by Matt Kapp
A smart, attractive, chronically single friend of mine had been feverishly fidgeting with his iPhone for half a dozen blocks, somehow navigating the crowded sidewalks without once lifting his gaze from the screen. “Here’s one … 1,127 feet,” he muttered. And then, “Oh, 413 feet!” Sensing my annoyance, he showed me his phone: dozens of little thumbnail pictures of guys, with little blurbs about themselves, organized from top to bottom in order of proximity. Suddenly, it became clear to me what his excitement was about. Could this crude little iPhone app be every single gay man’s dream: to be able to cruise anywhere, anytime? Shopping? Why not! Meet me in Aisle C! Killing time at the airport? I’m sitting at Gate 17. At the gym? A no-brainer. Even at gay bars: cruising within cruising.
A smart, attractive, chronically single friend of mine had been feverishly fidgeting with his iPhone for half a dozen blocks, somehow navigating the crowded sidewalks without once lifting his gaze from the screen. “Here’s one … 1,127 feet,” he muttered. And then, “Oh, 413 feet!” Sensing my annoyance, he showed me his phone: dozens of little thumbnail pictures of guys, with little blurbs about themselves, organized from top to bottom in order of proximity. Suddenly, it became clear to me what his excitement was about. Could this crude little iPhone app be every single gay man’s dream: to be able to cruise anywhere, anytime? Shopping? Why not! Meet me in Aisle C! Killing time at the airport? I’m sitting at Gate 17. At the gym? A no-brainer. Even at gay bars: cruising within cruising.
Grindr claims its app has more than a million users in more than 180 countries, including Sri Lanka, Djibouti, Haiti, Iraq, and Iran, places where being gay can get you killed. But nowhere is Grindr more popular than in the U.K., where there are more than 160,000 users, which means, after adjusting for population, almost twice as many gay Brits use Grindr as gay Americans do. London tops the list of cities, with 62,000 Grindr users, which the company proudly points out is “1 in every 60 male Londoners.” Users spend an average of 1.3 hours a day logged on. Openly gay celebrity jack-of-all-trades and devout technophile Stephen Fry introduced Grindr to British television viewers on the BBC’s hit show Top Gear, which is about the rather heterosexual subject of cars. “This one may not be quite so up your strata,” he warned Top Gear’s host, Jeremy Clarkson. “It’s called Grindr.” As Fry showed off the app, Clarkson’s incredulity shifted to enthusiasm. “You can find the nearest cruising homosexual with one of those?,” he marveled. “Imagine in traffic jams!” Grindr downloads spiked by 30,000 in the days after Fry’s appearance on the show.Read more:
