Did gay dating app Grindr crash during the RNC in Milwaukee?

Are hookups on the rise during the Republican National Convention this week?

According to Google search trends, that has been one of the hot topics on people's minds in Milwaukee, particularly regarding gay dating app Grindr, which has seen a flood of unconfirmed reports that it's continually crashing during the convention.

But what's really happening on Grindr this week?

One user in Milwaukee said there has been a major bump in anonymous users.

“On any given day, you’ll go on there and see a headless torso or blank profile,” said the source, who did not want to be named. He explained that profile typically means a user is looking for a fling and not a relationship.

The Grindr user said on a normal day you'd encounter maybe 10 users with no profile photo, but Thursday, when he checked the app, he said he stopped counting at 50 blank profile photos.

If that's the case, it aligns with Grindr activity during previous national conventions.

After the 2016 RNC in Cleveland, a Vice article that cited sources from Grindr said the area around the 2016 convention's main hub saw user traffic increase by 66%. Other Grindr hotspots like Times Square; Capitol Hill; Disneyland; and South Beach, Florida, saw no comparable increase in user traffic at the time, the article said.

Democrats flock to the app during their convention, too. The same article said Grindr reported a 148% increase in activity around Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Arena during the week of the 2016 DNC.

Grindr did not immediately respond to a request for comment about an increase in usage or reported outages during the 2024 RNC, and according to status.grindr.com, no operational incidents have been recorded by Grindr since May, when partial outages for the grid, chat and albums features were noted. In June and July, all Grindr features were 100% operational according to the app’s official status tracker.

But that's not stopping users from taking the matter into their own hands.

Reports of the Grindr app crashing increased by more than 90% in the past 48 hours across the country, according to Downdetector, a digital platform that tracks service issues among apps. Downdetector's heat map shows where the Grindr outages are taking place. Milwaukee is one of a few hotspots for outages, according to the website.

Those reports may have spawned from a recent post from @TheHalfwayPost, a political satire account, on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The post claimed to quote a Grindr executive who allegedly said that the Republican National Convention is "basically Grindr's Super Bowl".

As of Thursday morning, the post has nearly 50 million views.

Former Republican New York Congressman George Santos was one of them. Santos, who was expelled from Congress earlier this year for misuse of campaign funds and committing federal crimes, responded to the satirical tweet with a sincere message to any potentially closeted gay conservatives. 

“So, Grindr executives are calling the RNC the ‘Grindr Super Bowl,” Santos said in a July 17 video posted to X.

“Let me tell you something,” the openly gay former Congressman continued. “Just come out the closet, boys. Come on, it’s fun! You can be gay and conservative. But, look, Grindr’s already outing you anyway based on the hits, and guess who’s in town? It’s all you conservatives. Bye!”

In the same video, Santos said he met his husband, Matheus “Matt” Gerard, on Grindr. The two have been together for six years and married for three.

That timeline means the couple couldn't have linked up during the 2016 RNC, but with one more night of the 2024 convention to go, there's plenty of time for last-minute matches to be made in Milwaukee, no matter the dating app.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Did gay dating app Grindr crash during the RNC in Milwaukee?