'Most guys are pretty aggressive,' Tom told Mic. But he admitted that it's difficult for most gay men on the app to believe that he's only there to find drinking buddies. To this day, Tom said he will sometimes jump on Grindr to make new friends. Yet afterwards, Tom and his partner kept in touch, later becoming close friends. 'From the moment I was naked, I just knew it wasn't for me,' he said. Once, he let a guy he met give him oral sex. So Tom downloaded GrindrВ and flirted with men he met on the app. 'When you're 29 you reach the point where you're just like 'Well, am I gay?'' I guess the taunts bothered me more and more the older I got,' he told Mic. I didn't have the deepest voice and fucking hated sports. 'Growing up, I was called gay a lot by people in my grade. Tom*, 32, is another self-identified heterosexual man who uses GrindrВ to make platonic connections - although originally, he downloaded the app as part of a sexual experiment of sorts. 'I've noticed a crazy amount of dudes on there being like 'no fats, no fems,' I'm not super up to date on the lingo, but you can tell that guys are picky,' he told Mic. 'They're not going to be pissed at me for trying to connect when there are 20 other guys that are willing to hook up right around them.'ДЄndrew also said that being onВ GrindrВ has given him keen insight into the internalized homophobia within the queer community. 'I think even gay guys are tired of strict labels,' he told Mic. While some guys have been pushy about hooking up with Andrew, he says that most of the men he talks to are accepting of his orientation. 'So I downloaded Grindr not for sex, but to meet cool gay guys in a totally relaxed way.' 'Every time I went to a gay bar to meet people, I was getting push-back from guys who thought I was taking up space,' he told Mic. He found it difficult to make new friends in the sprawling city. 'I grew up doing theater in high school, so I've just always been comfortable around gay guys,' Andrew told Mic.ДЄfter graduating college Andrew moved to Seattle to work in finance. While you'd think many of them would be in the closet (and indeed, an estimated 18% of gay men on the app are), that's not the case: Andrew is totally straight. Straight men like Andrew*, 24, have also turned to GrindrВ to make friends. 'I think they were very clear that they're open to friendships but they aren't looking for a woman to become a huge part of their life through the app.' 'We will grab drinks once every few weeks and go dancing and text, but beyond that we don't hang out every day,' she told Mic. Now, Elizabeth estimates that she's made at least two friends on the app. Her profile picture was blank, and her bio read: 'looking to connect with genuine guys.' But when she labeled herself as a 'twink,' she found the conversations she was having with her matches were more open and accepting. She told Mic that when she was a jock, there were more expectations for her to exude typical masculine traits. GrindrВ touts itself asВ 'theВ world's leading social app exclusively for gay, bi and curious men.' The geosocial app finds other gay men in your area, then allows you to 'connect' with them based on height, weight and of which 'tribe' (bears, twinks, jocks, etc.) you're a member.Д®lizabeth originally signed up as a jock, then switched to twink when she discovered it was easier to make friends with people who self-identified that way. She is one of a number of people who have turned to the app for something other than sex: platonic friendship. While it might seem strange for a heterosexual woman to use one of the largest gay dating apps out there, Elizabeth is not alone. But after I explained to the few who would listen, they were all really accepting of me,' she told Mic. 'Once I told them I wasn't a guy, a lot of them blocked me. Over time, Elizabeth started regularly hanging out with a few of the men she met onВ Grindr. But even though she didn't find out whether her boyfriend was cheating on her on Grindr, something surprising happened after she ultimately broke up with him: 'I actually started making connections.' 'None admitted to it,' Elizabeth told Mic. She needed answers but wasn't sure where to begin, so she pulled out her smartphone and downloaded Grindr for reconnaissance.ДЄt first, Elizabeth pretended to be a man on her profile, asking around to see if any of the men in her area were sleeping with her boyfriend. To hear Elizabeth tell it, her boyfriend had never expressed interest in men before, so she couldn't believe he might be interested in having sex with them. She was talking about how she discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her after she found a dick pic on his phone. 'This is embarrassing,' Elizabeth*, 26, told Mic over the phone, her voice shaking.

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