Grindr has revolutionised gay dating culture, according to a new PhD
Grindr is being used to sell drugs (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
In news that probably won’t surprise many people, Grindr has apparently revolutionised dating for gay men.
That’s the finding of a new PhD thesis by Kristian Møller, postdoc at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“I found that a lot of people already in relationships searched for sexual partners,” Møller told videnskab.dk / ScienceNordic.
“In principle, it’s not surprising. But the interesting thing was the ways non-monogamous relationships were negotiated in relation to the hook-up app interface.”
Related: A black guy shared the vile racist abuse he got from a white man on Grindr
He added: “Gay culture has long been mediatised and closely knitted with communication technology.
“Having sex with other men has always depended on ‘spaces’ [hidden from authorities] in the city.
“Gay men have used media to create their own spaces, for example through contact advertisements. We use code words for each other and to go under the radar.”
The study found that Grindr offered a new avenue for gay men to make themselves known to one another, shifting the balance in the culture.
He added that the use of mobile apps has reversed the direction of travel of cruising back from the internet and the home to the streets.
Møller wants to study other aspects of Grindr and similar apps, including how they are used to facilitate chemsex, and what role they play in moral panics and the so-called “dating apocalypse”.
As well as being used safely by many gay and bisexual men, Grindr has been mentioned in a number of recent criminal cases.
A junior doctor used Grindr to proposition an undercover police officer he thought was an underage boy.
Meanwhile, a man in Texas admitted to using Grindr to lure several gay victims for violent homophobic attacks.
