Kirsten Michelle Cills
Hello and welcome to So Curious, presented by the Franklin Institute.
The Bul Bey
We are your hosts. I am an incredible rapper named The Bul Bey!
Kirsten Michelle Cills
And I am a mind-blowing stand-up comic! I’m Kirsten Michelle Cills.
The Bul Bey
On this season of So Curious!, we are talking all about the science behind love, sex, and relationships. Everything from your brain on love, to why we obsess over our favorite television characters, to how science and tech are changing our relationships with each other.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
For this episode, we are going to be talking with the VP of Grindr, Patrick Lenihan, and we’re going to be discussing the popular gay dating app.
The Bul Bey
And later, we are joined by the chief bioscientist of the Franklin Institute, Dr. Jayatri Das, to get some insight into the role science plays in the behaviors and social norms around hookup culture.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Bey, I’m going to be honest with you. I am so stoked to talk to our first guest. Something that I know about Grindr is that it’s less of an algorithm and it’s more proximity-based, which is, like, pretty ahead of its time. So with Tinder, there’s more of this complicated algorithm, but Grindr is all about proximity.
The Bul Bey
Yeah. So Grindr presents you with options based on who is closest to you physically.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Literally, down to the 100-foot measurement. And the cool thing about Grindr is it was so revolutionary, because it was the first platform to really build community for gay people in your area. Have you ever been to New York’s Pride?
The Bul Bey
I haven’t.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
As a gay myself [laughs], Pride rocks! You can’t walk more than 100 feet without running into Grindr merch. It is everywhere. They are, like, the kings of this. And they really found a way to bring together communities, especially in areas where it might not be as okay to be outwardly gay, maybe in different parts of the country, different parts of the world, to still be able to find each other.
The Bul Bey
Yeah. Which is very cool.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. Not every town in rural America is going to have a gay bar.
The Bul Bey
Right. Or just interests, right? Interests that kind of intersect in these particular communities and pockets of places.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. How are you supposed to meet your fellow gay people if there’s no drag brunch?
The Bul Bey
Yeah, right.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
That’s where I’ve met all my closest friends.
The Bul Bey
Mimosas…!
The Bul Bey
Well, this is a great time to introduce our first guest, who knows more about Grindr than most people.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Patrick Lenahan is vice president and head of communications at Grindr, the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. As Grindr’s chief spokesperson, Patrick represents the company to media investors and the broader LGBTQ+ community. Thank you so much for being here, Patrick.
The Bul Bey
Welcome to the So Curious! Podcast. Can you tell us more about your history, the history of Grindr, how revolutionary it has been for the gay community and beyond?
Patrick Lenahan
I came out as a gay man 20 years ago. When I came out — and I think that a lot of people have this experience — even though I lived in northern suburban New Jersey, which is relatively cosmopolitan, and you can sort of like, see Manhattan from certain points in town, you still have this impression that you’re the only gay person in the world. And that has been, I think, a prevailing experience for a lot of queer people throughout history: not knowing whether or not there are people like them, and not being able to find one another. That sense of isolation is incredibly heavy and tough to carry. And that’s what queer community has been, is people coming together around these commonalities. Grindr was invented in 2009, relatively soon after the launch of the iPhone. This was, like, an early, first-generation app when apps were the sexiest new thing.
The Bul Bey
“There’s an app for that.”
Patrick Lenahan
Right! Those sorts of commercials! And it was invented by this guy, Joel Simkhai in Los Angeles, who was like, “I want to find my people, I want to find gay people. And it’s got to be easier than looking around and guessing.” And so he developed this really, really simple technology, and it’s just people who create profiles, and seeing those people in proximity. If you download Grindr today, it’s not really dissimilar from what you would have seen in 2009. You see, upon creating an account, the first 100 people who are closest to you, who are also on the app. And you see the information about those people that they choose to share with you, a profile photo, their gender, their age, what they’re into and interests, whether or not they want to share photos, whether or not they want to meet up, things like that. And you can see whether they’re online, and you can chat with anybody who’s sort of in your area. And then there’s a variety of feature sets that are sort of behind some paywalls and that expand your reach and your ability to talk to other people to 600, or unlimited…. We have roughly 12 million monthly active users, which is a lot of people, and they’re all queer, and they’re all looking to connect with one another.
Patrick Lenahan
And so our mission, which — this is now a 13-year-old company, and so it’s been through different leaders and groups of people running it — but I think the mission has stayed more or less the same. And the way we describe it is, it’s our mission to connect queer LGBTQ+ people with one another and with the world.
