In a reddit AMA on Friday, in between jokes about gay bears and JD Vance’s potential username being CushionCasanova, Grindr CEO George Arison answered a question about the economy. He didn’t hold back.
“Inflation is terrible, and there’s a massive affordability crisis in this country that our government has ignored since at least 2020,” he wrote in the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, where, following the release of the company’s quarterly earnings report, he took questions from users.
It was a startling admission from the man whose company is about to release a subscription offering intended to price out most Grindr users. On November 17, Edge, a “premium tier” with some AI-powered features costing $120 a month, will be available to members worldwide, according to the report. Early access opened today.
The document suggests that Edge will help users find connections “with less effort” and will include a personalized recommendation feature, Insights, to “understand compatibility and the likelihood of a reply,” as well as Reconnect, which “brings past connections back into view.” The app will have an entirely new design, interface, and icon intended to create a vastly different experience for users willing to foot the high price tag.
But even if you can afford it, you may not get in. As with Raya, an invite-only app where some people have been on the wait list for as long as seven years, the company is planning to turn Edge into a digital gated community of sorts: Sign-ups will be limited to 1 percent of global monthly users.
The goal is to “deliberately [manage] the growth of the Edge community to preserve exclusivity” for “a select community” who can pay “meaningfully more,” the report noted. According to figures from the company, only 1.4 million of its current 16 million users pay to use Grindr.
Edge’s official rollout comes following pilot programs in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US, and a year’s worth of speculation about how much it would cost and what exactly would separate it from other apps that provide comparable features at a lower price.
“These VIP tiers make me think of [it as a] digital version of expensive hustler bars,” one user said on Instagram. “The men who will pay hundreds for access are rarely the hot men you would log on for.”
Grindr is the world’s largest dating app for gay, bi, and trans people, but it has consistently struggled with user concerns of data privacy and user safety. And as it unveils its latest upsell, many members say the app’s fundamental infrastructure remains broken.
“Grindr is a top-tier example of enshitification and predatory monetization,” one person wrote in the reddit AMA from last week. “You need to stop with the intrusive ads and start getting in touch with reality,” posted another.
In September, the company agreed to a $35 million class action settlement over allegedly sharing users’ HIV status and testing information with third-party vendors; the details of the settlement included no admission of liability on Grindr’s behalf. That same month, Grindr acquired the telehealth company Freddie, which helps people get access to the HIV-prevention medication PrEP. The purchase builds on Arison’s investment into health care and turning the app into a social network. Currently, Grindr sells erectile dysfunction pills and GLP-1 weight-loss medication through its Woodwork program.
Critics will likely argue that pivoting to luxury dating in an economy where more and more people are struggling isn’t great optics, but Arison is betting that improved features and a “deliberately limited membership” will create opportunity for “substantially higher pricing over time,” the report noted.