Would you choose a friend by how close they are?

The thing about Grindr is that the main criterion by which it shows you people is how close they are. It's the location. I said this on the Friend of Dorothy podcast, and once you've noticed it, it's hard to stop noticing.

Is that a criterion by which you would choose a boyfriend or a friend? Literally, how close they are.

Maybe if you just want to go to the pub down the road. For anything else, it's a strange place to start.

The other apps aren't much better, just different. On Hinge, how you're shown people is a function of how you choose other people and how other people choose other people. And then the algorithm just decides who is sort of hot. You know who is hot, because they always show you the really hot person when you've just run out of likes.

Easy and dangerous

What I find extraordinary is which part feels risky. As I put it on Friend of Dorothy:

It feels really easy to have sex with a randomer, that feels safe, and yet saying hello to someone, "how are you," feels very dangerous somehow.

Just going up to someone in a bar and saying hello can feel like an affront, like you're invading their personal space, even though you're in a bar. People can be totally physically intimate with a complete stranger they've never met, and yet emotional intimacy feels very difficult. To go up to someone in a club or a bar, say hello, and be rejected somehow feels much more hurtful as a possibility than someone on Grindr saying no.

So we don't. It's a muscle we have to practise, and I think it's got a lot worse since everyone moved online. People in a bar, unless they're closed up, want to talk to people. But it's so easy just to go on your phone.

Grindr is a bit like fast food, isn't it? If it's there, then you can do it. And the habit of hookups can take away from giving yourself the chance to make a quality connection. Why be on Grindr and talk after, when you could just talk?

What the apps do to how we see each other

I think how we treat other people is a reflection of how we're treating ourselves in the end. If people are objects, then you're an object as well. And maybe that's fun. But if that's the main way people go about it, and it's really hard to talk to people in bars, and there isn't another way of doing it except Hinge or dating, how on earth can you make quality connections? It just becomes a perpetual cycle of objectifying other people and yourself, and not giving other people, or yourself, the space to actually connect on a deeper level.

That's why I'm pleased to see more in-real-life events. Online is such a waste of time. Everyone's getting neck problems from looking down at their phone the entire time and scrolling.

Not a war on the app

I'm not against hookups. If everyone wants to do it, that's great. The point of No Sex Gay Weekend is not to reduce the amount of sex in the world. What I'd love is for Grindr to be a niche app. I would love it to be just a hookup app, and for people who want more, or are looking for friends, not to use it.

Because sometimes we do. When we're travelling, we use Grindr. How cool would it be if you could go travelling to Liverpool and quite easily find gay guys who would want to chat with you? You wouldn't have to go to a No Sex Gay Weekend event. That's probably what gay clubs used to be in the past, before apps, in the '90s and 2000s.

Not everyone is going to get on with everyone. But it's for you to get to know them, and in return to let other people actually get to know you. As I said at the end of that conversation:

Gay guys have so much to offer. Like, everyone has so much to offer, but we have so much more to offer each other than dick and ass, you know? We just have to give each other a chance, and give yourself a chance, really.

If you'd like to try it in person first, start with an evening event on what's on.