“The Gay Tinder”, Grindr, is a dating application teeming with promiscuous and creepy gay men; something that shouldn't be attractive, but somehow is. Acting on sexual desires is a completely normal human activity, but it can be difficult for gay men to act on those desires depending on their surroundings. Grindr makes interaction between gay men easily accessible through its user-friendly interface that displays 100 to 700 gay men in the user's immediate vicinity. Since the application is tailored to such a specific audience, it reflects the interests of the homosexual community in order to keep them engaged and involved in the application and its community. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay With sex as an intrinsic motivator, the Grindr platform makes the search for a suitable sexual partner enjoyable and rewarding for those who use it. In this essay I will show how identity-based affective commitment (Kraut & Resnick, 2011) is felt within Grindr's user base, making users feel as if they truly belong to a community and virtually coexist in an enclave of the world of online dating. Second, I will talk about how Grindr exists for needs-based engagements (Kraut & Resnick, 2011). Due to the extreme and innate desire for sex, Grindr sought an opportunity to speed up the process of relationships (dating, dating, sex life, etc…) and satisfy the sexual desires of gay men. Grindr brings gay men into casual sex, which is one of the main motivations for using the application. These casual sexual encounters keep users coming back to the application. Finally, I will explore how the Grindr platform encourages users to actively contribute to the community. By placing users in small, like-minded groups, Grindr motivates participants not to be intimidated into interacting with each other due to two main similarities among all users: homosexuality and location. All in all, Grindr has capitalized on the sexually inclined minds of homosexual men by making the search for a viable sexual partner rewarding, enjoyable, and even community-oriented. Kraut and Resnick (2011) define identity-based affective commitment as “a feeling of being part of the community and helping to fulfill its mission” (p. 79). Gay men who participate in Grindr fulfill the app's mission of sexual freedom and sexual liberation for the homosexual community. Through every interaction between gay men, Grindr's mission is increasingly realized. Expanding on identity-based affective commitment, Kraut and Resnick (2011) discuss social identity theory as “how sharing a common social category with others causes people to classify themselves as legitimate members of a group and to identify with it” (p. 79). Based on the common social category of sexual orientation, gay men use Grindr and the surrounding community to explore their sexual options. Often feeling marginalized, the gay community finds comfort in an online community where they can express themselves, the community's culture, and the surrounding lexicon. Chatting with other gay men about sexual exploration, interests, fetishes, and other self-disclosure topics is an intrinsic reward in and of itself because, of course, you want to talk to people who are just like you. Not only are you part of the larger gay community when you're an active Grindr user, but you're part of the more niche community of Grindr users.Although there has been a recent positive evolution of widely shared beliefs, homosexuality often brings with it questionable aspects. Being part of both the broader and niche gay community furthers the mission of sexual freedom and sexual liberation that Grindr pursues, in hopes of reducing the number of questionable stares homosexuality brings with it. Gay men who choose to be part of the Grindr community choose to be part of the sexually advanced and explicit nature of the application, but they also find it rewarding to learn about the similarities between themselves and the gay community in their own vicinity. Within the application, a user can choose self-identifying "tribes" that represent a strange nexus of body types and interests. For example, one may join the “leather” tribe if one fetishizes sadism and masochism, but one may also join the “trans” tribe if one identifies as transgender or is interested in transgender people. A user can also choose their "position", for example "top", where they prefer to be penetrated, or "bottom" where they prefer to be penetrated. Kraut and Resnick's (2011) sixth design statement for identity-based affective commitments reads: “creating named groups within a larger online community increases members' commitment to subgroups” (p . 83). In these subgroups the Grindr application creates an even stronger sense of community. Finding these small, like-minded communities brings users back for repeat visits where they can further explore their sexual interests without shame. Sexual exploration with like-minded people is an important intrinsic motivator because it satisfies a great deal of natural human desires. Additionally, exposure to these terms and subgroups sparks curiosity from other users. As mentioned above, sex is a basic human desire that can get quite aggressive. For some, sex might be considered a human need. In the Grindr community there is a unanimous belief that sex is a desire that must be satisfied. With this belief in mind, Grindr's application interface accommodates needs-based commitments. Kraut and Resnick (2011) define this type of commitment as “an attachment to an online community that depends on the net benefits people experience from the community” (p. 105). With Grindr, the main benefit is satisfying sexual desires. If Grindr continually acts as a virtual community where gay men can seek to entertain their sexual side, then the app will continually have both new and repeat users. Kraut and Resnick's (2011) thirty-second design statement for needs-based engagements in online communities states that “providing participants with experiences that satisfy their motivations for participation in the community increases their needs-based engagement with the community” ( p. 107). By allowing users to exchange precise positions, community members can quickly meet to satisfy their sexual needs and desires. If a participant has sexual urges and wants instant gratification of those urges, knowing Grindr's quick and intuitive experience will motivate that person to find a suitable sexual partner. Knowing that their sexual needs can be satisfied almost instantly, Grindr users have every reason to return to the app whenever they want. As long as sex is a human desire, there will be gay men using Grindr. Encouraging men to sign up and start contributing to the Grindr community might be a challenge, but there are many design claims that demonstrate that Grindr's interface motivates its users to.