Mark Bittlestone is a stand-up comedian. He is also very gay man. Just a very gay man, doing a lot of straight-up gay stuff.
He’s on social media too! Follow Mark on Instagram here
If you have arrived here it means you must be interested in gay life. Which is good because this is a blog that deals with NOTHING ELSE. NOTHING, DO YOU HEAR ME!!! YOU WILL NOT FIND THE WORD “STRAIGHT” HERE. Except in speech marks… or in the title. This, my friend, is a GAY BLOG, or a glog, if you will (“Hey, did you check out @poofsrus’s glog the other day?” “No, but I sure as hell will now!”). Now, a few weeks ago I told you how NOT to do Grindr, but I realised it was remiss of me not to give you Aunty Mark’s (dno about you but I’ve got a boner just from referring to myself as an aunt) advice on how to actually do Grindr.
1) Know what you want.
My Grindr hook-up life got 1 billion times better (although what’s a billion multiplied by 0 lol?) when I started being super clear on my profile. All of a sudden I got boys in my inbox who were my type and up for what I wanted. So… if you want to pay someone to throw custard at you, say this on your profile! If you want someone to drip cat’s piss onto your ears while you watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, whack it on your profile (100% recommend this actually, genuinely a stunning afternoon)! Saves everyone a lot of time.
2. Be a nice boi.
This always needs restating in a Grindr context but here’s one example (of many I could give) of something some Grindr users feel the right to be arseholes about: people who don’t follow through with a hook-up are not “timewasters”. There are a billion different reasons why someone might not feel up for hooking up. They might be scared or anxious, they might be significantly less experienced than they suggested over chat, they might just have lost the horn. How difficult is it just to say “no worries” instead of having a freak out about them wasting your precious time? Also, your time is not worth that much. Dno about you but I spend most of mine watching Spanish language soaps on Netflix or being anxious about not doing enough with my time (wait a minute…).
3. Don’t expect romance.
I think some people on Grindr confuse directness for rudeness. They are not the same thing. You can be direct about what you want without being rude. Saying “do you want to btm for me?” is not rude, it’s just skipping hours of dry small talk. That said, if you’re after being wined and dined, or holding court at length about politics and musical theatre before getting down to it (better than sex anyway tbh), then state that in your profile!
4) Stay calm.
Honestly some people get so angry over Grindr it’s unbelievable. Personally the one that annoys me the most is getting a string of messages, each growing in anger, about not replying. Imagine: you’re in a bar. You go up to someone and say “Hi”. They don’t reply. THAT IS NOT RUDENESS THAT IS THEIR PREROGATIVE AS A HUMAN BEING. But instead of taking your cue and leaving, you continue to bombard them with messages before getting angry and calling them a “disrespectful piece of shit”, or, my favourite targeted message, “you’re a hypocrite for calling out the toxic gay community in your videos when you don’t even have the decency to reply”. The only thing toxic here babe is the masculinity that, were you to have been straight, would have been directed at women whom you would have called a “slut” or a “whore” for rejecting your advances. No one owes you anything.
5. Take breaks.
It’s easy to get addicted to the shop window that Grindr is, to perceive it as a never ending flow of cock and balls (that’s my autobiography title sorted). During lockdown I lost hours to it. Like all things, it’s best enjoyed in moderation (except for cock which is best enjoyed with a side of eggs and lashings of hot sauce (weird Aunty Mark strikes again)). Go enjoy some “fresh air” (speech marks because, being gay, I’m not 100% sure what that is) and take a break every now and then.
For more from Mark check him out on Instagram right here!
