It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: My RNC Grindr Adventure

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Gare investigates the alleged increase in Grindr activity at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Original Air Date: 8.2.24See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups.

On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper, Listen to Season 4 of Snafoo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentleman's cutturbin.com.

Please enjoy responsibly. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to, Good people and small towns.

Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. CoolZone Media. Grindr, I hardly. This is It Could Happen here, where today the It is gay flirting and or harassment, and the here is Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 2024 Republican National Convention. I'm Gare, also known by my undercover alias, Garrison Davis, and I was lucky enough to be one of our on-the-ground RNC correspondents.

A few weeks ago, we provided daily coverage of the GOP Coronation Festival based on our conversations with delegates, lobbyists, and think-tank ghouls, and reported on the general trends in rhetoric used by popular speakers at the event. We'll have some more in-depth episodes about those topics in the weeks to come, using more of our recorded interviews we collected at the convention. But on top of our regular coverage, I also had a special assignment that I more or less assigned to myself. On this show, we often talk about right-wing extremism and issues facing gay and trans people. including the various ways conservatives and Christian nationalists are trying to make life harder for queer people,

whether through legislation, online harassment, and physical violence. As these are two of our most frequently covered topics, being at the Republican National Convention provided me with the perfect opportunity to investigate the intersection between conservatism and homosexuality. For years, I've heard rumors and urban legends about a massive influx of Republicans flocking to the gay hookup app Grindr to get laid during the RNC, whether they be 20-year-old Republican Twinks from Miami or 53-year-old self-hating closeted gay men from Idaho trapped in loveless marriages.

Curiosity has often gotten the better of me, and I needed to know how many homosexual Republicans were actually logging onto Grindr. In case you're unfamiliar, Grindr is technically a dating app that serves the LGBTQ community, but in actuality, it is a mediocre hookup app that mostly serves as a way for strangers in their 40s to completely unprompted send you unflattering pictures of their penis. Grindr was launched in 2009 and is arguably the largest and most popular gay dating app, especially among men. Grindr has only been around for two in-person RNCs prior to this point,

2012 and 2016, since all convention activities moved online during 2020 for the pandemic. So this July, for the first time in eight years, Republicans from all around the country could gather in one city, and once their wives fell asleep, log on to Grindr. And this episode, I'm going to tell you about my RNC Grindr experience. Before traveling to the city that was about to be invaded by all of the weirdest Republicans in the country, I needed to do some prep to help ensure safety and success in my investigative endeavor. I hope you Queers liked that terrible pun. Based on the massive increase in violent anti-trans rhetoric coming from the GOP, I already knew that I would be dusting off my old boy motor skills and going undercover

as a cisgender male. Although my ability to pass as a straight male is debatable, I can at least easily pass as a not quite straight male. My trans-feminine fashion taste has been skewing more mask lesbian in recent years, so clothing wasn't really an issue. I packed up basically all my button-up-collared shirts, three ties, two black suits, and a beige London fog trench coat. Basically, the vibe I was going for was half-young Republican, half Roman towel boy dressed as a 1950s FBI agent. I refer to this as Dale Cooper moating. I was unwilling to cut my hair to match most of the young Republican frat boys, so I settled on styling my wavy blonde locks like Baron Trump meets Tilda Swinton in Constantine. I was kind of Gabriel Maxing for

most of the convention. And though most attendees were unable to pick up on my dykish undertones, the one day I wasn't wearing a tie, I did get she heard by the Secret Service when entering the convention through a security checkpoint. They're going woke! So that was my general look for the convention. I also completely remade my grinder profile for the RNC. For simplicity's sake, I thought to emphasize my twinkish past and removed the explicitly non-binary transgender aspects of my profile. replacing some of my more trans-coded photos with pictures of my light Yagami and Dale Cooper cosplay. Perhaps next R&C, I can experiment with discovering how many of the R&C attendees are chasers, but for safeties at sake, I went to more stealth both online and in person at R&C-related events.

