My RNC Grindr Adventure

Published Aug 2, 2024, 4:00 AM

Gare investigates the alleged increase in Grindr activity at the 2024 Republican National Convention.     

Cool zone media grinder. I hardly this is it could happen here where today the it is gay flirting and or harassment, and the here is Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the twenty twenty four Republican National Convention. I'm gare also known by my undercover alias Garrison Davis, and I was lucky enough to be one of our on the ground RNZ correspondence. A few weeks ago. We provided daily coverage of the GOP Coronation festival based on our conversations with delegates, lobbyists, and think tank ghoules, and reported on the general trends in rhetoric used by popular speakers at the event. We'll have some more in depth episodes about those topics in the weeks to come, using more of our recorded interviews we collected at the convention. But on top of our regular coverage, I also had a special assignment that I'm more or less assigned to myself. On this show, we often talk about right wing extremism and issues facing gay and trans people, including the various ways conservatives and Christian nationalists are trying to make life harder for queer people, whether through legislation, online harassment, and physical violence as These are two of our most frequently covered topics. Being at the Republican National Convention provided me with the perfect opportunity to investigate the intersection between conservatism and homosexuality. For years, I've heard rumors and urban legends about a massive influx of Republicans flocking to the gay hookup app Grinder to get laid during the R and C. Whether they be twenty year old Republican twinks from Miami or fifty three year old self hating, closeted gay men from Idaho trapped in loveless marriages, curiosity has often gotten the better of me, and I needed to know how many homosexual Republicans were actually logging onto Grinder You're unfamiliar. Grinder is technically a dating app that serves the LGBTQ community, but in actuality, it is a mediocre hookup app that mostly serves as a way for strangers in their forties to completely unprompted send you unflattering pictures of their penis. Grinder was launched in two thousand and nine and is arguably the largest and most popular gay dating app, especially among men. Grinder has only been around for two in person RNCs prior to this point twenty twelve and twenty sixteen, since all convention activities moved online during twenty twenty for the pandemic. So this July, for the first time in eight years, Republicans from all around the country could gather in one city and once their wives fell asleep, log on to Grinder and this episode, I'm going to tell you about my RNC Grinder experience. Before traveling to the city that was about to be invaded by all of the weirdest Republicans in the country, I needed to do some prep to help ensure safety and success in my investigative endeavor. I hope you queers liked that terrible punt. Based on the massive increase in violent anti trans rhetoric coming from the GOP, I already knew that I would be dusting off my old boy motor skills and going undercover as a cisgender male. Although my ability to pass as a straight mail is debatable, I can at least easily pass as a not quite straight male. My trans feminine fashion taste has been skewing more mask lesbian in recent years, so clothing wasn't really an issue. I packed up basically all my button up collared shirts, three ties, two black suits, and a beige London fog trench coat. Basically, the vibe I was going for was half young Republican, half Roman towel boy dressed as a nineteen fifties FBI agent. I refer to this as Dale Cooper Moting. I was unwilling to cut my hair to match most of the young Republican frat boys, so I settled on styling my wavy blonde locks like Baron Trump meets Total Swinton. In Constantine. I was kind of Gabriel maxing for most of the convention, and though most attendees were unable to pick up on my diikish undertones, the one day I wasn't wearing a tie, I did get she heard by the Secret Service when entering the convention through a security checkpoint. They're going woke. So that was my general look for the convention. I also completely remade my Grinder profile for the RNZ For simplicity's sake, I got to emphasize my twinkish past and removed the explicitly non binary transgender aspects of my profile, replacing some of my more trans coded photos with pictures of my light yagami and Dale Cooper cosplay. Perhaps next rn C I can experiment with discovering how many of the RNC attendees are chasers. But for safety's at sake, I went to more stealth, both online and in person at RNC related events. For my main profile picture, I chose a pretty basic photo of me with disheveled hair, wearing a light gray shirt and thin blackes I looking just frankly exhausted. I chose the simple yet elegant user name Twink, and for my bio wrote gen z in town for Convention, which I thought was pretty funny and signals to people that yes, I am here for the RNC, but leaves the exact reason why still a bit mysterious. So this was my bait. On my way to the airport, I was already dressed for the part, as I suspected the flight from Atlanta to Milwaukee would be part of the whole RNC experience. I arrived at the gate and the vibe shift was immediate. Older white men with even whiter hair wearing a mix of poorly tailored suits and country club polo shirts fit for the driving range. They all kind of looked like my Republican grandfather. The women, meanwhile, regardless of age, were all cause playing their favorite female Fox and News anchor with bleached blonde hair. There were a handful of delegates as well as Republican super fans wearing Trump buttons and mega hats, just really excited to be going to the convention, the way a NERD would be excited to go to San Diego Comic Con. Others at the gate were more subdued, perhaps not wanting to attract too much attention in the Atlanta airport, but I could still overhear them getting into quiet small talk about their RNC expectations and in hushed tones, asking others at the gate if they were going to the convention. And that's what everyone called it, not the Republican Convention, not the GOP convention or the RNC the convention. As I was borning the plane, an older woman with straw like blonde hair, sitting a few rows in front of me waved me and asked, young man, are you going to the convention? I gave my best yes, ma'am, took my seat, and then heard her remark to her friend about how happy she was that more young people are attending the convention. And I would suspect she would be quite disappointed to learn why I was attending the convention and what I was doing there, mainly trying to collect as much information about these weird RNC Grinder Republicans as I can. And you will hear more about those weird Grinder RNC Republicans after the break. This episode is brought to you in part by the top Gun soundtrack, which I was listening to as I was coming down from adderall while writing the second half of this episode, as well as these products and sponsors. Okay, back to the Grind. Most convention activities took place in the Peiser Forum, which it took about four days to learn how to pronounce. This venue is usually home to the NBA team, the Milwaukee Bucks, and this is where I would do most of my Grinder cruising so I could see other profiles within the radius of the convention area. Every time I walked into the Pfiser Forum, which was multiple times a day for four days in a row, I would find a little corner or a place to sit and discreetly boot up Grinder and refresh my feed to see what profiles were in my proximity. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Grinder. One of its more terrifying features is the proximity detector, telling you what users are near you, whether that be five miles away or five feet away. Every night, when I got back to the hotel after recording with Robert and Sophie, I would once again check a Grinder to see if any unlucky delegates were put up in the hotels by the airport. The hotel we were staying at was also home to the Idaho and North Dakota delegates, and though I don't believe anyone from our hotel was on Grinder, save for maybe an anonymous profile or two, there definitely were RNC attendees at some of the nearby hotels roughly fifteen hundred feet away from my bed. The Grinder proximity detector was quite useful to me and locating profiles active around the footprint of the r and C, as well as when sorting through all my messages back home to confirm who attended the rn C from out of state. Because Milwaukee is about six hundred and fifty miles away from Atlanta, if someone's distance marker was substantially different from that, I could assume that they were in Milwaukee for the r and C from out of state, even if I wasn't able to confirm through any brief text exchange. I've also done my best to follow up with certain profiles to rule out possibilities of secondary traveling or other random reasons for why their distance markers might not line up exactly. And I think they have it narrowed down pretty well. Okay, you've been very patient, and now I think it's time to read through the highlights from my grinder in box. And I gotta say I think I started off pretty strong. While attending the RNC kickoff party the night before the convention officially started, I got one of the very first messages I received from a twenty one year old Republican with the profile picture that's just a close up picture of a dark suit with a dark blue shirt and magenta tie, already horrendous vibes. He asked me if I was quote unquote with the GOP and I said I was attending with friends, and then I got no further response. I saw this guy online throughout the convention, and then after the convention was over, he moved like three hundred miles away, so I'm pretty sure he was there for the RNC. I got a message from someone who identified himself as a local conservative quote but not a hardcore Republican unquote, and he was excited the convention was in town, hopeful that he would quote meet my future husband unquote. The first chaser I encountered with the bio looking for some lady dick to feel in my ass, saw through my cisgender disguise and messaged me cock question mark. I got one other message from a chaser who was pretending to be Tea for Tea, who asked me if I was in town for Kitsu Khan an Anima in Green Bay. A nice local messaged me, quote hope you're finding what you're looking for, smiley face, which was very nice and just kind of amusing if you consider that he thought I was just a gay Republican looking for some other gay Republican. Another local with the name older for young sent me the message quote boomer, who will talk politics with you or we can just fuck. I asked him if the quote unquote talk politics pickup line works very often, and he replied quote less often than I would hope. For On here zero unquote, he mentioned that he had noticed some convention attendees on the app telling me that they have infiltrated Grinder. He then asked me what exact hotel I was staying at. So that was the end of that conversation. A minority of the Milwaukee locals who messaged me identified themselves as conservatives and were largely excited that the RNC was in town. They vicariously questioned me about how the convention was going, as most were disappointed that they themselves cannot attend. One such fellaw who described Trump's first