On September 21, 2025, tens of thousands gathered at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, for a memorial service honouring Charlie Kirk, the homophobic Christian conservative commentator who was fatally shot at an event held at Utah Valley University two weeks prior. The attendance was notable not only for its size—nearly 90,000 people, including high-profile figures like former President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance—but also for its overtly political and cultural symbolism. The event, described by the BBC as resembling ‘a raucous political rally or megachurch service,’ featured a sea of red, white and blue, countless Make America Great Again hats, and Christian bands leading communal prayer and song.
In the midst of this gathering, an unexpected digital phenomenon caught the attention of social media users in Phoenix, just nine miles from the stadium. Grindr, the popular gay dating and hookup app, reportedly experienced significant server outages, with users in Phoenix and other major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York reporting widespread difficulties accessing the service. Crowdsourced monitoring tool Downdetector recorded sharp spikes in outage reports precisely around 7 pm, coinciding with the memorial event. However, Grindr did not issue any official statements acknowledging or explaining the outages.
The timing and location of these Grindr service interruptions sparked waves of speculation and humour online, with many joking that the conservative crowd had overwhelmed the app’s servers. An anonymous screenshot circulated on TikTok appeared to show users on a similar hookup app, Sniffies, congregating suspiciously around the stadium, further feeding the narrative. While such reports stem from user-submitted data on platforms like Downdetector—which accounts for typical reporting volumes based on long-term trends—online commentary embraced the coincidence with both irony and satire.
This is far from the first time Grindr has experienced outages or spikes in usage linked to large conservative political events. Similar patterns were observed during the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland, where Grindr reported a 66% surge in local users near the Quicken Loans Arena. At that time, the app noted that white men, who comprise only 40% of the overall Grindr community, represented 75% of the local users at the RNC, underlining a demographic nuance. The 2024 RNC in Milwaukee also saw Grindr slowdowns and increased anonymous activity, with over 1,000 outage reports in the area and a corresponding influx of users seeking quick connections amidst the political proceedings. Former Republican Congressman George Santos even remarked that Grindr executives referred to the RNC as the “Grindr Super Bowl” due to the unprecedented user activity.
The connection between large conservative events and spikes in Grindr usage has intrigued observers and injected a layer of irony into the sociopolitical discourse. Charlie Kirk, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, a critic of what he called the ‘LGBTQ agenda,’ and an advocate for rigid gender binaries, would likely find this juxtaposition, erm, interesting.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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