Gay hookup app Grindr is apparently experiencing an outage in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention is taking place this week.
According to Downdetector (which is owned by Mashable’s parent company, Ziff Davis), the app has been experiencing problems in the last day. Milwaukee — as well as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York — are all hotspots for outages as of Thursday afternoon:
Credit: Screenshot: Downdetector
Milwaukee has been home to this year’s RNC, which began on Monday and concludes tonight.
There have been several false reports of Grindr at the RNC that have gone viral on X (formerly Twitter) this week, such as a video of someone quickly swiping through lots of options on the app with the caption, “Opening Grindr at the RNC.” (The video is actually someone opening the app at a Troye Sivan concert.)
Another fake viral post, courtesy of satirical account The Halfway Post, read, “BREAKING: An executive of the gay dating app Grindr says the Republican National Convention is ‘basically Grindr’s Super Bowl.'”
There’s no confirmation anyone at Grindr said this, but former Republican congressman George Santos ran with it. He shared a video on X urging these men to come out of the closet and that they can be both gay and conservative.
“I’m openly gay, no qualms about it, proud conservative Republican,” Santos said, before saying that he met his husband on Grindr.
“Grindr’s already outed you anyway,” Santos continued. An executive may not have called the RNC Grindr’s “Super Bowl,” but the outage map doesn’t lie.
Mashable has reached out to Grindr for comment.
