Dating apps such as Grindr/Tinder: how to remedy the flaws

in #lgbt6 years ago

This post is essentially targeted at the LGBT folks here, but of course, anyone is welcome to inject their opinion.

For those of us, gay guys, who have used Grindr and Tinder in the past with earnest attempts for new encounters, regardless of their nature (sexual, friendly, romantic), we have all experienced staggering frustration with the kind of conversations occurring. Fleeting conversations, robotic-like exchanges "lookin? - sup - t/b?", ghosting, and generally speaking a lack of substantial narrative.

The problem, (not a new one and numerous research have confirmed this), is that gay men crave validation and gratification. For all the years spent in the closet during their upbringing, trying to navigate their identity amidst the heteronormative landscape bestowed upon them at their birth, gay men suffer from authentic displaying. Years of cognitive dissonance have begotten a fragile identity, shaped by societal expectations of how their biological sex is surmised to "perform".

Thus, having ineptly built their identity by failing to embrace their authentic selves, once gay men reach a certain age of sexual activity, all those years of inadequacy pile up and the gay man overcompensates his endeavors for sex with strangers because sex with a stranger entails validation (physical) which satiates the gay man's deficiencies but only temporarily as the orgasm (and the hookup) is (sadly) ephemeral. And then the gay men scours the next profile hoping to fill in that hole (pun intended) again.

Grindr and Tinder enable and facilitate this. I think this needs to stop.

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Two unrelated responses:

  1. I don't like to paint with such broad strokes. Even if generalizations have a grain of truth, they are reducing everything and everyone down to easily-digestible form, which does a huge disservice to us as individuals. I think it's more the nature of dating sites than the nature of gay men. "Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think." - Emma Goldman

  2. I manage the Discord server for Steemit's LGBT+ community, which you are welcome to join by clicking on the banner below. There is a brief, straightforward screening process we use to keep out the trolls and protect our members' privacy.

Welcome to Steemit. :)

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