For my main profile picture, I chose a pretty basic photo of me with dishevelled hair, wearing a light gray shirt and thin black tie, looking just frankly exhausted. I chose the simple yet elegant username, Twink. And for my bio, wrote, Gen Z in town for convention, which I thought was pretty funny, and signals to people that, yes, I am here for the R&C, but leaves the exact reason why, still a bit mysterious. So this was my bait. On my way to the airport, I was already dressed for the part, as I suspected the flight from

Atlanta to Milwaukee would be part of the whole R&C experience. I arrived at the gate, and the vibe shift was immediate. Older white men with even whiter hair, wearing a mix of poorly tailored suits, and country club polo shirts fit for the driving range. They all kind of looked like my Republican grandfather. The women, meanwhile, regardless of age, were all cosplaying their favorite female Fox News anchor with bleached blonde hair. There were a handful of delegates, as well as Republican super fans wearing Trump buttons and

mega hats, just really excited to be going to the convention, the way of nerd would be excited to go to San Diego Comic-Con. Others at the gate were more subdued, perhaps not wanting to attract too much attention in the Atlanta airport. But I could still overhear them getting into quiet small talk about their R&C expectations, and in hushed tones asking others at the gate if they were going to the convention. And that's what everyone called it. Not the Republican Convention, not the GOP Convention, or the R&C, the Convention. As I was boarding the plane, an older woman with straw-like blonde hair, sitting a few rows in front of me, waved to me and asked, young man, are you going to the convention?

I gave my best, yes ma'am, took my seat and then heard her remark to her friend about how happy she was that more young people are attending the convention, and I would suspect she would be quite disappointed to learn why I was attending the convention and what I was doing there, mainly trying to collect as much information about these weird R&C Grindr Republicans as I can. And you will hear more about those weird grinder R&C Republicans after the break. This episode is brought to you in part by the Top Gun soundtrack, which I was listening to as I was coming out from Adderall while writing the second half of this episode, as well as these products and sponsors.

Hi, Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder. after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman.

There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for

AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York,

since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, And I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Jenna World, Jenna Jameson, Vivid Video, and The Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, host of Heidi World The Heidi Fly Story, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild ride through adult films. We get paid more than the men. We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our life. In the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson crossed her. over into mainstream culture, redefined stardom, then left it all behind.

I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a man. With a cast of hundreds of actors and comedians playing key figures, we'll take a look at how adult films became legal in the 70s, hugely profitable in the 80s and 90s, and fell off a financial cliff in the 2000s. Listen to Geno World on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, back to the grind. Most convention activities took place in the FISA Forum, which it took about four days to learn how to pronounce.

This venue is usually home to the NBA team, the Milwaukee Bucks, and this is where I would do most of my grinder cruising, so I could see other profiles within the radius of the convention area. Every time I walked into the FISA forum, which was multiple times a day for four days in a row, I would find a little corner or a place to sit and discreetly boot up Grindr and refresh my feed to see what profiles were in my proximity.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with Grindr, one of its more terrifying features is the proximity detector, telling you what users are near you, whether that be five miles away or five feet away. Every night when I got back to the hotel, after recording with Robert and Sophie, I would once again check a grinder to see if any unlucky delegates were put up in the hotels

by the airport. The hotel we were staying at was also home to the Idaho and North Dakota delegates. And though I don't believe anyone from our hotel was on Grindr, save for maybe an anonymous profile or two, there definitely were RNC attendees at some of the nearby hotels, roughly 1,500 feet away from my bed. The grinder proximity detector was quite useful to me in locating profiles active around the footprint of the RNC, as well as when sorting through all my messages back home to confirm who attended the RNC from out of state. Because Milwaukee is about 650 miles away from

