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