RNC entrance as electric and a very emotional moment for him and the entire crowd unquote, would have liked to attend, but he was busy working at the hospital because they needed quote extra staffing just in case unquote. Now, the worst profile picture I found was an older guy wearing a baseball camp and one of those half faced skull masks like Adam Offfen used to wear. He said he was from Florida and claimed to be in town not for the RNC but to visit family, and mentioned that Vance had completely sold out his morals for the VP spot. This guy's politics were impenetrable. Maybe this was just like your average Florida Independent. Very baffling fella. A younger guy messaged me, asking you're a Republican and I said, not really putting it lightly, and he never got to me. I did find a thirty one year old chaser named Greg who I do believe was attending the convention, and his bio read quote Anon, come drain me trans CD as crossdresser sissy fem to the front of the line. I asked, you like trans and he responded yes. We had no further conversation. I did talk with two other people who happened to be covering the convention, including one guy who thought I was with CNN because the Grinder proximity sensor put me near the CNN area when I was actually using Grinder at the Heritage Foundation party. And lastly, really the only guy I saw who openly claims to be attending the RNC in his public bio was a thirty two year old from Shreveport, Louisiana with the user name suck me Off one Word. He described the convention as exhausting but awesome and told me he was quote proud to support President Trump unquote and called Trump's speech on the final day amazing. A lot of the RNC speakers, including Trump, talked about Corey Competour, the man who was killed at the Trump rally during the attempted assassination. So after mister suck me Off talked about how awesome Trump's speech was, I just replied to him, poor Corey, and he messaged me back Corey who, and that he told me what exact hotel he was staying at. Now, part of the danger of trying to use Grinder directly in the middle of the RNC, even discreetly, is that even if I'm hunched over on my phone, there is a non zero chance that some passer by or persons sitting right above me might catch a glimpse of an unsolicited dick pic that fills my phone screen as I try to check my messages. And this is simply a non negotiable part of the Grinder experience. Whatever you do, grainy, unflattering, bizarrely angled photos of some balding, forty three year old married man will appear in your inbox. Ordinarily, I would check the profile first to see who might be sending me a photo, to weed out the undesirable prospects before even considering to open up a DM. Unfortunately, multiple factors prevented me from doing this. For one, this was research, so I needed to collect the most amount of data possible. But moreover, even if I still wanted to vet for applicable profiles in my dms, this was impossible without opening up each DM individually and clicking through to their profile from the chat log. Due to one of the many glitches I experienced using Grinder at the RNC, about halfway through the week, the app started crashing pretty frequently. But the main glitch I had to deal with, which has since been fixed, is that I could not access anyone's profile from the DM's page. I had to click into each individual chat log to open up a user profile, which meant I had to look at a lot more unsolicited dick pics before even being able to check anyone's profile. So there I was watching Ted Cruise's speech, sitting underneath about fifty Republicans and right next to both of my bosses, scrolling through an endless stream of dick picks to see who was local and who was here for the R and C, hoping that whatever Republican voter from Alabama wasn't looking over my shoulder at the plethora of dimly lit hog, but I was far from the only one reporting issues with the app during the r and C. Around midday on Tuesday, the second day of the convention, over a thousand users reported a Grinder outage in the Milwaukee area on the website down Detector. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote on the final day of the r and C that quote reports that the Grinder app crashing increased by more than ninety percent in the past forty eight hours across the country unquote. The down detector heat map showed Grinder outages in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as a hot spot of outages in Milwaukee near the end of the convention, indicating users were experience and sing issues with the app, possibly due to an increase in activity, and you will hear more about that activity after this ad break. This episode of It Could Happen Here is brought to you in part by the Challenger's soundtrack remix by Boys Noise, which I was listening to as I wrote most of this episode while on the plane back to Atlanta. This episode is also brought to you by these products and services. We once again returned to the grind. We got to keep on grinding. We're almost done, but we got to grind a little more. Just one more grind bro I swear abou addictors on more grind broachs one more grind. During the influx of reports about the Grinder app breaking during the RNC, a post from the Twitter account for the Halfway Post went extremely viral, bolstering claims of a massive increase in activity quote breaking, an executive of the gay dating app Grinder says the Republican National Convention is quote basically Grinder's super Bowl unquote. This quote from a Grinder executive went super viral, prompting discussions all over the Internet about five different articles and even disgraced former New York Congressman George Sentos commented on the phenomenon content warning, gay Republican, so.