Atlanta, if someone's distance marker was substantially different from that, I could assume that they were in Milwaukee for the RNC from out of state, even if I wasn't able to confirm through any brief text exchange. I've also done my best to follow up with certain profiles to rule out possibilities of secondary traveling or other random reasons for why their distance markers might not line up exactly. And I think I have it narrowed down pretty well. Okay, you've been very patient, and now I think it's time to read through the highlights from my grinder inbox. And I got to say, I think I started off pretty strong. While attending the RNC kickoff party, the night before the convention officially started, I got one of the very

first messages I received from a 21-year-old Republican with the profile picture. that's just a close-up picture of a dark suit with a dark blue shirt and magenta tie. Already horrendous vibes. He asked me if I was quote-unquote with the GOP. And I said I was attending with friends, and then I got no further response. I saw this guy online throughout the convention, and then after the convention was over, he moved like 300 miles away. So I'm pretty sure he was there for the RNC.

I got a message from someone who identified himself as a local conservative, quote, but not a hardcore Republican, unquote. And he was excited the convention was in town, hopeful that he would, quote, meet my future husband, unquote. The first chaser I encountered with the bio, looking for some lady dick to feel in my ass, saw through my cisgender disguise and messaged me, cock, question mark. I got one other message from a chaser who was pretending to be T for T who asked me if I was in town for Kitsu Khan, an anime convention in Green Bay. A nice local messaged me, quote, hope you're finding what you're looking for, smiley face, which was very nice and just kind of amusing, if you consider that he thought I was just a gay Republican looking for some other gay Republican. Can another local with the name Older for Young sent me the message, quote, Boomer who will talk politics with you, or we can just fuck.

I asked him if the quote unquote talk politics pickup line works very often, and he replied, quote, less often than I would hope for. On here, zero, unquote. He mentioned that he had noticed some convention attendees on the app telling me that they have infiltrated grinder. He then asked me what exact hotel I was staying at. So that was the end of that conversation. A minority of the Milwaukee locals who messaged me identified themselves as conservatives

and were largely excited that the RNC was in town. They vicariously questioned me about how the convention was going, as most were disappointed that they themselves could not attend. One such fellow who described Trump's first R&C entrance as electric, and a very emotional moment for him and the entire crowd, unquote, would have liked to attend, but he was busy working at the hospital because they needed, quote, extra staffing just in case, unquote. Now, the worst profile picture I found was an older guy wearing a baseball camp and one of those half-face skull masks like Adam Offen used to wear. He said he was from Florida and claimed to be in town, not for the RNC, but to visit family,

and mentioned that Vance had completely sold out his morals for the VP spot. This guy's politics were impenetrable. Maybe this was just like your average Florida independent, very baffling fella. A younger guy messaged me asking, you're a Republican, and I said, not really, putting it lightly, and he never got back to me. I did find a 31-year-old chaser named Greg, who I do believe was attending the convention, and his bio read, quote, Anon, come drain me, trans, C.D, that's cross-dresser. Sissy, femme, to the front of the line. I asked, you like trans? And he responded, yes, we had no further conversation. I did talk with two other people who happened to be covering the convention, including one guy who thought I was with CNN because the grinder proximity sensor put, me near the CNN area when I was actually using Grindr at the Heritage Foundation Party. And lastly, really the only guy I saw who openly claimed to be attending the RNC in his public bio was a 32-year-old from Shreveport, Louisiana, with the username, suck me off.

One word. He described the convention as exhausting but awesome and told me he was, quote, proud to support President Trump, unquote, and called Trump's speech on the final day, amazing. A lot of the R&C speakers, including Trump, talked about Corey Comptor, the man who was killed at the Trump rally during the attempted assassination. So after Mr. Suck Me Off talked about how awesome Trump's speech was, I just replied to him, Poor Corey. And he messaged me back, Corey who?

