Is Grindr Lifeless? | Vox

[ad_1] What's Grindr presupposed to be?

I’m undecided if this existential query is one which retains anybody up at evening, however with the current announcement that the hookup app is rolling out EDGE, a $500 per month plan powered by “gAI” (pronounced gay-eye) expertise, it’s an inquiry that got here to my thoughts. I had just a few extra, too.

Has arranging intercourse change into so difficult that robotic help is now wanted? At $500 monthly, wouldn’t hiring a intercourse employee be extra economical and extra climate conscious ? Have pc scientists researched what occurs if you feed a synthetic intelligence a gradual stream of attractive chats?

Maybe an important query: Do the individuals who run Grindr know what Grindr is?

The introduction of AI feels unnecessarily difficult, throwing extra expertise and friction onto a platform that’s presupposed to be direct. Based on customers I spoke to, it appears like yet one more factor that the corporate is engaged on as an alternative of constructing the app extra consumer pleasant. For a corporation that made hooking up so environment friendly and simple, one thing about its present kind feels exhausting.

The collective dissatisfaction coupled with the rise of newer, extra direct hookup apps may be the loss of life knell for Grindr. However there’s additionally one thing anchoring this fatigue: Beneath the sticker shock and that gay-eye pun is a deeper story of what occurs when homosexual tradition turns into comfortably mainstream and what it means to be on Grindr in a world the place so many individuals don’t assume they want it anymore.

How Grindr grew to become such a ache to make use of

For an app that’s presupposed to be attractive and enjoyable, a number of the dialog surrounding Grindr is decidedly not attractive or enjoyable. The best way many customers discuss it comes from a spot of frustration and even embarrassment for utilizing the app in any respect.

Over the previous few years, Grindr customers have complained it’s change into concurrently extra unusable and extra expensive . To the individuals who have used it for almost a decade, it’s a transparent instance of what’s often called “ enshittifcation ,” a time period coined by Cory Doctorow to explain the phenomenon through which companies degrade their product to maximise revenue. Enshittification is sweet for enterprise and for executives, however unhealthy for customers.

Ryan, a former advertising and marketing worker who left in 2023, says the turning level occurred in 2022, when Grindr had its IPO. (Ryan requested for anonymity to have the ability to communicate freely about his time on the firm. In the meantime, a lot of the different males I interviewed for this piece got pseudonyms to have the ability to communicate frankly about their intercourse lives.)

After the corporate went public, Ryan says, the main focus shifted from Grindr’s customers to its traders. New CEO George Arison had a imaginative and prescient for the corporate that was extra aligned with a burgeoning tech firm (e.g. an obsession with AI ) than it did an irreverent queer startup.

“Grindr actually modified the sport in a number of methods; it was a special sort of cruising,” Ryan mentioned, explaining the app’s subversive roots. “It was, on the time, so cool and creative, however now, it’s taken on a Silicon Valley form.”

I requested AJ Stability, Grindr’s Chief Product Officer, concerning the criticism that Grindr has strayed from its core mission of constructing hooking up simpler. He mentioned that the hookups are only one section of the app, and that the corporate is excited about constructing different segments. “A few of the rules we have now in constructing our merchandise is giving customers selection…and management over what merchandise they need to use,” Stability advised Vox. “If customers don’t need to interact [with these products], they don’t should go there. They'll additionally decide out of those options in the event that they don’t need to take part in any respect.”

<img alt="Grindr flag in front of the New York Stock Exchange" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-1442554415.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Grindr went public in 2022. Spencer Platt/Getty Photos

To listen to Grindr customers inform it, the present route isn’t resonating with the folks merely utilizing Grindr as god supposed: to get laid.

“There’s a form of suggestions loop,” Jack, 46, advised Vox. “It will get sh*tty. Extra folks depart as a result of it’s sh*tty, they usually [Grindr] should make it even sh*ttier for the remaining customers in an effort to mid-max for income, not for consumer expertise.”

Jack initially downloaded Grindr again in 2009, when he acquired his first iPhone and across the identical time that he moved to New York Metropolis, the place he presently lives. That model was free and allowed customers to browse 100 profiles. On the time, you would spend $2.99 monthly on an ad-free model that doubled the variety of accounts you would have a look at. Jack mentioned his peak utilization was from round 2009 to about 2012, and he totally stopped utilizing the app in 2022 — the identical yr that Ryan, the previous worker, additionally says was the turning level.

