We use code words for each other and to go under the radar,” says Møller. Gay men have used media to create their own spaces, for example through contact advertisements. Having sex with other men has always depended on ‘spaces’ in the city. “Gay culture has long been mediatised and closely knitted with communication technology. It displays other users in the area and allows users to contact each other. Grindr is a dating app for smartphones, which primarily attracts gay and bisexual men. Read More: Same-sex marriages are on the rise in Norway Avoiding conflict within relationships can be difficult and requires some work, since by default, Grindr shows everyone who is online in the neighbourhood, including your partner.
Møller saw that the use of Grindr among gay men in relationships depends on the agreement established within their relationship.įor example, whether it is an open relationship or a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ agreement. But the interesting thing was the ways non-monogamous relationships were negotiated in relation to the hook-up app interface,” he says. He has recently completed his PhD thesis looking at Grindr. “I found that a lot of people already in relationships searched for sexual partners,” says Kristian Møller, postdoc at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark. The study shows that Grindr has led to new ways for gay men to make themselves visible to one another and let each other know that they are available for intimate encounters.Īs people adapt to this, it changes the rules of the game and creates a new balance in the intimacy of gay dating culture. A new PhD project has analysed how the dating app Grindr has affected dating culture among gay men.