And that he told me what exact hotel he was staying at. Now, part of the danger of trying to use Grindr directly in the middle of the RNC, even discreetly, is that even if I'm hunched over on my phone, there is a non-zero chance that some passerby or person sitting right above me might catch a glimpse of an unsolicited dickpick that fills my phone screen as I try to check my messages. And this is simply a non-negotiable part of the Grindr experience. Whatever you do, grainy, unflattering, bizarrely angled photos of some balding 433, three-year-old married man will appear in your inbox. Ordinarily, I would check the profile first

to see whom might be sending me a photo to weed out the undesirable prospects before even considering to open up a DM. Unfortunately, multiple factors prevented me from doing this. For one, this was research, so I needed to collect the most amount of data possible. But moreover, even if I still wanted to vet for applicable profiles in my DMs, this was impossible without opening up each DMs. individually and clicking through to their profile from the chat log due to one of the many glitches I experienced using Grindr at the RNC. About halfway through the week, the app started crashing pretty frequently, but the main glitch I had to deal with, which has since been fixed, is that I could not access anyone's profile

from the DM's page. I had to click into each individual chat log to open up a user profile, which meant I had to look at a lot more unsolicited dickpicks before even being able to do. check anyone's profile. So there I was watching Ted Cruz's speech sitting underneath about 50 Republicans and right next to both of my bosses, scrolling through an endless stream of dick picks to see who was local and who was here for the RNC, hoping that whatever Republican voter from Alabama wasn't looking over my shoulder at the plethora of dimly lit hog. But I was far from the only one reporting issues with the app during the RNC. Around midday on Tuesday,

day, the second day of the convention, over a thousand users reported a grinder outage in the Milwaukee area on the website Down Detector. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote on the final day of the R&C that, quote, reports of the grinder app crashing increased by more than 90% in the past 48 hours across the country, unquote. The down detector heat map showed grinder outages in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as a hot spot of outages in Milwaukee near the end of the convention, indicating users were experiencing issues with the app, possibly due to an increase in activity. And you will hear more about that activity after this ad break.

This episode of It Could Happen here is brought to you in part by the Challenger's soundtrack remix by Boy's Noise, which I was listening to as I wrote most of this episode while on the plane back to Atlanta. This episode is also brought to you by these products and services. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle

to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.

Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him?

I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know.

A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Barry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Barry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing.

The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We once again return to the grind.

We've got to keep on grinding. We're almost done, but we've got to grind a little more. Just one more grind. Bro, I swear I'm not addicted. Just one more grind, bro. Just one more grind. During the influx of reports about the Grindr app breaking during the R&C, a post from the Twitter account for the half-months.

Post went extremely viral, bolstering claims of a massive increase in activity. Quote, Breaking, an executive of the gay dating app Grindr says the Republican National Convention is, quote, basically Grinders Super Bowl, unquote. This quote from a Grindr executive went super viral, prompting discussions all over the internet, about five different articles, and even disgraced former New York Congressman George Santos commented on the phenomenon. Content warning, gay Republican. So, Grindr executives are calling the R&C convention the Grindr Super Bowl.

Folks, look, I'm openly gay, no qualms about it, proud conservative Republican. I met my husband on Grindr, and we've been together for six years going on seven, married for almost three. Let me tell you something. Just come out the closet, boy. Come on! It's fun! You can be gay and conservative. But look, Grindr's already out of you anyway, based on the hits, and guess who's in town? It's all you conservatives. Bye. Now, I certainly did observe a lot of blank or anonymous profiles, at least more than I'm used to. I also received messages containing variations of Hey, Sexy, from at least five accounts that have since been deactivated. And this does line up with a report from a Milwaukee area garage. user who spoke with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, saying that he noticed a major bump in anonymous users. Quote, on any given day, you'll go on there and see a headless torso or a blank profile,

said the source, who did not want to be named. The grinder user said on a normal day, you'll encounter maybe 10 users with no public profile. But Thursday, when he checked the app, he said he stopped counting at 50 blank profile photos, unquote. Now, we don't have any official data yet on Grindr usage near the 2024 R&C, only the down detector reports which our user submitted. But we do at least have data from the last in-person convention in Cleveland, Ohio, all the way back in 2016. A vice article by Candice Brian spoke with sources from Grindr and wrote that, quote, Grindr usage near the Quicken Loans Arena showed a 66% increase during the R&C. Other active destinations, including Times Square, Capitol Hill, Disneyland, South