Based on Jack (in addition to different present/former Grindr customers I spoke to), the app’s sh*ttiness is available in two foremost varieties: adverts and bots.

Seemingly, each time you faucet inside the app — whether or not you’re opening a message, receiving a photograph, loading extra profiles, and many others. — you’ll be hit with an advert that interrupts the motion. For a service that’s presupposed to promptly join excited customers to one another, it does its fair proportion of cockblocking. It’s made worse by the content material of a few of the adverts, which can be pretty unhinge . They could contain a recreation the place you save a child or pet from lava or ask you to consolation a bald, pregnant girl enduring a depressing life.

In the meantime, bots are faux profiles that ship spam messages to customers, typically linking to third-party web sites or asking for bank card data. As a result of they’re so prevalent, and a few try to do legit crimes, Grindr has a “Scam Awareness Guide” instructing customers on how to not get phished. Whereas a educated Grindr consumer might not ever fall for a bot, these faux profiles nonetheless take up house on grids; can depend towards the entire variety of profiles you possibly can view; and might inundate your inbox with messages and faucets (much like sending somebody an emoji response on an Instagram), triggering rounds and rounds of pointless notifications.

Based on Stability, the corporate takes each adverts and bots critically and is trying to “proceed to enhance the advert expertise.” He mentioned that complaints with the advert expertise might should do with Grindr’s privateness considerations.

“We really serve adverts with the least doable quantity of knowledge to share with advertisers due to that,” Stability mentioned. “And so we don’t share private data past IP deal with and advertiser identifier with consumer consent. Because of this, our adverts are much less customized and focused.”)

Need to make these annoyances go away? For now, you’ll want to begin wanting into Grindr’s paid mannequin.

That preliminary $2.99/month worth is lengthy gone. As an alternative, customers have the selection between two paid tiers: Xtra and Limitless. Xtra removes the adverts and unlocks the five hundred profiles nearest in proximity. Limitless, the dearer choice, unlocks all of the profiles together with further options, like with the ability to ship pictures that disappear after they’re opened. The pricing is roughly $15 per week or $150 to $300 per yr (there’s a slight low cost for paying up entrance, and Grindr presents sporadic gross sales). Based on Stability, there are roughly 15 million energetic customers and 1.2 million customers who pay for some form of premium model of the app.

A core tenet of enshittification is that the consumer ache factors aren’t bugs however options. The more severe a free expertise, the extra folks pays to keep away from it or to revive it to its unique use. On this mannequin, there isn’t any incentive to make issues higher, as a result of that isn’t what makes cash.

Did homosexual man tradition transfer past the necessity for Grindr?

As Grindr’s consumer expertise has modified, the tradition it helped mainstream modified, too — perhaps to the purpose the place Grindr has change into out of date.

Brian Moylan, a tradition author, advised Vox that Grindr’s trajectory from novelty, to the apex hookup app, to a different participant in a crowded area isn’t that stunning; he’s seen it occur earlier than. Previous to Grindr, homosexual guys have been on web sites like Manhunt and in Gay.com chatrooms. Grindr disrupted these platforms by providing one thing location-based and conveniently accessible by smartphone.

Moylan, 47, believes that the Grindr viewers in search of out hookups who're aggravated by the app’s declining usability have moved to Sniffies, a competitor that launched in 2018 and that places extra direct emphasis on hookups and public intercourse. Although Sniffies has a paid model ($19.99 monthly, with a reduction if you happen to pay for 3 or six months at a time), the fundamental options can be found to customers, and the adverts within the free model are minimal and simple to click on out of.

“Individuals are fed up with the apps generally, not simply Grindr, and need extra actual life experiences,” Moylan mentioned. “That’s why you’re getting this rise of Sniffies, which is making it extra like how cruising was once. It’s additionally about glory holes, and teams, and anonymity.”

