archiveGrindr

The dating arena is an unforgiving place. There’s no time to waste on that search for lasting love. As ever, I only want to help, so if you want to separate the men from the boys and the woulds from the would-nots, here I have 25 more men you should, if at all possible, avoid when dating. Everything I do, I do it for you. You should never date a man who… 1. Has a 'hilarious' answer-phone message. Wacky outgoing voicemail messages are up there with novelty underpants, Homer Simpson...

The year is 2001. I am in a bar, talking to a gay man. I used to do that. He might be trying to pick me up; I can't tell. He takes another sip of his almost-drained drink and looks me up and down carefully. Here we go. "How old are you?" he asks, with a mouthful of beery spittle. "I'm 25," I reply. He surveys me again as if looking at a child's finger painting. Finally, he speaks. "If you want a body, you're going to have to get...

You can’t get more upfront and visual than Grindr. It’s the frank, confrontational reality TV show contestant of the social media app world, assuring you if it has anything to say it will “say it your face” or telling you “what you see is what you get”. Of course the truth is something quite different. Grindr is merely a cloudy mirror, vaguely reflecting society but usually doing its own hair or photoshopping out its eye-bags. What it has done with its instant gratification storefront, however, is slowly strangle some of...

You know what they say: “evolve or die”. And in a world where your next French kiss might be no farther than the end of your backyard, gay dating and hook-up sites have had to change faster than most. Way back when Grindr was nothing more than just a vague wet dream in Joel Simkhai’s mind, the king of the road when it came to meeting guys was Gaydar – its array of oiled-up nipples and extreme close-ups as synonymous with the late Nineties and early Noughties as Steps, Harry...

The 2010s are truly the age of the share, whether Instagramming pictures of your breakfast, Facebooking all your friends about your holiday or tweeting a link to your latest blog. Social media has turned us all into broadcasters, producing special-interest programming on every aspect of our lives and thoughts. We are all our own chat show. But while we gently mock those who overshare or bore on about their children or their dull jobs or impart half-baked political opinions, social media has also given us a window into people’s lives...

What's in a name? You don't know the half of it. The one thing they forget to tell you when you try online dating is that you have to pick a name for yourself. Yes, not only do you have to fret about whether your pictures make you look pretty or the quality of your babbling blurb, you also have the added trauma of coming up with a profile name. It has to encapsulate everything about you in one easy line. It will appear alongside your picture and could mean...

There are so many good guys out there -- you almost need two hands to count them. But in among the gold, is the tin. The sand in your sandwiches, the rain on your parade. The world is full of men you shouldn't date, for every kind of reason. If only there were some kind of test, or a 'tell', so you could easily divine the dregs from the demigods. There's no magic answer, but if your potential beau is a 'yes' to any of the list below, it may...