Beach and Trump Tower showed no comparable increase in active users, unquote. Many of the local twinks and trans folks certainly were concerned about possible RNC freaks hiding on the app. People would often first ask me if I was a Republican or why I was in town before trying to hit on me. One such twink told me, quote, I would be surprised if you were a delegate or something, but I had to check, unquote. As the week progressed, more locals told me that they had found a handful of out-and-proud patriots online, but really not many. In fact, multiple Milwaukee locals I chatted with on Grindr did claim to notice an uptick in users, but mostly recognizable local users who were online for the same reason I was,

to see if there was an influx of closeted Republicans. Someone told me, quote, for the record, it's like three times busier here than normal. Everyone is out to see what the Republicans are up to, and the chasers have come out of the woodwork. Unquote. Far from being the App's Super Bowl, according to Vice, the 2016 RNC's 66% bump in activity is less than one half of the increase in grinder activity that was seen at the last in-person DNC, an event which was also a whole day shorter. I'll read from Vice, quote,

however, from Sunday to Monday, the week of the Democratic National Convention, there was an even higher, 148% increase in activity around the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia, unquote. It's also worth noting that of that 66% increase in activity around the 2016 RNC, only about 40% of those users were visiting Cleveland. Most were locals. Meanwhile, 60% of Grindr users active near the DNC in Philadelphia were visiting the city. Oh, and that quote from a Grindr executive calling the R&C Grinders' Super Bowl, as well as George Sandos' other claim about Grindr purposely outing gay conservatives, both of those claims originate from Twitter satire accounts.

It's totally made up. Pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction. We made it up. We made this one up. It's a made-up tale. It's a total fabrication.

It never happened. It's an urban legend that never happened. So, no, the R&C is not Grinders' Super Bowl. I got messages from over 150 different people, over 90% of the messages I received and profiles visible online, even while inside the Pfizer Forum, were from locals completely unaffiliated with the RNC. And any boost in activity that can be attributed to people visiting for the RNC is a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to the proverbial orgy festival of out-of-town gay Democrats who travel to the DNC. and like if you think about this logically this shouldn't at all be surprising the Republican Party has spent the past two years

screaming about how all drag queens are child groomers and though this was the first year the GOP has removed opposition to gay marriage from their party platform they have massively increased their opposition to and attacks against trans people and really any display of visible queerness like come on this is the Republican Party there's this kind of fucked up cultural conception

that homophobic politicians must be so because they are secretly gay. And while there is the occasional, like Lindsey Graham or repressed homosexual preacher, this is not the norm. And all Republicans being secretly gay is not the driving force of legislative homophobia. It is an ideological drive, largely in furtherance of hegemonic Christian nationalism. And now, for people like Elon Musk and more young Republicans, of fascistic notion of reproductive futurism built on fears that young people,

white people, aren't having enough white babies, which they partially attribute to society becoming more accepting of gay and trans people, resulting in people having less reproductive or heterosexual sex. Never mind the fact that queer and trans people oftentimes can and do have children, which still doesn't seem to please these conservatives as it doesn't align with their traditionalist view of the family unit.

So no, Grindr wasn't flooded with closeted Republicans because there simply isn't that many closeted Republicans that are going to be attending the RNC. And while there may not be as many Republicans as I thought there might be, I do believe that I have the bump in activity, albeit a smaller bump than rumored, basically figured out. Based on my anecdotal experience and the reports of a handful of local Grindr users and journalists I talked with who were online during the 2024 R&C, and considering the 2016 Grindr data, I can report that merely a small minority of activity was due to ordinary R&C attendees. The majority of activity was from locals who either regularly used Grindr

or were specifically curious about who might be online during the RNC. I observed two more groups that would contribute to any noticeable increase in activity. Not everyone who attends the R&C are guests or delegates. A lot of people work at the convention center or work tech, and a sizable chunk of people are like myself, researchers, pollsters, or journalists who attend conventions like this for work. And lastly, the final group that fills out the bump in grinder activity, one that I for some reason didn't really expect to see upon arrival,