Grinder executives are calling the RNC convention the Grinder super Bowl. Folks. Look, I'm openly gay, no qualms about it. Proud conservative Republican. I met my husband on Grinder and we've been together for six years going on seven, married.

For almost three.

Let me tell you something. Just come out the closet, boys, come on it's fun.

You can be.

Gay and conservative, but look, Grinder's already anyway based on the hits, and guess who's in town. It's all you conservatives.

By now, I certainly did observe a lot of blank or anonymous profiles, at least more than I'm used to. I also received messages containing variations of hey sexy from at least five accounts that have since been deactivated. And this does line up with a report from a Milwaukee area Grinder user who spoke with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying that he noticed a major bump in anonymous users. Quote. On any given day, you'll go on there and see a headless torso or a blank profile, said the source, who did not want to be named. The Grinder user said, on a normal day, you'll encounter maybe ten users with no public profile. But Thursday, when he checked the app, he said he stopped counting at fifty blank profile photos unquote. Now, we don't have any official data yet on Grinder usage near the twenty twenty four R and C only the down detector reports which our user submitted, but we do at least have data from the last in person convention in Cleveland, Ohio all the way back in twenty sixteen, a Vice article by Candice Brian spoke with sources from Grinder and wrote that quote, Grinder usage near the Quick and Loans Arena showed a sixty six percent increase during the RNC. Other active destinations including Times Square, Capitol Hill, Disneyland, South Beach, and Trump Tower showed no comparable increase in active users. Unquote. Many of the local twinks and trans folks certainly were concerned about possible RNC freaks hiding on the app. People would often first ask me if I was a Republican or why I was in town before trying to hit on me. One such twink told me, quote, I would be surprised if you were a delegate or something, but I had to check. As the week progressed, more locals told me that they had found a handful of out and proud patriots online, but really not many. In fact, multiple Milwaukee locals I chatted with on Grinder did claim to notice an uptick in users, but mostly recognizable local users who were online for the same reason I was to see if there was an influx of closet Republicans. Someone told me quote for the record, it's like three times busier here than normal. Everyone is out to see what the Republicans are up to, and the chasers have come out of the woodwork unquote. Far from being the app's super Bowl. According to Weiss, the twenty sixteen rnc's sixty six percent bump in activity is less than one half of the increase in Grinder activity that was seen at the last in person DNC, an event which was also a whole day shorter I'll rage from Wece quote. However, from Sunday to Monday, the week of the Democratic National Convention, there was an even higher one hundred and forty eight percent increase in activity around the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia. Quote. It's also worth noting that of that sixty six percent increase in activity around the twenty sixteen r and C, only about forty percent of those users were visiting Cleveland, most were locals. Meanwhile, sixty percent of Grinder users active near the DNC in Philadelphia were visiting the city. Oh, and that quote from a Grinder executive calling the RNZ Grinder's super Bowl, as well as George Sandos's other claim about Grinder purposely outing gay conservatives. Both of those claims originate from Twitter satire accounts. It is totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction.

We made it up. We made this one up.