Sniffies’s extra subversive, sex-forward angle can also be extra in keeping with how homosexual hookup tradition has modified. Moylan says that improvements like PrEP and extra basic information about safer intercourse has given queer males extra sexual freedom — which incorporates freedom to discover the form of kinks and fetishes that Apple’s app retailer restricts however Sniffies caters to. (Sniffies is primarily web-based; the corporate formally launched an app for iOS in 2025, however it was pulled due to restrictions on grownup content material.) That newfound freedom coincided with Individuals’ more and more open attitudes about being LGBTQ+. (Keep in mind: Obergefell v. Hodges , the Supreme Courtroom determination that legalized homosexual marriage, was nonetheless a few years away when Grindr launched.)

When Grindr debuted in 2009, it made hooking up with different males extraordinarily simple. All you ostensibly wanted have been (no less than) two males who had the app. However as LGBTQ+ tradition, and particularly homosexual males’s hookup tradition, turns into extra mainstream and socially acceptable, that connection isn’t inherent or unique to Grindr.

“It’s similar to if you understand you don’t want Grindr to hook up, there’s no cause to return to Grindr,” Phil, a 29-year-old, advised me. Phil first used the app when he graduated in faculty in 2018 however stopped after transferring to the South a yr later. Now, he and his husband discover social media to be simpler and environment friendly than any gay-specific relationship apps. “I don’t must get on Grindr to search out someone that I need to hook up with,” he mentioned. “I already know that as a result of we’ve been in one another’s DMs on Instagram or Twitter.”

“It’s a lot simpler to discover a homosexual man now,” Moylan mentioned. “Now, you go on a sizzling man’s Instagram, and there’s a rainbow flag within the bio, and like, ‘Oh, okay, I can message you.’”

Maybe it’s an indication of progress that we now not want a selected homosexual hookup app to orchestrate a homosexual hookup.

In the meantime, Grindr itself has additionally change into mainstream, cementing its place in popular culture. The app has been the topic of late night sketches . Sabrina Carpenter sampled its distinct notification sounds. It’s the punchline in jokes about its own ubiquity . There’s additionally the shopworn trope or gimmick that the individuals who use Grindr probably the most are those — Republicans , religious figures , and many others. — most hostile to homosexual males.

All of that universality sands away a few of its attraction. Shouldn’t Grindr, a platform that’s about hookups and intercourse, have some form of edge to it? Why would homosexual guys need to be on a web site that so many straight folks learn about?

The lads I spoke to for this text did observe that, regardless that they personally have outgrown Grindr, it nonetheless serves a objective: It’s prone to be extra precious in small cities, for instance, the place LGBTQ+ tradition may not be as accessible. It additionally permits youthful queer folks and males who're within the closet to discover their sexuality. For these customers, Grindr is less complicated to search out and extra accessible (e.g. on Apple’s app retailer) in comparison with a web site like Sniffies, and it has an even bigger consumer base to attach with.

Grindr’s cultural presence as an app that isn’t primarily for hookups feels in keeping with what the corporate envisions. Stability, the Grindr Chief Product Officer, used the time period “gayborhood” a number of occasions in his dialog with me, explaining that he sees Grindr as extra of a neighborhood than a hookup house.

<img alt="The Grindr logo!" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/gettyimages-625496254.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> When all is claimed and finished, Grindr continues to be probably the most seen hookup app that’s ever been created Getty Photos

“We predict the gayborhood idea is an effective metaphor for it. Throughout the neighborhood there are locations and areas for the extra hookup or informal encounter-forward features of homosexual life and there are locations and areas for dates and buddies and journey,” Stability mentioned, noting that the AI assistant would in all probability be extra inclined for the latter, as a result of it may streamline and set up these suggestions.

In a way, the neighborhood imaginative and prescient may be in keeping with how Grindr’s customers now see it. Most of the males I spoke to mentioned Grindr’s most helpful high quality is that it makes touring simpler. In these situations, they don’t essentially use the app for intercourse, however to attach and ask folks for suggestions about which bars to go to, good eating places to attempt, and what events are occurring — basically a social media app.

“I've it as a result of once I go to a brand new metropolis or I journey or one thing, it’s good to see who’s round. However I wouldn’t say that I exploit it as typically,” Ryan, the previous Grindr worker, advised me. However he mentioned that, whereas useful, asking homosexual guys the place to eat and what bars to go to isn’t what it was made to do and what it ought to be.