as “heterotopias” (to borrow a term from Foucault) where the setting provides added frisson to sexual experiences via feelings of risk and taboo.
Compared to traditional settings for gay sex, the app reflects the contemporary ethos of sex as frictionless consumption.
Being an example of “technological disruption”, the app has essentially cut out all competition by reshaping norms and expectations. Whilst the app hasn’t “killed the gay bar” like is sometimes claimed, it has permanently reshaped the sexual lives of gay and bisexual men across the globe.
Is this for better or worse? Who knows? But it sure seems profitable.