Gen Z Singles Are Trying to Make ‘Solomaxxing’ Aspirational
For young people, the trend removes the stigma of being unmarried and alone, and recasts it as something to aim for, not avoid. Source link
All posts tagged: dating apps
Anti-Vax Dating Apps Are Going IRL. People Are Mad as Hell About It
As a crowd of 60 anti-vaxxers squeezed into the upstairs dining area of Jonathan’s Grille in Nashville on a recent Monday night, a moment of pride washed over Scott Armstrong. Years ago, he had been let go from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor for refusing to get vaccinated. Now, unvaccinated people from all over the country were piling into the sports bar to meet others like them. There was a woman who flew in from New Jersey and another from Philadelphia. One group drove up from Florida. They were there to attend a mixer hosted by Unjected, an anti-vaccination dating app that, according to its website, is “built on creating health-conscious relationships.” It was the second stop on Unjected’s four-city “Summer of Love” tour meant for singles who oppose the Covid-19 vaccine. “We’re still some of the most persecuted people in society right now,” Armstrong, who now owns a video production company and helped organize the event, tells WIRED. “People still express this absolute hatred for us and for our beliefs in …
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Inside Madonna’s Horny, Full-Throttle Grindr Takeover
As tourists in Times Square made their way to The Lion King or Olive Garden on Thursday, they may have noticed the notoriously crowded area was more dense than usual. When the Grindr logo flashed in pink, the reason became clear: Mutha was here. The “mutha” in question was Madonna. Since April, she’s been the new face of the app. The partnership culminated in a 20-minute concert featuring songs from her upcoming album Confessions on a Dancefloor: Part II, complete with a flash mob of dancers in the crowd. Madonna emerged from one of the giant screens, singing and dancing on a spinning stage from a suspended balcony; in addition to new music, she launched into a trio of hits from 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, including the megahit “Hung Up.” Courtesy of Madonna; Photographed by Ricardo Gomes For Grindr users, the advertising for Madonna’s 15th album has been hard to miss. When users opened the app on April 24, Madonna’s voice greeted them with “Hello, it’s mother.” The app’s homepage perpetually has a banner …
A Dating App Is Giving Away Free Gas to Convince People to Get Out of the House
While Gen Z catches a lot of flack for being single, or even antisocial, there’s a brutal economic reality underscoring why some people aren’t going out: They simply don’t have the disposable income. Dating apps, already struggling to maintain user bases due to enshittification and a lack of quality matches, are contending with this affordability crisis. In a dystopian sign of the times, BLK, the app for Black singles, announced on Wednesday that it is giving away free gas in an attempt to incentivize people to go on dates. As part of the promotion, BLK is providing $500 gas gift cards to 10 people who download the app and tag three friends in the campaign post across its social channels. “Dating should not have to compete with the price of a full tank,” Amber Cooper, BLK’s head of brand, said in a statement. According to AAA, gas prices hit a four-year high over the Memorial Day weekend, with the average cost of gas now $4.56, up $1.30 from the same time in 2025. The US- …
These Privacy-Conscious Gay Dating Apps Want to Dethrone Grindr
You could argue, and people have, that the top gay dating apps are now optimized for monetization and juicing engagement loops. Increasingly overrun with bots, they are at times even devoid of actual connection. Grindr, with its 15 million monthly active users, is drowning in ads while pushing expensive upsells on users. (In February, as part of its “gAI” overhaul, the company announced a new premium monthly subscription tier for $500.) Sniffies was beloved by cruisers until the seismic reaction in April to Match Group’s $100 million investment sparked concerns that another queer space could get absorbed into a larger dating conglomerate. As public backlash against popular queer apps continues to mount, a batch of tech entrepreneurs are scrambling to meet the demand by doubling down on privacy-conscious, community-driven alternatives. Calum Bowden, who posts under the internet persona @donjackoghue, launched MeetMarket in March. Currently only available as a web app, MeetMarket includes all the core features of your typical hookup app—a customizable profile, a grid of nearby users—with one major difference. It was built on …
How to Make Apps and Websites Remove Your Nonconsensual Nudes
