The VICE Guide to Grindr

After reading VICE’s useful guide for men on Tinder, I was inspired to do the same for my fellow man on Grindr. I realize that everyone on dating apps has different goals and endgames (marriage, murder, etc.), so this should be taken loosely, and tweaked heavily to achieve your goals (unless it’s actually murder). I also realize that some (aka not gay male) people might not be familiar with Grindr, so maybe this article will explain it a bit. I hope this helps some gays out, and if you’re not gay, strap yourselves in for the ride.

GRINDR IS NOT TINDER

If you picture Tinder’s interface like a filtration system, imagine Grindr like wading through a swamp with no shoes on. Anyone can send you unsolicited nudes as their icebreaker. ANYONE. There’s no degree of separation for a vetting process, it’s just a bunch of thirsty dudes in geographic cesspools hunting each other.

Because it’s not like Tinder, you shouldn’t be modeling your Grindr profile like one. Tinder is where you can post vacation photos with maybe a family member or best girlfriend to make it look like you’re a fun and functional human being. Don’t do that on Grindr. Grindr is for hookups, without having to go through the boring formalities like “What’s your name?” or “What do you do when the sun is up?”

CRAFT YOUR PROFILE

I mean, you could be looking for Mr. Right on Grindr, but in the context of my guide, you’re already using it wrong. In my experience, there are two successful types of Grindr profile to craft for successful responses: a sexy, mysterious profile where you come off as a cool, mildly apathetic person who doesn’t look as desperate as you actually are in real life, or the more direct approach. The direct approach has a Tinder-esque face pic, maybe shirtless, and has social media accounts linked to it.

Personally, I opt for the face pic with social media linked up, because in this modern age I feel like internet stalking is a given with online dating.

An important note about daily existence in society: Don’t be discriminatory! If you’re writing things like “no femme guys” or “masc4masc” or “white dudes only” you don’t deserve to hook up with ANYONE, and I hope you lose your phone in a taxi.

Once you pick your photo and ~vibe~ of your profile, it’s time to tell all the other desperately horny men what you’re looking for.

BE DIRECT ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

It’s really important to be clear about what you want and what you’re into. No one wants to go to someone’s place thinking it’s going to be a medium-vanilla hookup and the guy is high on meth with four friends, or asking me weird things like if I am going to ever see him again. You could be looking for those things, and I’m 100 percent not shaming you for it, but just tell people what they’re getting into. Ask, and you shall receive. Here are some examples of me telling all the dudes out there what it takes to get into my pants.

Grindr is a land of (mostly unwelcome) surprises, and it definitely pays off to tell people your expectations. Speaking of expectations, that brings us to my next guideline.

HAVE LOW EXPECTATIONS

I feel like this should be a general rule in any “dating” realm, not just on Grindr. If you’re going on Grindr expecting to meet a super hot guy who’s into all the same stuff as you and lives on the same floor of your building and has no emotional baggage and a perfect cock and doesn’t snore or tell you that you should be doing more with your life, you’re setting yourself up to be let down. I have had lots of good hookups on Grindr, but they’ve mostly just happened out of the blue, and definitely not from looking for my ideal companion.

I also message people who are way out of my league all the time on the off chance that it could actually lead to a hookup. Most of the time it does not, and I am OK with that. I know I’m not a catch, and I am OK with that as well.

When someone messages me, I usually assume that it’s a bot or a catfish, which are two of the most abundant creatures in the Grindr swamp. If a really sexy guy wants me to come over, he’s probably not using his own photos. Or they could just be a sexy algorithm that isn’t going to satisfy your loneliness whatsoever.

Here is my friend Brent talking to a gay robot

GET USED TO REJECTION

If I see someone I want to hook up with, I’ll usually message them first. This is definitely a parallel I see with Tinder, too…people having too much pride or ego or whatever to message the other person first. I don’t care about looking cool. I have no chill in real life, so why am I going to censor myself on Grindr, of all places?

I suggest getting used to being shot down. I don’t really take Grindr seriously, so it doesn’t faze me. Usually when I am on Grindr it’s also pretty late, which tends to bring out a lot of wasted and high people―much like a real bar! I’m sober, and not a sexual predator, so sometimes things can get a bit dicey. Night Grindr still beats Day Grindr. Day Grindr sucks.

Day Grindr is mostly just office job people sending you nudes from their work bathroom. The real action starts to happen at night. I like to think there’s a magic hour, where everyone is horny, but not too lazy to leave their house yet. Laziness factors into one of my favorite aspects of Grindr: potential guys being displayed by their proximity to my bedroom. People who’ve never used Grindr might be thinking it’s similar to Tinder’s “less than a kilometer away” distance feature. It’s not. This is like “yo dude I am 10 feet away from you, nice eyes” distances. You can turn your location off, and sometimes I do, but I also like the thrill.

GRINDR CAN BE SPOOKY

Safety is really important when using Grindr. If I am going to a guy’s place in the middle of the night I’ll let my roommate know, and send a photo of his location and face to her. I watch too much Forensic Files not to. The aforementioned “thrill” of location settings can also be terrifying. Once, I was on my mom’s farm in the middle of the woods and it said someone was 50 feet away from me and I freaked out and checked to make sure all the doors were locked. Maybe I am paranoid when it comes to going out alone at night to meet complete strangers for sex, but if there is any time to be overly alert and mildly skeptical, it’s then.

NONSEXUAL GRINDR

Even when I am not looking for dicks, Grindr can be one of the most entertaining pastimes. It’s really fun for me to check the Grindr game in weird places and places you don’t often frequent. Vacation spots, malls, small towns, and my all-time favourite: AIRPORTS. Why would I read a book when I can post up and look for random guys catching a connecting flight, or flight attendants, or perhaps even the rarest of them all―a pilot!

Hopefully this guide serves you well. I delete Grindr every other week and download it again when I am bored and horny. I honestly have better luck on Tinder, but sometimes I just like the comfort of knowing there’s a community of other lonely, horny guys a stone’s throw away from me.

Jaik Puppyteeth an artist and cynic based in Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter and jaikpuppyteeth.com