Rough Weekend For Grindr: App Crashes Amid Influx Of Olympians In London

The gay dating website couldn’t cope with the surge in activity shortly after the arrival of Olympic athletes.

1. First, the app crashed in London

According to People (UK), the app “crashed within minutes of the first Olympic athletes arriving in London – due to the volume of demand.”

As one user put it: “It happened almost as soon as the teams got here. Either loads of athletes were logging on to meet fellow Olympians or were looking to bag a local.” (It should be noted that there are only 14 openly gay Olympians competing at London and only two of those athletes are male.)

Founder Joel Simkhai apologized to users: “I want to personally ­apologize to users. I know it was ­frustrating. I was ­frustrated myself. I also rely on Grindr in my day-to-day personal life. It made me feel disconnected.” Luckily for the 350,000 users in London, the site was restored nearly 24 hours after the initial outage.

2. Then, Grindr was slammed for ruining Fire Island

New York magazine published an article questioning the app’s appeal at a gay destination getaway like Fire Island. Apparently it’s “ruining the island’s unique and delicate social ecology.”

Fire Island is viewed as an escape from the city heat, “traffic, straight people,” and “technology.” But the intrusion of the app is disrupting that freedom and potentially ruining the appeal of getting away and meeting people the old fashioned way - in person, at a bar or party.