The Grindr Files
Adventures in Appland
My favourite conversation on Grindr went like this –
Him - “Hey”
Me - “Hey”
Him - “Hey”
Me - “All bound for Mu Mu Land!”
Reader, he blocked me.
Welcome to The Grindr Files, Episode 1.
In future episodes I’ll be sharing some of my (mis)adventures in Appland, with names and locations changed to protect the not-so-innocent.
But Episode 1 is what we writer types call “an origin story”.
So let me begin by taking you back to 2010, when I was employed as LGBT Editor at Time Out magazine and wrote about an exciting new dating app…
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Towards the end of the last century, I found myself in a gay sauna in Bristol, where a group of men in towels were huddled around a computer screen, checking out other men’s Gaydar profiles. I wrote at the time that I had seen the future of gay mankind, and to some extent I was right.
Gaydar has revolutionised the way gay men interact with one another. It’s also had a massive impact on the bar and club scene. Gay men don't need to go out looking for sex anymore. They can just sit in front of their computers and order in. The current ad campaign from Gaydar asks: “Why go out when you can stay home and play?”
Now comes a piece of technology which enables you to go out and play. It’s like Gaydar, only it’s mobile, and it even tells you how far you are from your fellow users.
Grindr is a free smartphone app, which uses the power of GPS to connect with other, like-minded individuals. The location-based technology was first developed to help concerned parents keep track of their children.
But it’s gay men who’ve put it on the map, thanks in no small part to Stephen Fry, who extolled the virtues of Grindr on that famously gay-friendly TV programme Top Gear last June. It’s said that 20,000 people signed up in the three days that followed, which rather begs the question of who actually watches Top Gear. First launched in February 2009, Grindr now claims 500,000 users worldwide.
Together with my colleague Derek Adams, Time Out gadgets guru, I decided to put it to the test. Since I don’t possess an iPhone, Derek acted as my technical adviser and honeytrap. We downloaded the app and created a profile for ‘Big Del’, complete with vital statistics like height and weight (but no photograph – Del is a happily married man and we didn’t want his wife getting the wrong idea).
Immediately we found men with user names like ‘LoveHunter’, ‘JustCurious’, ‘Fun Boy One’ and ‘Aussielad29’ – all within a short distance of our office on Tottenham Court Road. The nearest was barely 100 metres away. Still we resisted the potential charms of ‘Honk If You’re Horny’ and took to the streets.
Our first stop was Soho Square, where the app was slow to respond, leaving us time to read some customer reviews. “Lame” said one. “Keeps crashing” said another. Our connection crashed twice. Maybe it was the O2 network.
Still we persevered. We walked along to Ramillies Street and suddenly things perked up. Possibly it’s because there are so many gyms in the area, including the gay gym and sauna, Sweatbox Soho, but soon we discovered that our nearest candidate was ‘no metres away’ – ie right on top of us.
Another was six metres away. We scanned the street but couldn’t see anyone fitting the description on the profile. Maybe they were sweating their bollocks off in Sweatbox?
(As you can see, this thought amused me)
Next we headed down to Old Compton Street. If Grindr didn’t come up trumps here, then clearly it wasn’t as popular as people claimed. It did, and it is. Outside Costa Café we were swamped with profiles of fellow users, ranging from ‘Luke23’ to ‘Dirty Boy’, who appeared to be in his 40s (as on Gaydar, gay men on Grindr have a flexible definition of the word ‘boy’). We counted 80 men in the vicinity and up for action, which isn’t bad going for two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.
But if you really want to get the most out of Grindr, you have to wait until after dark. On Old Compton Street we ran into the author Christopher Fowler. “Oh, my friend uses it all the time,” he told us cheerfully. “The best time to go on is at 4am.”
So now you know.
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That was then – and this is now.
Sadly, Chris Fowler is no longer with us. He died in 2023. Chris was a good friend and a wonderful author. His last book, the memoir Word Monkey, is a measure of his many fine qualities as a writer and a man – honest, insightful, playful and witty, even in his darker moments.
Back in 2010, I was happily married. I didn’t own an iPhone and had never had a Gaydar profile. Now I’m single and I’m still not on Gaydar. But I do have an iPhone and I’m no stranger to Appland.
