GChat — But G doesn’t stand for Google
So for this social norms project decided to do the GChat social norm experiment. This norm requires you to chat with random strangers. However, I decided to do take this social norm experiment in a different direction. So, for my experiment, I decided to take the GChat experiment to a little app called Grindr
For those who don’t know, Grindr is a social media app that allows members of the LGBT+ community to communicate with others within the locality. Although this app was created for people to get to know each other, it has gained a reputation for other types of interactions within the community. This reputation is why I decided to use this application rather than google (also google chat is kind of outdated in my opinion but to each their own)
My Process
I had my profile up and I decided to contact 10 profiles on Grindr. I should point out that due to the reputation of the app, I was contacted and got responses that were NSFW. Those conversations do not play into the 10 profiles I am referring to. I chose these 10 profiles based on a few different criteria: information on the profile, number/quality of profile picture. I did a few criteria because there is a prevalence of bots on the app. I looked at the different information on the profile as well because it can tell you which one is more likely to have a clean conversation with you, however, it is not a sure-fire guarantee. After finding my possible conversants, I left them a small message trying to engage them in conversation: different variants of “Hey, what's up?”
Results
Out of the 10 people that I contacted, I got responses from 7 of the people. Out of those 7, about 4 attempted to hold up the conversation with me. The other 3 just gave very dry responses, making the conversation very one-sided. Some of the conversations ended abruptly when the person wanted to make the conversation more NSFW and I respectfully denied it. By the end of this experiment, 2 people were still having a decent conversation with me.
While doing this experiment and staying clean, I got a few annoyed responses from communicants because of the known uses of Grindr. However, these responses are somewhat normal in this world. As the conversations continued, the intent of some of the people also started to shift as well to something that I was not interested in. The use of Grindr has changed since it’s startup and it now normal that people use the app for these purposes. It is pretty common for people on Grindr to contact others and not have any intention of having a normal conversation.
Discussion
In Baym’s chapter about social norms, she talks about social norms emerging in different SNSs. She mentions LiveJournal, MySpace, and Friendster, as well as other SNSs about the concept of friending people. When I read this, it was similar to the social norms surrounding Grindr. Grindr is used to connect different LGBT+ members in the community. However, with the ever-changing events not only in the world but also in our bodies (aka puberty and hormones), it has changed the uses of Grindr to satisfy more the primal urges within people. Through interactions on Grindr, users learn the different community norms and either reinforce it by joining in with the other, negotiate it by participating in an exchange, or deny it by either not participating in the norms at all or even ignoring the norms completely by deleting the app.
