When Joel Simkhai's female friends spoke jealously of Grindr, a popular GPS-based casual-sex hookup service for gay men, and said they wanted a similar smartphone app for straight people, Simkhai complied, says Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon. But the result, Blendr, isn't exactly "the tool for horny heteros that it was built up to be." That's partly by design — Simkhai is pitching Blendr as an app to "make friends, and build connections, and explore your surroundings" — and partly because, whatever Simkhai's female friends told him, there aren't enough women users who actually want sex relative to the number of male users seeking it out. "Are straight people really this boring?" Here, an excerpt:
No number of bug-squashing programmers will convince straight women to use a service associated with an app for no-strings sex with strangers. After several days testing it out, I instant-messaged a gay friend who has used the original app: "Grindr for straights is SO BORING," I complained. His response: "You're blaming the software?"
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
5 hilariously spirited cartoons about the spirit of ChristmasCartoons Artists take on excuses, pardons, and more
-
Inside the house of AssadThe Explainer Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, ruled Syria for more than half a century but how did one family achieve and maintain power?
-
Sudoku medium: December 22, 2024The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
