Grindr: A Strange, Lonely and Troubling App

The Daily Telegraph has finally caught onto Grindr, the iPhone gay cruising app.
And boy are they worried!
Apparently Grindr is "Troubling... damaging... destructive... disturbing... unhealthy... risky... nurturing a generation of lonely and single middle-aged homosexuals... [and] impressionable gay teens... are being sucked into this creepy and dangerous world."
Oh. Dear.
Fagburn loved the rhetorical lose-lose question asked in the DT's headline; 'Grindr: combatting loneliness or a cruising ground for gays?'
They sound like they could both be Good Things to Fagburn, but I think we are about to enter... the twilight virtual world of the homosexual.
Journalist Milo Yiannopoulos asks another terrifying question in his feature; "But is this troublingly convenient new way of soliciting anonymous sex fuelling a rise in damaging and self-destructive habits?"
He'd announced the article on Twitter as; "My piece about the disturbing rise of gay cruising apps like Grindr".
Disturbing?! You betcha.
"These new discovery mechanisms aren't just accelerating the process of finding casual sex, with all the concomitant risks that entails. They also appear to be fostering a set of unhealthy and risky behaviours among gay men."
What could they be?
Unsafe sex? Smoking? Rock climbing? Pony trekking???
Tell me Milo!!!!
"According to one app manufacturer, which collects data about its users and is able to generalise about behaviour patterns, a significant portion of users get obsessed with checking and re-checking the app despite having little or no intention of using it for its ultimate purpose."
Oh.
Fagburn checks his email account quite a lot to see if there's anything interesting there - is that "unhealthy and risky behaviour"?
Wait. It gets WORSE!
"Gay social networks remain controversial, with many - even, and perhaps especially, gay people - dismissing them as little more than online cruising grounds."
So Gaydar and Grindr are "online cruising grounds".
Well duh.
I've also heard rumour that Amazon is little more than an online bookshop.
Hang on Penis Duh Milo is hurtling towards his conclusion; "While these new apps certainly can't be blamed for nurturing a generation of lonely and single middle-aged homosexuals by themselves..."
Eh?
You will almost certainly recall the hoo-ha last year over an article in The Daily Mail by Jan Moir on Stephen Gately; "A strange, lonely and troubling death..."
Moir ended that piece with a macabre non sequitur; "For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see."
And so (unwittingly?) does Milo Yiannopoulos.
"With apps like Grindr around, which ought to come with a health warning, that's hardly surprising. I wonder: how many impressionable young gay teens with shiny new iPhones are being sucked into this creepy and dangerous world?"
Yup - The creepy and dangerous world of gay!!!!!
Although one online reader, Scribbleandrew, begged to differ; "You want to know the scariest thing about Grindr? It really is a battery killer on the iPhone!"