The Bul Bey
And you mentioned proximity just a second ago. Why is that so important to building community? The Internet has opened up the world to everybody, and we can create community online, but speak really quickly to proximal communing, and just connecting.
Patrick Lenahan
I think a lot of social media aims to BE your social relationships, to completely intermediate them. And that is not what Grindr does. Grindr is there to accelerate your social relationships with people offline. And so the point is to actually meet people and to get to know people. And yeah, you can chat on the app for as long as you want, and if that’s where you’re most comfortable and feel like connecting there is what’s right for you, then that’s great. But the idea is that people who are close to one another will want to meet up in person, and we are encouraging of that. Obviously, you have to be safe and we have this very detailed, robust safety guide that we share with all of our users. But we think people meeting people is really important. It’s sort of like the foundation of it’s, somewhere in the middle of Maslow’s hierarchy. So we think it’s pretty important.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Well, first of all, I just want to say I love what you just said a few minutes ago about growing up in a smaller town, and then just really feeling like you’re the only queer person there. I’m from the suburbs outside of Philly, and it’s so interesting how Philly is such a…. I mean, famously gay! You know, we have the Gayborhood, and that’s where I ended up going to college. But prior to that, I remember feeling the exact same way. It’s like, “oh, I’m the sole gay person in the world.” And then I moved into a place called, on Google Maps!, called the Gayborhood, with rainbow signs on every street sign and, you know…just amazing. So. I love that thought. I’ve never put that into words before, but can you tell me, in your personal experience, did you use Grindr prior to working for Grindr?
Patrick Lenahan
Oh, yes, funny story!
The Bul Bey
We love those.
Patrick Lenahan
I was living in the Middle East in Doha, Qatar, and a friend of mine came back from the US. And was like, “you would not believe what they have now!” I was like, “What?!? Like, there’s an app just to find other gay people, what?!?” And you couldn’t download it there, and there are reasons why you couldn’t download it there that you could fill a whole other podcast about… But, so, I didn’t really download it until after I left. I was in Doha for two years, and then I moved to San Francisco.
Patrick Lenahan
And then I got to San Francisco — I land there — I spent years in the Middle East. I’m not acculturated to [laughs] Northern California, and didn’t have any gay friends there. And so the first thing I did was download Grindr. And even though I lived like a mile from the Castro, that was still one of the ways where I started to make gay and queer friends right off the jump. And I was like, “oh my God, there’s so many of us here!”
Patrick Lenahan
Grindr does not feel like Match.com, Tinder, Bumble. It’s not designed the same way it came before these apps, and it’s designed very differently. So those apps all, it’s like a swipe model, right? You’re like shown a card and you see some information, you see a picture, you see some pictures, it’s left or right and you make a decision. And maybe you match, maybe you don’t. There’s basically a control valve these companies have of how many people they’re showing you, and it’s algorithmically determined. And it’s probably a little bit like gambling, right? Like, they’re going to give you a match one in every 125 swipes to keep you interested and engaged. We don’t do that. That’s not the point. We hope people make connection. And at the core of the queer LGBTQ experience is sex in one way, shape, or form, right? Sexual expression, sexual exploration, identity. So at the core of any gay app is going to be sex. But it’s much more than that, I think. And the app’s structure of the application speaks to that. My own personal experience with Grindr has been way better when it’s about just making friends and chatting with people in new places than getting into the whole hookup-y thing. That’s fine and good and great, but personally, I have been, in my life, less frustrated when I’m just on there looking for friends and people.
The Bul Bey
Did the community create Grindr or did Grindr help cultivate the community, how people interact and talk to one another?
Patrick Lenahan
I will say definitely Grindr did not create the community. Absolutely not.
The Bul Bey
Yeah. And specifically, “hookup culture.” Did the app create that culture, or was the culture already there?
Patrick Lenahan
Definitely not, I think.
The Bul Bey
Okay, great.
Patrick Lenahan
The great thing about being gay is there’s actually this incredibly long and well documented history, particularly since the 1960s. Or even since the 1950s. Actually, for the last 2000 years! There’s some pretty fascinating history documented of LGBTQ people, whether or not they were called that. And more recently, you’ve got books like “The Answer from the Dance,” and “Faggots,” and “Giovanni’s Room.” And these are all books that were written in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and they describe a culture that anybody who’s in the queer community today would read and go, “oh, yeah, that sounds like Saturday night at 3-Dollar Bill!”
Patrick Lenahan
I think hookup culture existed for sure, although most of my adult sexual life has been since Grindr was out. But at the same time, Grindr is not so much a product of the community. Grindr is like so many pieces of technology, kind of like a mirror or a cipher for human behavior. At its core, it’s a very simple and basic piece of technology. It’s literally just accounts on a proximity grid. That is like, really basic stuff. And all of our competitors have copied that [laughs].
