4 — Wednesday, March 30, 2022 // The Statement
What’s Grindr got to
do with it?
BY DRAKE GEORGE, STATEMENT
CORRESPONDENT
Content Warning: Mentions of sexual abuse, abuse of minors,
graphic nudity
Opening up Grindr is like reading a magazine with no articles
or captions. Just photos of the sexiest male celebrities, faceless
creatures we like to flip through like products in a catalog.
Grindr is designed to allow Queer men to find other Queer men
to hook up with. In my experience, many men will send graphic
photos of their body, or send a lewd pick up line in an attempt to
sleep with others in the area.
As a teenager, this app scared the hell out of me. The first time
I was introduced to the app, I was scrolling on Instagram and saw
meme posts about it. I heard horror stories from Queer friends of
mine about boys, just like me, being abducted and slaughtered as
a result of connecting with a stranger on Grindr. Other caution-
ary tales I heard involved boys my own age being groomed into
performing ludicrous acts for faceless profiles that they had never
seen in person.
These stories were enough to instill an aversion to Grindr. I
promised myself that when I turned eighteen (the age required
to sign onto the app), I would not be using an app as dangerous as
that.
Beyond the horror stories, many individuals who did use the
app at the time had negative experiences that proved my fear valid.
In a Vox Article from 2018, a poll revealed “77 percent of Grindr
users felt regret after using the app.” In the same article, the inter-
viewees said “that when they closed their phones and reflected on
the shallow conversations and sexually explicit pictures they sent,
they felt more depressed, more anxious, and even more isolated.”
In an interview by NPR, a man named German Chavez speaks
about how he downloaded the dating app Grindr when he was 13.
The interview revealed that “more than 100 men across the Unit-
ed States have faced charges since 2015 related to sexually assault-
ing or attempting to meet minors for sex on Grindr … according
to an investigation by the GBH News Center for Investigative
Reporting.”
Although the idea of exposing myself to this dangerous app
initially left a foul taste in my mouth, as soon as I got to college,
my thinking shifted. I, a Queer man, really wanted to meet other
Queer men and get to know them intimately. Suddenly, the app
that had been so scary to me was now providing a great opportu-
nity to explore my sexual desires. I was in the Buffalo Wild Wings
on State Street my freshman year when I decided to download
Grindr. I’d finally turned eighteen and was ready to enter the
world of ‘hookup culture.’
Two skeletons walked into a bar: Why we
love joking about death
BY REVA LALWANI, OPINION COLUMNIST
Content warning: Mentions of self-harm and suicide
I can’t quite remember when morbidity became a “thing.” Was
it before or after rainy day dodgeball games in the middle school
gymnasium? Was it during our first finals season of freshman
year? Or maybe it was when we were busy running around trying
to catch an Eevee in Pokémon Go. All I know is that by my soph-
omore year in high school, I would hear at least one suicide joke
made amid the cackles of my sleep-deprived peers before recess
had even started.
I made (read: make) them just as frequently as anyone else
because sometimes, “This is so hard” just couldn’t capture my
frustration as well as “Death would be easier” could. Soon enough,
our generation had somehow glorified the concept of death while
laughing at our shared experience.
“I’d literally rather die than take this math test,” is tossed
around at Mason Hall as easily as commentary on Michigan’s
unpredictable weather.
“Do you think I’d get an extension on the Euchre project if I
jumped off a cliff and broke both legs?” is followed up with a “Defi-
nitely not. You’d get an ‘I understand your situation’ email at most.”
And “thoughts on just letting climate change win?” is the new
and improved response to “What’s up?” Our generation is faced
with such incredible levels of existential dread that sometime,
somehow, expressing our concern begins to sound more and more
like morbid standup comedy.
Whether or not these jokes should even be made is another
issue entirely, but in examining why this form of humor is com-
mon among Millennials and Gen Z, we discover what exactly our
morbidity attempts to obscure.
Starting from increasingly competitive college admissions
and leading to sleepless nights during final season, the glorifica-
tion of death has become a coping mechanism for people my age
trying to find the silver lining amid the never-ending stressors.
Gen Z has the highest rates of depression to date, stemming from
unprecedented levels of academic, personal and financial stress.
What seems ironic is the extent to which Millennials and Gen Z
focus on mental health, or, at least, make the performative effort
to focus on it.
For most of us, the completion of each midterm prompts a self
care day: face masks, childhood movies (“How to Train Your
Dragon” is a personal favorite) and comfort food. Mental health
resources are made accessible to University students right along-
side yoga classes and fun, stress-buster activities. From the “well-
being breaks” that replaced spring break in the 2020-2021 school
year to the LSA@Play posters that decorate each empty wall in
Angell Hall, the University seems to have caught on to the new
trend. Arguably, self-care has never been more advertised than it
is today — so why do we still prefer dark humor to the other, more
conventional coping mechanisms that are so readily pushed onto
us?
ILLUSTRATION BY TAMARA TURNER // PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG
ILLUSTRATION BY TAMARA TURNER
PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com