It's a made up tail. It's a total fabrication. It never happened. It's an urban legend that never happened. So no, the RNZ is not Grinder's a super Bowl. I got messages from over one hundred and fifty different people. Over ninety percent of the messages I received and profiles visible online even while inside the Pfizer forum were from locals completely unaffiliated with the rn Z, and any boost activity that can be attributed to people for the RNC is a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to the proverbial orgy festival of out of town gay Democrats who travel to the DNC and like, if you think about this logically, this shouldn't at all be surprising. The Republican Party has spent the past two years screaming about how all drag queens are child groomers, and though this was the first year the GOP has removed opposition to gay marriage from their party platform, they have massively increased their opposition to and attacks against trans people, and really any display of a visible queerness, like come on, this is the Republican Party. There's this kind of fucked up cultural conception that homophobic politicians must be so because they are secretly gay. And while there is the occasional like Lindsey Graham or repressed homosexual preacher, this is not the norm and all Republicans being secretly gay is not the driving force of legislative homophobia. It is an ideal low drive, largely in furtherance of hegemonic Christian nationalism, and now for people like Elon Musk and more, young Republicans of fascistic notion of reproductive futurism built on fears that young people white people aren't having enough white babies, which they partially attribute to society becoming more accepting of gay and trans people, resulting in people having less reproductive or heterosexual sex. Never mind the fact that queer and trans people oftentimes can and do have children, which still doesn't seem to please these conservatives, as it doesn't align with their traditionalist view of the family unit. So No Grinder wasn't flooded with closeted Republicans because there simply isn't that many closeted Republicans that are going to be attending the RNC. And while there may not be as many Republicans as I thought there might be, I do believe that I have the bump in activity, albeit a smaller bump than rumored. Basically figured out based on my anecdotal experience and the reports of a han full of local Grinder users and journalists I talked with who were online during the twenty twenty four rn C, and considering the twenty sixteen Grinder data, I can report that merely a small minority of activity was due to ordinary RNZ attendees. The majority of activity was from locals who either regularly used Grinder or were specifically curious about who might be online during the RNC. I observed two more groups that would contribute to any noticeable increase in activity. Not everyone who attends the RNC are guests or delegates. A lot of people work at the convention center or work tech, and a sizeable chunk of people are like myself researchers, polsters, or journalists who attend conventions like this for work. And lastly, the final group that fills out the bump in Grinder activity, one that for some reason didn't really expect to see upon arrival, but in retrospect makes total sense. Are cops so many? There were so many cops online at the RNC, just like delegates or reporters. They are coming to town from all around the country. There was cops or state troopers from Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, California, Indiana, and many more states, as well as US Capitol Police, Secret Service, TSA, DHS, and FBI. They were all in town as a part of the security detail. A few of the guys that messaged me I can absolutely confirm are one hundred percent police or some kind of military police. A thirty three year old cop or military guy quote looking for sexy bottoms with the tag's jock, military discreete and weightlifting, as well as many pictures of him in the gym. Said it in his bio that he was quote really into slim, skinny, toned and muscular people. He messaged me saying, Hey, now I got a lot of haze in my inbox, which is not unusual for Grinder. You will pry mostly get hay as a message as well as just like you know, a picture of someone's penis, but between a penis and hey, those are probably the two most received messages you will get on Grinder. There was another guy with a username DL military who said in his bio he was working security for the week and that Grinder messages had completely broke for him and to instead message him on Snapchat. The DL in DL military stands for down low. It's a tag that only the worst people on Grinder will use, mainly like self hating gay men who are closeted, and it's download because they don't want to be like publicly seen being gay. Just absolutely the worst. We do not fuck with DL, both literally and figuratively. There were a bunch of other non locals who I would describe as cop types. I can't one hundred percent say for sure that they are cops, but they have like the look, you know, like the look the cop look. I don't know. They could also be like a bodyguard or working private secure. But one of these cop looking guys message to me asking if I was a trans guy, which I always loved to see. It means I'm doing gender very well. And a few other cop types sent relatively boring messages so yeah, a lot of cops, which is not completely surprising considering the fact that basically half the cops in the country were at the Republican National Convention in some form or another. A few final notes, Now, this didn't really make up a sizable chunk of the Grinder population, but after saying I was just covering the RNC, a couple of people on Grinder, just completely unprompted, told me that they were attending the protests against the RNC. Please do not do this. That's a horrible idea for multiple reasons. You gotta stop talking about your political activities on dating apps, especially Grinder, especially at the RNC. Horrible idea. Do not do this. And despite my lazy attempt at a young Republican disguised online profile, a few too many people did recognize me from Twitter or the pod, but they were very nice. They gave me some recommendations for what gay bars to check out after convention hours, and one person told me this interesting anecdote that I'd like to share. Quote, I don't think Trump is going to win. I can missed for Hillary in twenty sixteen, and at least here it doesn't feel the same. Unquote I thought that was a little interesting tidbit that I received at probably round three am on grinder. So there you go. Anyway, that was my RNC Grinder experience. I'm sorry to report it is not the hotbed of closeted Republicans that we mean it to be. It's mostly local gaze, a few reporters and a few more cops. I do not think I'll be reporting on the DNC grinder, but I am curious to see if there is a sizeable increase in activity as compared to the RNC Grinder, So I guess I will maybe posted by that on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie if you want updates on that. Anyway, Stay safe out there. Be careful if you're ever on grinder. Please especially don't tell someone covering the RNC that you're attending any protests. But in general, be careful on these types of dating apps and I will see you on the other side. Message from Quickie Grinder said you were super close yesterday. Wasn't stalking? I promise? Message from birthday present emoji. I almost thought you were Josh Thomas. Message from anonymous wait, are you pro or anti Republican? I'm not gonna lie. I mainly asked your politics because I thought you were cute, but I didn't want to hit on a Trumper message from older for young. Aren't all the delegates propositioning you? You're cute? Message from anonymous? Why establish a detlitarian state if I can't breed? It's a dictator message from suck me off. I'm down for anything. Lol? Are you supporting Trump? Ha? Ha? It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, Updated monthly at Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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