A Close Look at Grindr, a Homosexual Dating Platform

“The Gay Tinder,” Grindr, is a dating application crawling with creepily suggestive, promiscuous gay men; something that should not be appealing, but somehow is. Acting upon sexual desires is a completely normal human activity, but for gay men those desires can be difficult to act upon depending on one’s surroundings. Grindr makes interaction between gay males easily accessible through its user-friendly interface that shows anywhere from 100 to 700 gay men within close proximity of the user. Because the application is tailored to such a specific audience, it reflects the interests of the homosexual community in order to keep them invested and involved with the application and its community.

With sex as an intrinsic motivation, Grindr’s platform makes the search for a suitable sexual partner both enjoyable and rewarding to those using it. In this essay, I will show how identity-based affective commitment (Kraut & Resnick, 2011) is felt within Grindr’s user base, making users feel as if they truly belong to a community and virtually coexist in an enclave of the online dating world. Secondly, I will talk about how Grindr exists for needs-based commitments (Kraut & Resnick, 2011). Because of the extreme and inherent desire for sex, Grindr sought an opportunity to expedite the process of relationships (meeting, dating, sex life, etc…) and cater to the sexual desires of gay men. Grindr leads gay men to casual sex, which is a main motivator in the usage of the application. These casual sexual encounters keep users coming back to the application. Lastly, I will explore how Grindr’s platform encourages users to contribute actively to the community. By placing users in small, like-minded groups, Grindr is motivating participants to not be intimidated to interact with one another because of two main overwhelming similarities between all users: homosexuality and location. All things considered, Grindr has capitalized on the sexually leaning minds of homosexual men by making the search for a viable sexual partner rewarding, pleasurable and even community-minded.

Kraut and Resnick (2011) define identity-based affective commitment as “a feeling of being part of the community and helping to fulfill its mission” (p. 79). Gay men participating on Grindr fulfill the application’s mission of sexual freedom and sexual liberation for the homosexual community. Through every interaction between gay men, Grindr’s mission is being fulfilled further and further. Expanding on identity-based affective commitment, Kraut and Resnick (2011) discuss the theory of Social Identity as “how sharing a common social category with others causes people to categorize themselves as a rightful member of a group and to identify with it” (p. 79). Based on the common social category of sexual orientation, gay men utilize Grindr and the surrounding community to explore their sexual options. Often feeling marginalized, the gay community finds solace in an online community where they can express themselves and the community’s culture and surrounding lexicon. To chat with other gay men about sexual exploration, interests, fetishes and other self-disclosing topics is an intrinsic reward in and of itself because, naturally, you want to talk to people who are just like you. Not only are you part of the greater gay community when you are an active user of Grindr, but you are but are of the more niche community of Grindr users. Although there has been a recent positive evolution of widely held beliefs, homosexuality often brought along questionable looks. Being part of both the larger gay and more niche online community furthers the mission of sexual freedom and sexual liberation that Grindr seeks, in hopes of lessening the number of questionable looks brought along by homosexuality. Gay men who choose to be a part of the Grindr community, choose to be part of a sexually forward and explicit nature of the application, but also find it rewarding to know the similarities between them and the gay community within their very own vicinity.

Within the application, a user can choose self-identifying “tribes” that are an odd nexus of body types and interests. For example, one may join the “leather” tribe if they fetishize sadism and masochism, but may also join the “trans” tribe if they are either transgender-identifying or are interested in transgender people. A user may also pick their “position,” such as “top,” where one like to penetrate or “bottom” where one prefers to be penetrated. Kraut and Resnick’s (2011) sixth design claim for identity-based affective commitments reads “creating named groups within a larger online community increases members’ commitment to the subgroups” (p. 83). In these subgroups, the Grindr application creates an even stronger sense of community. Finding these tiny, like-minded communities brings users back for repeated visits where they can explore their sexual interests further without feeling shamed. Sexual exploration with people of the like is an important intrinsic motivator because it satisfies a great deal of natural human desires. In addition, the exposure to these terms and subgroups brings curiosity from other users.