Once someone submits a takedown request, a platform has up to 48 hours to determine whether it is valid. If it decides that it is, then it has to remove both the content reported and any identical copies. Several larger platforms say they use an industry tool called StopNCII, which uses matching algorithms to identify abusive images and videos and is maintained by a British nonprofit. People can open cases directly on the tool’s website to add to what the tool flags. Reddit, TikTok, Snap, Microsoft Bing, and Meta’s social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all listed as participants on the tool’s website. Though many major platforms have dedicated forms to help guide the submission process, Alejandro Cuevas, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy who studied the impact of initial passage of the law on deepfake communities, has observed that some sites only offer an email address for people to submit takedown requests. Cuevas says in those cases, keeping good documentation, including links to the offending content, is especially …
Tinder owner Match Group is slowing hiring to pay for its increased use of AI tools
You might think the big story out of Match Group’s first-quarter earnings is Tinder’s turnaround. The dating app’s revenue is slightly up again after quarter-after-quarter of declines. But we’d like to point to a comment the chief financial officer made about how the company is slowing its hiring right now because it needs more money to pay for AI tools for its employees. Ah, yes, the good ol’ “let’s blame AI” strategy! While speaking to analysts on the first-quarter earnings call, Match Group CFO Steven Bailey talked about how the dating app giant was investing in AI technology for internal use at the company — as well as how Match was paying for it. “We’re making a big push around AI enablement. We’re giving every employee in the company access to all the cutting-edge tools. We’re giving them the training they need to succeed. We’re setting expectations. We really want to become an AI-native company,” Bailey said. “We think it’s a huge opportunity. But these tools cost a lot of money, as I’m sure you …
Dating Is a Rich Person’s Game Now
Ask just about anyone what’s wrong with modern dating and they will likely tell you the same thing: The apps suck. They’re built on a pay-to-win model. Fewer people are finding quality partners. Some studies have even suggested that increased time on them leads to higher depression and anxiety while also contributing to loneliness among men. All told, the pursuit of finding love through a swipe has created a generation of burned out, sexless singles distrustful of dating apps. But the dating apps aren’t the only problem—at least not the main one anymore. According to recent research, the cost of dating in 2026 has priced out the average single person, and the divide in who can afford to date is wider than ever. An overwhelming majority of US singles (86 percent) say that money concerns have led them to delay dating or reentering the dating pool, according to a survey published in April by financial services firm JG Wentworth. A BMO Real Financial Progress Index report earlier this year found that “date-flation” is on the …
Sniffies’ Users Worry About a ‘Straightification’ of the Gay Hookup App
Of all the gay hookup apps Brennan Zubrick uses, Sniffies, a cruising app for men interested in discreet sex-positive casual encounters with other men, is by far his favorite. Some of the most popular kinks among members on the platform include edging, cum play, and BDSM. “I overwhelmingly prefer the experience I get and the community I can access,” he tells WIRED. But Zubrick, who is 40 and based in Washington DC, has a bad feeling that could soon change. Tinder and Hinge parent company Match Group announced on Monday an investment of $100 million into Sniffies. The deal gives Match Group a large minority share and the choice to become the sole owner later on. The announcement has set off an intense firestorm of reactions from users who are second-guessing the direction of the company, and the longterm sustainability of the app. “Sniffies has long held its market position as the little guy, catering to a specific section of the gay community and is somewhere people who might not be comfortable with Grindr—where no …
Match Group invests $100M in Sniffies, a cruising app for gay men
Match Group, the dating app behemoth that owns Match, Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge, says that it has invested $100 million in yet another mobile service designed to bring people together: a Grindr competitor known as Sniffies. The website for Sniffies sports various images of men in their underwear. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the app, which is a self-proclaimed “cruising”— or hookup — matching service for gay men. The app includes what it calls a “real-time, fully interactive map of nearby Cruisers and popular local cruising spots.” “From the first time I met the Sniffies team a year ago, it was clear they had a deep understanding of their users and a strong point of view on how its community actually connects,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief executive officer of Match Group, in a press release Monday. Sniffies, based in Seattle, has an estimated 3 million monthly active users, Match says. The company will continue to operate independently, with Match Group assisting the team’s “vision and growth,” it said. Match …