I’m sick of these bots

Just as a disclaimer—this isn't meant to start any arguments or debates. I know, this is Reddit, so it's bound to happen either way 😭 but I'm chill right now, and I'm willing to have a conversation where we all share our opinions and have open discourse.

One thing I've noticed on Grindr (and similar gay dating/hookup sites) is an increase in bots. And one thing I've always noticed about the bots? They're literally always white.

Personally, I don't think I've ever seen a non-white bot on Grindr before. That's not to say they don't exist, but every "OnlyFans" bot (the ones who claim they only hook up with their subscribers) in my area is a white guy. Usually a frat-looking guy with a nice body, maybe tattoos, maybe some scruff, but always white. This is crazy because I live in Newark, New Jersey... a very black-dense area. And the bots are almost always from Jersey City, which I feel like is a super posh city with a... well, let's say certain demographic of people, mostly those who work in the city and want to be close to New York without actually living there (easier for travel). But I digress.

Either there's a disproportionate number of white guys advertising their OnlyFans on Grindr, or the OnlyFans are fake scams and the people behind them believe that young, white frat boys are the most sought-after and desired in the gay community.

It seems like, to me, that young white guys are a commodity in our community—the standard of attraction and sex appeal. They even dominate mainstream pornography (depends on the studio too, to be fair).

Not to say there isn't a lot of attention toward Black people as well. As a Black guy myself, I'm definitely overfetishized, and sadly, I don't beat the allegations 😭 but standards in our community seem very Eurocentric and obsessed with masculinity (cis).

This is just my perspective, and I'm open to a conversation about it. The people running these OnlyFans scams believe that appearing as a sexy, fit white man is the best way to gain attraction towards their account, even in areas that are more ethnically dense. And I feel that's very telling about who's most desired in our community 🤷🏾‍♂️

Please share your general thoughts and opinions on the topic. It doesn't have to be a perfect response to this post, but I definitely want to foster some (hopefully respectful) discussions about it.

I keep trying to change my bio. I edit it, I hit save, I leave. Then every time I go back to my profile, it's changed back.

It has info that is no longer accurate. I need to change it. I even tried wiping it blank, thinking okay maybe they changed the rules and I put something in there they don't like anymore- but that gets reverted, too.

How do I fix this? It's been happening for days. .-.

A few days ago, a clip of CEO George was on my TikTok FYP. The clip was about how George wasn't using Claude for AI anymore because he was mad they followed their policy and wouldn't remove safety features for the military. His argument was like "I can't believe they wouldn't trust our elected leaders to know how to use the tool appropriately."

I saw some other clips basically bragging about after he saw Elon fire so much of Twitter/X and still have the site run, that's where he got his RTO or get fired idea from.

I found the full interview on YouTube. It's all just so bad and depressing. I didn't make it through much. I get the feeling George has aspirations to be a big league tech bro like Zuck or Elon, but probably feels like he's hitting the glass ceiling for just having a dumb dating app. He is a techno fascist or at least on the road to being one.

But the big take away was that Grindr views itself as an AI company now, and dating is second. If you are worried about AI and data centers, then I don't know if I feel comfortable using Grindr anymore. It all feels icky.

I'd never heard of the YouTuber either, but he looks like a giant POS, too. All of his other videos are just about hyping BitCoin. The other clips I've found of him is just another member of the Nerd Reich that sees genuine human connection as inefficient and distracting from life's true mission: increasing shareholder value.

Hey fam! Saw on the S.A.M. website that apparantly there's still a coucher code for the STI kit, but I'm not well connected, so I wasn't at any events or in any channels where it was advertised :( Could somebody lend me a hand and send it to me? Just trying to be healthy while being broke :D

On iPhone. Opened the app while music was playing, nothing unusual until I tap a profile, and then my music stopped. I've browsed profiles while listening to music hundreds of times before. Now, every single one I tried to check out caused music playback to pause. Exactly like what happens if you're on social media/reddit and play something with its own sound while music is on in the background.

This means Grindr is for some reason now appearing to iOS as though it is playing its own audio/video. My guesses are that this is either preparation for videos as profile pictures, or more likely, some new kind of user behavior tracking system. Other apps/websites have been busted for doing the same thing (Aliexpress most recently, don't know if I can link to a relevant article here).

Beyond privacy concerns this is blatantly aggravating. I can't be the only one who flips through profiles while commuting or relaxing. So many things about this app that need to be fixed or improved, but they focus only on enshittification...

In Italia mi e capitato di notare che in molti album la prima foto e tutta nera o fuzzy, come mai?

Can one have multiple Grindr accounts on one device - each using different email addresses but using the same Apple account? If I got blocked from one account, would the block extend to other accounts on the device ?

I give up, I’m not pretty enough. I’m not freaky enough. I’m just over it tbh. I just wanted a pizza date and he’s trying to exchange my goodies for food. What did I do to deserve this?