As previously addressed, sex is a basic human desire that can become pretty aggressive. By some, sex could be marked as a human need. In the Grindr community, it is an unanimous belief that sex is a desire that needs satisfying. With this belief in mind, Grindr’s application interface caters to needs-based commitments. Kraut and Resnick (2011) define this type of commitment as the “attachment to an online community that depends on the net benefits that people experience from the community” (p. 105). With Grindr, the main benefit is fulfilling sexual desires. If Grindr continually acts as a virtual community where gay men can seek to entertain their sexual side, then the application with continually have both new and recurring users. Kraut and Resnick’s (2011) thirty-second design claim for needs-based commitments in online communities states “providing participants with experiences that meet their motivations for participating in the community increases their needs-based commitment to the community” (p. 107). By allowing users to send precise locations to one another, community members can meet up quickly to fulfill their sexual needs and desires. If a participant has sexual urges and wants immediate gratification of those urges, knowing the quick and user-friendly experience of Grindr will motivate that person to find a fitting sexual partner. Know that their sexual needs can be met almost instantaneously, Grindr users have every reason to return to the app when they choose. As long as sex is a human desire, there will be gay men using Grindr.

Encouraging men to sign up and start to contribute to the Grindr community might be a challenge, but there are many design claims that prove Grindr’s interface motivates its users to participate in conversations that they feel comfortable having. The thirty-third design claim for encouraging contribution, according to Kraut and Resnick (2011) is that “people will be more willing to contribute in an online group when the group is small rather than large” (p. 63). Downloading the application knowing you will only be exposed to the closest one hundred gay men may be a little intimidating at first, but when users find their niche communities within Grindr - the community suddenly becomes smaller. With a newly found interest group, users will want to become a part of that smaller community - hoping to gain new understandings and relationships that form because of it. As design claim thirty-two states, “commitment to an online community group increases willingness to contribute to it” (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 63). If users become committed to virtually coexisting in order to meet up in person, their willingness to continually contribute to whatever niche community they chose to be a part of will be seen on Grindr.

Coming from the lens of personal experience, Grindr users like to send nude selfies as a conversation starter, in order to get the person on the other end to reciprocate the effort of sending nude selfies. As Robert Cialdini suggests about reciprocity (2001), “all societies subscribe to a norm that obligates individuals to repay in kind what they have received” (p. 76). Further, Cialdini (2001) believes that reciprocity “also applies to concessions that people make to one another” (p. 77). In the Grindr community, a man who sends a picture of his genitals might want a picture of the same nature back, but when the receiver declines, the sender might lessen the request and ask for a picture with underwear on, as to not sexually expose the receiver of the original message. Because of Grindr’s sexually explicit nature, reciprocation of both pornagraphic media and sexual favors keeps the user base motivated to create more events like this for themselves. As Kraut and Resnick’s eleventh design claim says “People will be more likely to comply with requests if they come from others who are familiar to them, similar to them, are attractive, are of high status, or have other noticeable socially desirable features” (p. 33). Contribution, most likely X-rated, is continually encouraged on Grindr through forced exposure to people of similar interests.

Grindr’s carefully thought out user interface helps to make the arduous journey of finding an acceptable sexual partner easier, while giving a virtual community to the often marginalized gay community, so that they may feel oneness in their community. Because the application is tailored to such a specific audience, it reflects the interests of the homosexual community in order to keep them invested and involved with the application and its community. With sex as an intrinsic motivation, Grindr’s platform makes the search for a suitable sexual partner both enjoyable and rewarding to those using it. Users feel an affective commitment based on identity (Kraut & Resnick, 2011), that leads them to become part of the Grindr community and help spread its message of sexual tolerance and freedom. Not only is there an identity-based commitment to Grindr but there are also many cases of needs-based commitments (Kraut & Resnick, 2011). Sex, a basic human desire, can be easily found through the application’s many thrill-seeking participants. If participants are able to achieve an active sex life, that will keep them coming back to find more suitable partners and crave their human desires. Lastly, encouragement to contribute can be seen with “tribes” and proximal locations. Those interested in “leather” as a fetish, can have two-way conversations (anonymously or publicly) about any new developments within the realm, interests surrounding it or the possibility of meeting up offline to perform these sexual acts. Also, if a user is exposed to pictures of faces, face-less torsos and half-naked men that are less than a mile away from the user, they will be more likely to engage with them since they have both homosexuality and location in common - and both are working to fulfill their sexual desires. Grindr provides countless opportunities for casual sex in the gay community, which gets gay men to sign up and stay on Grindr. For the gay community, often feeling trivialized, Grindr motivates these men to be active and recurring participants in the online gay community, especially in a sexual context.