Patrick Lenahan
So it’s really how you use it. And I think it’s really with all pieces of technology, like Jia Tolentino’s, “Trick Mirror,” where she talks about, we look at this thing and we see human behavior on this unbelievably massive scale that we probably were never supposed to see it at, right?
Patrick Lenahan
And I think a lot of what we see in this giant, giant “Trick Mirror” is stuff that we don’t particularly like sometimes. And sometimes it’s stuff that we do really like. We have I think a tendency to focus on stuff that we don’t. In any event, I think that it’s definitely a product of gay culture in many ways. I mean, I don’t know, we could go deep on this for a long time. To just straight answer your question, Grindr is more the product of the community than anything else.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. And I feel like one of the beauty of Grindr specifically is that it’s creating, it’s taking something with so much history — like you said, that had to, at many points in history, be underground — and making it visible and then as a result, safer in so many ways and making it more transparent, which is incredible. And so I’m curious because, for example, during New York Pride or Philly Pride, there is so much Grindr merch everywhere, right? Which is amazing. What would you say is Grindr’s presence offline? What is your mission in supporting local queer spaces?
Patrick Lenahan
This is something about which I personally care a great deal, and the company is really committed to. We’ve talked about how we see ourselves as facilitating and accelerating social relationships, not replacing them. And there is a whole and the sort of hyper-local nature of our business is showing people things like, right there, that they can go and walk to and meet. And we want that to carry over into how we support queer businesses, bars, nightlife and experiences. That, over the last two years has been something that’s been pretty hard to do, with COVID. And we’ve sort of fought that fight as everyone else has. We’ve done a lot to partner with a group called Save Our Spaces, which is focused specifically on helping keep LGBTQ bars and nightlife venues open and thriving. And we’ve, I think, done 30 different bar activations, all COVID-protocol compliant, just to keep driving traffic to those bars where we traditionally have showed up. And we want to make sure those bars continue to be successful. There is no Grindr without gay spaces. There’s really not, right? I think that there’s a lot of… One thread of things that I hear, and I’ve been at the company three months, so I’ve heard everybody has called me to criticize the company, and to praise the company, and I’ve sort of heard everything from every side.
Patrick Lenahan
And one criticism is, oh, well, Grindr’s killing gay bars. I was like, I don’t actually know if that’s true because, yes, you can now go on Grindr and meet people. And before you could only really go to gay bars, at the same time, it’s become much more socially acceptable to be gay. So I think gay people are showing up sort of everywhere, and everywhere is a little bit of a gay bar now. And you can take it or leave it, but I’m a big believer in having space that is specifically for queer people and puts queer people first. And I think we are looking for, now that we’re moving into sort of this next phase of COVID where things are — we know how to handle things — I think we’re going to be doing more stuff offline that we’re really excited about.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Just for people who may be listening and aren’t super familiar with the logistics of Grindr, can you just tell us how you specifically provide that info to other users?
Patrick Lenahan
Totally. So when you sign up, we walk you through it, you sort of have to click all the boxes and say all the things. And we encourage you to take a look at our privacy policy. And we will regularly push into the Inbox — which is just where all your messages show up — we’ll push messages letting you know about things going on in your community. We’ll let you know about, if there’s safety things going on, or there have definitely been times when there’s been an STI outbreak in a particular area, and we’ve been able to push a notification to encourage testing, things like that. So that like really basic. It’s really basic. It’s just literally sending messages to people, based on where they are, with the information that we think that they’re going to need. And this becomes particularly helpful in countries — because we’re not just operational in the US, we’re operational in nearly every country in the world, and that includes countries where it is illegal to be gay. And we don’t operate in those countries because we think we’re going to get subscription revenue or anything. We operate in those countries because the third-party LGBTQ+ activists who are operational there have asked us to stay operational in those countries, because we create opportunity for people there to connect with one another that they really wouldn’t have otherwise.
Patrick Lenahan
There’s a greater burden of security in those places. So in places like Egypt, we push daily safety messages to our users, letting them know about what’s going on. And we do that in a number of different places where it is much more risky to be gay. And again, that information typically is coming from — it’s not our information, it’s information from these nonprofits and third parties. We’re just acting as connective tissue again, and making sure our users stay safe. We don’t monetize or make any money off it, this is purely like, this is just the right thing to do, to stay in these countries and to help people connect with one another, even if there are risks.
