What\u2019s the psychology behind the Grindr reactivation cycle?<\/p>\n
…Lik Sam Chan, a professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote the book on this kind of thing.<\/p>\n
Last year, he authored the study, The Politics of Dating Apps. One chapter, titled \u2018Cycles of Uninstalling and Reinstalling\u2019, looks specifically at the push-pull pattern inherent in apps like Grindr. Chan confirms this when we chat over the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing gay dating apps such as Grindr\u2026 brings various kinds of emotions,\u201d Chan says. \u201cThe key issue here is that users experience these conflicting positive and negative emotions at the same time, and that\u2019s why they delete these apps only to reinstall them again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chan\u2019s research pointed to three specific emotions encountered by Grindr users: joy, anger and disgust. Joy, Chan found, is mostly observed as a result of users\u2019 connectedness to their community, while anger and disgust are developed out of feeling harassed and deceived.<\/p>\n
What emerges is a hotpot of incongruent feelings or, as Chan puts it, a site of \u201cambivalent emotional threads that constitute the Grindr user\u2019s experience.\u201d Continuing on, Chan says it\u2019s the \u201cintersection of these emotional threads [that] pushes users to keep uninstalling and reinstalling.\u201d<\/p>\n