17 Years of Grindr: Looking Back on Our Favorite Cultural Moments

Today, Grindr is celebrating 17 years of serving the LGBTQ+ community. The app has come a long way since its Los Angeles launch in 2009, slowly expanding its audience as one user at a time logged in and sent their first “hey” to a stranger. Over the past 17 years, Grindr has grown from a handful of Angelinos to a global network of millions, revolutionizing how gay men date, hook up, and think about geography. 

Since its launch, Grindr has introduced new vocabulary such as “NPNC,” “looking,” and “host/travel” into the lexicon and created the iconic notification bloop. Grindr has evolved as both an organization and an app since 2009, unveiling features such as Roam, which helps users connect with The Global Gayborhood, gAI (pronounced “gay eye”), its latest AI integration, and a BlackBerry app (RIP). The company went public in 2022, has fought for marriage equality rights and sexual health through Grindr For Equality, and even launched a fashion collaboration with Rainbow Wool made from the wool of gay sheep (because one out of every twelve sheep is gay FYI).

At some point, Grindr broke containment, becoming an ubiquitous brand that even your straightest relatives know about. It’s been namedropped on talk shows, spoofed on network television, and even made its way into a Tony Award-winning musical. So to celebrate the beloved app’s 17th birthday, let’s look back at 17 times Grindr made its way into mainstream pop culture. 

1. A Grindr butthole pic inspires an episode of The Other Two

No TV show quite had its finger on the pulse of gay pop culture like The Other Two, which managed to poke fun at everything from age-gap relationships to Broadway’s love of plays about AIDS. It was only natural then that the show centered a (w)hole episode around Cary (Drew Tarver) sending a butthole pic on Grindr that went viral. 

2. The app gets its own Riverdale dupe

From the “Five Seasons Hotel” and “The Matchelorette” to “Share BnB” and “23 Hour Fitness,” no brand was safe from a reworked moniker on the CW’s soapy Riverdale. When the show’s token gay character, Kevin (Casey Cott), needed a late-night rendezvous, he obviously turned to “Grind’em” to meet a man. 

3. A headless torso wreaks havoc on Love, Victor

While Hulu’s Love, Simon spinoff steered clear of the apps in early seasons, Victor (Michael Cimino) used another dupe titled “Gay Dating and Chat App” (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) to set up a date with a headless torso. As luck would have it, the torso ultimately belonged to Victor’s ex. 

4. Billy Eichner teaches Conan O’Brien Grindr 101

There’s nothing quite like exposing your straight friend to the no-nonsense wonders of Grindr for the first time, and Billy Eichner gave Conan O’Brien a world-class introduction to the app in a segment for Conan. I wonder how Musculo is doing these days. 

5. A gay Jeopardy contestant mixes up his dating apps

What’s the fastest way to find out if a Jeopardy contestant is gay? Apparently, by asking them to spell “Tinder.” When Drew Goins was asked a Final Jeopardy question with Tinder as the answer, he wrote down “Tindr” instead, realizing in real time that he’d chopped the “e” after frequent use of “Grindr.” 

6. Homer Simpson uses “Grinder”

Speaking of misspelled names, The Simpsons parodied the app in a 2016 episode, adding an “e” to the name and googly eyes to the logo. Marge downloads the app, looking for a pepper grinder app (who hasn’t made that mistake?), and then Homer uses it to help Smithers find a boyfriend.

7. Eminem cryptically mentions being on Grindr

Speaking of celebs on Grindr, Eminem broke the internet back in 2017 when he stated in a Vulture interview that he’d used Grindr to date after his divorce. While he later clarified that he was joking, for several days it did seem like we’d found a new bicon. 

8. Neighbors cracks a Grindr joke

Grindr reached new heights in 2014, when it was namedropped in the Seth Rogen comedy Neighbors. While Ike Barinholtz’s character didn’t seem to realize the app wasn’t for straight people, the writers felt sure that the film’s audience would. 

9. Sabrina Carpenter seemingly references Grindr in “Slim Pickins”

Grindr’s iconic notification sound has been a hallmark of gay culture for years, so gays immediately clocked a guitar pluck that sounds suspiciously similar in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Slim Pickins”. The sound appears right after Carpenter sings “and since the lord forgot my gay awakening,” further escalating the rumors. 

10. Grindr hits Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update desk

You haven’t made it until you’ve been spoofed on SNL, and Michael Che fired off a Grindr quip in 2019 in honor of the app’s tenth anniversary. Behind the desk, he said that the app has “all but replaced the old way of finding discrete gay hookups: church camp.” 

11. A Strange Loop rides a Grindr reference to the Tonys

A Strange Loop won Best Musical at the 2022 Tonys by boasting an entire song about Grindr interactions. While never mentioning Grindr by name, “Exile in Gayville” repeatedly croons “looking into hung,” an obvious reference to Grindr’s tags. 

12. Jennifer Coolidge namedrops Grindr in Netflix’s gay Christmas movie

Jennifer Coolidge has always been a gay icon, and she proved that yet again in the 2021 holiday flick Single All the Way, where she played a Christmas pageant director obsessed with gay people and, of course, Grindr. 

13. Grindr inspires a French arthouse film

Since 2009, Grindr has facilitated thousands of vacation hookups, and 4 Days in France is a stunning road trip film about a man traveling the French countryside, moving from one hookup to the next. If only every international encounter were so cinematic. 

14. A Eurovision fan seems to be very popular on the app

There’s nothing quite like live television, and during a Eurovision broadcast in 2024, a presenter attempted to demonstrate how to use the Eurovision app with a fan’s cell phone. Unfortunately for the user, a flood of Grindr notifications, complete with sound, spilled in during the segment, much to the confusion of the presenter and joy of the audience. 

15. Grindr "crashes" the Republican National Convention

Sorry, headline chasers — reports that Grindr crashed at the RNC were false, but that didn't stop the internet from running wild with the story. The app made headlines when Milwaukee suddenly became a very active gayborhood during the Republican National Convention, causing many to wonder if the RNC was a hotbed for hotbeds. 

16. Grindr falls victim to a classic Abbott Elementary joke

A running joke on Abbott Elementary is Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) butchering names. It seemed inevitable, then, that she’d eventually screw up Grindr, which she did to epic effect when chatting with Jacob (Chris Perfetti), calling it “Drillr.” 

17. And then obviously, Looking

It’s impossible to make a TV show about gay men post-2009 and not feature Grindr. The app was featured heavily on HBO’s Looking (hell, the title is a Grindr tag reference), but is especially prevalent in the show’s second episode titled “Looking for Uncut.”