
The Glory of Grinder: Equality for LGBT - mdlm
https://medium.com/@michaeldelamaza/the-glory-of-grinder-699a589593d7#.2wgp0uf0m
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Traubenfuchs
Grindr brings out the worst in gay men, it is an STD sharing application and
often enough it makes me feel ashamed to be gay.

I believe that all in all it made the world worse for gay men.

~~~
xemoka
I disagree. Sure, there can be crummy people on it, but there's also great
people. People you can actually form relationships with—my partner can attest
to that one.

Also, sometimes sex is just sex, Tinder is no worse (or better).

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Traubenfuchs
I have heard lots of stories of people finding long term partners on Grindr,
but I am fed up with searching for someone who looks for a serious
relationship among a flood of dick pics and people who did not read my profile
even if my profile name was "ReadMyProfile". OkCupid and Tinder led me to more
success and half a handful of dates.

I am happy for everyone who is sex positive and enjoys Grindr to it's fullest
though, but I believe Grindr is reducing the gay population's interest in
monogamous relationship which is what I am looking for.

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xemoka
You're looking for something that isn't easily offered by the app, and yet
blame it on the app and the users using it for what it's readily available
for. I imagine you see the problem here...

~~~
Traubenfuchs
I blame the app for making it harder to find what I am looking for.

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bubaflub
I think the central point of the article is:

> The Uber opportunity for Grindr is to establish itself as the leader of a
> new social movement that encompasses gender, racial, and religious equality
> and freedom.

I don't think the author sufficiently explained what exactly they mean by this
nor why this should be true.

It's unclear to me what exactly is envisioned by, "a new social movement that
encompasses gender, racial, and religious equality and freedom" in two ways.

First: what specifically are the proposed changes to the current service
designed "to connect gay men for physical encounters" to meet this new mission
or goal? For example, does the author envision that Grindr should move from a
single service to a broader social media platform? Does the author envision
Grindr expanding its user base beyond "gay men"? Does the author envision
Grindr extending services beyond "physical encounters"? I feel that without
concrete proposed changes it is unclear to me what the author imagines the
future Grindr would look like.

Second: what specifically is meant by "equality and freedom"? Perhaps this is
an unfair criticism because these terms are contentious, more abstract, or
simply outside of the scope of what the author intended to discuss. The author
does mention a future Grindr that takes "strong social positions" and which
would cause "[s]ocial change ... followed by political change and then policy
change". But since the author did not define what they meant by "equality and
freedom" nor did they offer examples of social, political, or policy changes,
it is unclear to me what the author is envisioning the future Grindr would
actually accomplish.

By the end of the article I don't have a good sense of what the author thinks
future Grindr looks like, what it does, what its new mission is, nor how it
accomplishes it. I feel that there is a big discontinuity between a suggested
short-term goal of fixing the existing app because it has a two-star rating to
a suggested long-term goal of the CEO winning "the Nobel Peace Price just like
Martin Luther King Jr." Hyperbole or not, I feel that there are several
important conceptual steps missing in between these two.

Since the thesis was neither explained nor proved as a result hile reading the
article I kept asking myself, "Why Grindr? Why not Kickstarter, or Kiva, or
Facebook, or some other existing service with users?"

What ever it is the author was trying to convey, I don't think the article's
reasoning is clear, sound, or complete.

