Is Grindr about to walk back this major change? Disgruntled users hope so!

Grindr’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange was hailed as a landmark day for LGBTQ+ advancement. Before the opening bell–as queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race flanked a rainbow stage–NYSE president Lynn Martin celebrated the symbolism of the queer hookup app becoming a publicly traded company in the same neighborhood where protests against the government’s handling of the AIDS crisis broke out nearly 40 years ago.

“Can you imagine what those 250 people would be thinking if they saw us all here today?” she remarked.

While that question remains unanswered, millions of Grindr users also consider its arrival on Wall Street a seminal moment, though for a different reason.

Their thoughts on the subject are clear: Grindr going public was a regression for its most important function.

How about we take this to the next level?

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Helping them get laid!

In recent years, complaints about usability have skyrocketed, while the free version becomes increasingly restrictive. Each update seems to take away another free feature, from “taps” to “explore.”

Like all dating/hookup apps, Grindr has struggled to convert users into paying customers, which is a problem for stock value.

“The company’s stock has been volatile since going public in 2022, trading below its debut levels for much of the last year,” Reuters reports.

Its most recent slide, however, may contain a silver lining for frustrated users. Reuters reports that two board members are poised to take the company private. They are part of an investor group that owns more than 60% of the company, providing them with leverage.

“The consortium has secured significant expressions of interest to participate in financing, including multiple highly confident letters and contributions of equity, and is confident these will be sufficient to fund the acquisition,” they said.

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The two individuals, Ray Zage and James Lu, acquired Grindr in 2020 and led its public listing in November 2022. The first Tr*mp administration pressured the company’s previous Chinese owners to sell, citing national security concerns.

Since its inception in 2009, Grindr has become ubiquitous. There are Grindr plays, Grindr books, and Grindr references in queer movies and TV shows.

Posting Grindr screenshots on social media is an instant way to gain clout, without suffering from stigma.

But with Grindr’s incredible popularity–the company says it has nearly 15 million active monthly users in 190 countries–comes alleged user exploitation. Like other apps launched in the startup heyday of the late aughts–Uber, DoorDash and peers like Tinder and Bumble–many complain that Grindr is too expensive and finicky.

Jamie Woo, who literally wrote the book on Grindr, previously told Queerty we’re all signing up for the basic economy experience.

“Grindr provides a way for people to conveniently, and with very low stakes, meet a wide range of people,” he said. “It is very much like Door Dashing that $42 burrito, and allowing us to have this ‘basic economy experience.’ We want just the slimmest experience of hooking up from this app.”

Whether Grindr returning to private ownership would be a net-plus for captive users remains to be seen. Semafor reports that Zage and Lu are in talks to secure debt financing from a firm called Fortress Investment Group, whose parent company is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi (not great).

But from annoyances like proliferating popup ads to serious scandals like sharing users’ HIV statuses, Grindr’s public era has brought immense criticism from the community it serves. Two rich investors taking the company private may not elicit comparisons to trailblazing queer activism.

But maybe it will make it a little easier to find enticing torsos on the grid.

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