but in retrospect it makes total sense, are cops. So many cops. There was so many cops online at the RNC. Just like delegates or reporters, they are coming to town from all around the country. There was cops or state troopers from Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, California, Indiana, and many more states, as well as U.S. Capitol Police, Secret Service, TSA, DHS, and FBI. They were all in town as a part of the security detail. A few of the guys that messaged me, I can absolutely confirm, are 100% police or some kind of military police. A 33-year-old cop or military guy, quote,

looking for sexy bottoms with the tag's jock, military, discreet, and weightlifting, as well as many pictures of him in the gym, said in his bio that he was, quote, really into slim, skinny, toned, and muscular people. He messaged me saying, hey. Now, I got a lot of haze in my inbox, which is not unusual for Grindr.

You will probably mostly get, hay as a message, as well as just like, you know, a picture of someone's penis. But between a penis and hay, those are probably the two most received messages you will get on Grindr. There was another guy with a username DL Military, who said in his bio, he was working security for the week, and that Griner messages had completely broke for him and to instead message him on Snapchat. The DL in DL military stands for Down Low. It's a tag that only the worst people on Grindr will use, mainly like self-hating gay men who are closeted and it's down low because they don't want to be like publicly seen being gay, just absolutely the worst. We do not fuck with DL, both literally and

figuratively. There were a bunch of other non-locals who I would describe as cop types. I can't 100% say for sure that they are cops, but they have like the look, you know, like the look, the cop look. I don't know. They could also be like a bodyguard or working private security, but one of these cop-looking guys messaged to me asking if I was a trans guy, which I always love to see. It means I'm doing gender very well.

And a few other cop types sent relatively boring messages. So yeah, a lot of cops, which is not completely surprising, considering the fact that basically half the cups in the country were at the Republican National Convention in some form or another. A few final notes.

Now, this didn't really make up a sizable chunk of the Grindr population. But after saying I was just covering the RNC, a couple people on Grindr just completely unprompted told me that they were attending the protests against the RNC. Please do not do this. That's a horrible idea for multiple reasons. You got to stop talking about your political activities on dating apps, especially Grindr, especially at the RNC. Horrible idea. Do not do this. And despite my lazy attempt at a young Republican disguised. online profile. A few too many people did recognize me from Twitter or the pod, but they were very nice. They gave me some recommendations for gay bars to check out after convention hours. And one

person told me this interesting anecdote that I'd like to share. Quote, I don't think Trump is going to win. I canvassed for Hillary in 2016. And at least here, it doesn't feel the same. Unquote. I thought that was a little interesting tidbit that I received at probably around 3 a.m. on Grindr. So there you go. Anyway, that was my R.N. grinder experience. I'm sorry to report, it is not the hotbed of closeted Republicans that we meme it to be. It's mostly local gays, a few reporters, and a few more cops. I do not think I'll be reporting on the DNC grinder, but I am curious to see if there is a sizable increase in activity as compared to the RNC grinder. So I guess I will maybe post that on Twitter at Hungry

bowtie if you want updates on that. Anyway, stay safe out there. Be careful if you're ever on Grindr, please. Especially don't tell someone covering the RNC that you're attending any protests. But in general, be careful on these types of dating apps. And I will see you on the other side. Message from Quickie. Grindr said you were super close yesterday.

Wasn't stocking, I promise. Message from birthday present emoji. I almost thought you were Josh. Thomas. Message from anonymous. Wait, are you pro or anti-Republican? I'm not going to lie. I mainly asked your politics because I thought you were cute, but I didn't want to hit on a trumper. Message from older for young. Aren't all the delegates propositioning you? You're cute. Message from anonymous. Why establish a totalitarian state if I can't breed its dictator? Message from suck me off. I'm down for anything.

L.O.L. Are you supporting Trump? Ha ha. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen here updated monthly at Coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

Thanks for listening. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.

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Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Clepper. Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product.

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