This brings us to Sniffies, a relatively new addition to the ever-growing slew of hookup apps geared towards gay men. Such oversimplification leads us to oblique solutions. What makes cruising radical is its persistence on the periphery Instead, it tends to fall back on a vague and well-worn claim that tech by nature makes us lonely and alienated.
Until just a few years ago, Grindr allowed users to sort by race, exacerbating racism that was already prevalent within the gay community, so often shrouded by vague claims of “preference.” But the anti-Grindr critique rarely focuses on the perniciousness of big tech. In 2018, the app admitted to sharing users’ HIV status to external companies. Last year, for example, Norway fined Grindr for selling sensitive personal information like GPS location, age, and gender identity to advertisers. In a poll, two-thirds of LGBTQ+ youth said that their mental health was negatively impacted by debates surrounding the bill.įurther, the critique of the apps themselves, and of Grindr in particular, is undoubtedly warranted. Hobbes’ piece, more ambitious in scope than others of its genre, makes a point of mentioning the lingering effects of the trauma of being in the closet, along with research that suggests the mental health of queer people worsens when homophobic legislation is on the docket - a dispiriting reality already taking shape in Florida, which passed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law in March.
This gripe wasn’t unique to media commentators the same concerns were echoed by reluctant app users themselves. Articles of this nature tended to blame apps for intensifying, if not causing, a broader crisis in gay men’s mental health, promoting loneliness, alienation, and materialism. A few of the many include the Guardian’s 2015 Op-Ed “Goodbye to all the gay bars,” Vox’s 2018 article “We need to talk about how Grindr is affecting gay men’s mental health,” and Michael Hobbes’ viral 2017 piece, “The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness,” for the Huffington Post. In the mid-to-late 2010s, as dating apps moved from the fringe to widespread public adoption, a slew of articles appeared advancing what is now a well-established critique of apps like Grindr and Scruff.