The Bul Bey
Which is amazing. And I’m really happy that you’re here to share that. So people know that Grindr extends beyond connections. It’s also information, it’s also safety, it’s all these different things rolled into one. So, Patrick Lenahan, thank you so much for taking the time to come on here and talk to us about not just the app and not just the culture, but the overall community. And just learning these different dynamics, it certainly was enlightening for me.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time.
Patrick Lenahan
Thank you guys for having me on. I really appreciate it.
[show music]
The Bul Bey
So what surprised you most about this conversation around Grindr?
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Oh, my God. I thought I knew everything about Grindr. My biggest takeaway from that is how Grindr works in other parts of the world and areas where it might not at all be okay — it’s sometimes illegal — to be gay, and so then they have the whole not just their usual community and all that, but then they also have the ability with those extra features in places like that where they have notifications to keep yourself physically safe, keep your health safe. That is dope.
The Bul Bey
No, it’s really important. Like, if there’s an STI outbreak in a certain pocket of a place, you can know about that, and have information about your health, that is always good. For me, what stood out was: it’s not all about sex. Some of this was just about building community and meeting people with similar interests. You might be in a space where… Obviously we live in a cis-hetero-dominated narrative space in most of our communities. So being able to navigate and meet new people is always fun and always great. We’re social animals. We need to always build and grow, no matter what our orientations are.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. Not everyone gets the luxury of living in the Gayborhood in Philadelphia, like I did all through college.
The Bul Bey
I’m sure that was fun.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Oh, buddy…! [laughter]
Kirsten Michelle Cills
On the topic of hookups, first of all, we can see how insane the changes in science and medicine — the positive changes — have been, from as far as hundreds of years ago to 50 years ago to even five years ago. And it really changes the risks and the perception of hookup culture, right? Because now we have a lot more of an ability to do it safely.
The Bul Bey
Absolutely. I haven’t hooked up a bunch, and I’m in a relationship right now, so I don’t hook up at all. But what I really appreciate is just how that’s really being held as a “normal human behavior,” the nee,d or desire, the urge, to want to connect with someone and be intimate or have a moment, a brief moment, but do it safely and do it in a way where we’re not dehumanizing anyone or jeopardizing anyone’s health. So I appreciate that. Really entering the space of science and behavior and medicine and so on and so forth.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
As with all questions that come up, we got a consult with our girl, the chief bioscientist at the Franklin Institute, Dr. Jayatri Das.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Hey, Bey. Hey, Kirsten. How are you?
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Good. How are you?
Dr. Jayatri Das
Good. So we’re talking hookup culture, right?
The Bul Bey
Uhhh…Yeah.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Hell, yeah. Aren’t we always?
Dr. Jayatri Das
Well, I think what fascinates me as an entry point into this topic is just how common it is. I was looking at some data, and some of the most recent data actually suggests that looking at college students, 60% to 80% of college students have had some type of hookup experience, and it’s common among younger teens as well. But this is clearly, like, a very common experience that’s kind of embedded in our culture these days.
The Bul Bey
60% to 80% is a large number. That’s a big number.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Yeah.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
So, Jayatri, tell us a little bit about your research in the topic of hookup culture.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Well, one of the things that I was interested in, from a biological point of view is, where is this culture coming from? Because maybe it’s always existed, but we’re also seeing some changes in physiological trends about how our bodies work that intersect, again with some social trends that I think people are looking at, as a reason for why there’s this prevalence of hookup culture. And so if you look at the United States, the age at which people get married and reproduce is getting later and later, and that’s definitely tied to a lot of social factors. And at the same time, the age at which kids are reaching puberty is getting younger. And so there’s this longer time span in which young adults are ready for reproduction and physiological interactions in that sense, but they’re not psychologically or socially ready to settle down yet. And so that increased time frame, I think, is part of the reason that scientists and social scientists think, that has given rise to the prevalence of hookup culture.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Interesting. So if I’m understanding you correctly, there’s a much larger gap now between when you’re physically able to, and might have the physical urges to have sex versus when socially and logistically and all of that, you can actually be building relationships. And so that gap is sort of leading to things like hookups.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Yeah, that’s right. So if you look at some of the causes of why we think kids are entering puberty earlier, you look at just the fact that we’re healthier across the board. So there’s lower rates of disease. Nutrition is changing. People have more stability in terms of their health, their food, their shelter. There’s also some theories that there’s potential environmental exposure to chemicals that might disrupt our hormone function. There’s a lot of questions. We don’t really know why. But you can see trends in that the average age of puberty has decreased by almost a year, which is pretty significant when you’re thinking about the lifespan of kids.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. What was the prior average age? What did it downgrade to?
Dr. Jayatri Das
So you’re seeing shifts from age 11-12 down to nine or ten. Hundreds of years ago, we were looking at puberty at age 15-16.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Wow.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Right. When people were really facing a lot of hardships in just sort of getting to that age beyond childhood disease.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yes. Which is interesting, because I feel like in older days, at least, the way it’s portrayed in movies, yeah, you did go through puberty later, but then that was immediately the age you, like, got married!
Dr. Jayatri Das
Exactly. Right.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
There was no gap.
Dr. Jayatri Das
You didn’t have time to hook up.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. Right.
The Bul Bey
Aww, no time.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah.
The Bul Bey
I’m starting to notice that there seems to be like, some legitimacy around just sexual pleasures and developing a language around that. Maybe hookups are part of that. I don’t know.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Okay, so we’re going to switch gears to part two of “Body of Knowledge.”
The Bul Bey
We went to the Internet to find out what people are asking about hooking up.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
We typed in, “how do hookups,” and we let the Google algorithm do the rest.
Dr. Jayatri Das
I’m so curious to see what comes up.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
We saw some of the most commonly asked questions about hookups were, “how do hookups work?” I would love to know as well. If I ever find out, I will let them know.
The Bul Bey
Yeah, I mean, should I try to answer that?
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah, go ahead.
The Bul Bey
How do hookups work? Well, it’s normally after 07:00 p.m. Maybe? I don’t know.
The Bul Bey
Okay, so the next question that we put into the Google search, right, is “how do hookups,” and the autocomplete” “how do hookups start?”
Kirsten Michelle Cills
How do hookups start?
The Bul Bey
I mean, you know, a little, “wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah. Wearing your hottest outfit, feeling good.
The Bul Bey
Yeah. I would imagine it’s different for everyone. There are different entry points. I guess. [Laughter] That may have been a terrible framing [laughter], but… There are platforms and apps and numbers and groups and communities. There’s just different ways, I guess, to do it in 2022.
Dr. Jayatri Das
Some of the work I was reading really focused on the fact that both the motivations to hook up as well as the reactions afterward that people experience are really complicated, and we don’t understand them very well. So, for example, in one study, they looked at people who are experiencing, maybe feelings of loneliness or depressive symptoms, who might look at a hook-up as a way to feel better. And in those people, they did see a decrease in those feelings after hooking up. So there’s like a positive impact there.
Dr. Jayatri Das
But in the same study, if you looked at people who had fewer of those depressive symptoms starting out, then often these casual engagements end up feeling more depressed afterwards. So it’s hard to figure out and just really pinpoint why people are doing this for any specific reason. I think it really differs and there’s a whole spectrum of reactions and feelings that people feel afterwards.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Next, we continued typing in, “how do hookups,” and the next question was, “end.”
Kirsten Michelle Cills
How do hookups end, Bey?
The Bul Bey
Hopefully pleasantly, with everyone being okay with what took place.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Hopefully, amicably?
The Bul Bey
Yeah. And…quietly?
[laughter]
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Great. Okay, Jayatri, what do you think? How do hookups end?
Dr. Jayatri Das
There’s a whole spectrum, right? There’s a little bit of data in terms of what makes people more likely to feel regret. And some of what I read was that one-night stands, or hooking up with somebody that you’ve known for less than 24 hours, are two factors that are more likely to predict whether you’ll feel regret afterwards.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Damn, that tracks though.
Dr. Jayatri Das
I mean, it seems like common sense there.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Yeah, right.
Dr. Jayatri Das
I wasn’t really surprised to read that.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Jayatri, as always, thank you so much. And thank you so much to Patrick for being on this episode of So Curious! Next week we are going to talk about what is going on under the surface when we fall in love — literally, like biologically, what is going on?
The Bul Bey
This and more on next week’s episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts and music and content, just subscribe right now.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
Do it.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
So Curious! is presented by the Franklin Institute. And special thanks to the Franklin Institute producers, Joy Montefusco and Dr. Jayatri Das. This podcast is produced by Radio Kismet. Radio Kismet is Philadelphia’s premiere podcast production studio. The managing producer is Emily Charish. The producer is Liliana Green. The lead audio engineer and editor is Christian Cedarlund. Head of operations is Christopher Plant. And the editors are Lauren DeLuca and Justin Berger. The science writer is Kira Vallette. And the graphic designer is Emma Sager.
The Bul Bey
And I am The Bul Bey, signing off for today.
Kirsten Michelle Cills
And I am Kirsten Michelle Cills, also signing off for today. And we will catch you next week.
