Grindr: Diamond Emoji Boys

Escort: the male equivalent of a prostitute; simply men who have sex in exchange of money

Grindr. The gay Mecca, gay men from all around do their daily pilgrimage there to check out who's around. There you can find twinks, bears, the little buffed up gym guy who kept staring at you while you did your squats, your friend’s closeted husband, a couple lady boys with titts as big as Anna Nicole Smith’s at her prime, some Female to Male transsexuals and a bunch of boys with little diamond emojis on their profiles. If you are not acquainted with the Gay mecca, let me give you a quick introduction: Grindr is a gay dating application, lets user the word (dating) very loosely here, established in 2009, Grindr currently holds a staggering 6 million active users a month and close to 2.4 million active users a day. It operates by simply analyzing your current location and showing you what grindr users are around you by stating how far they are, hence their slogan “0 feet away”. With this type of numbers Grindr is a one of a one of a kind place for us gays, whether it is for sex, which is called (fun) on grindr, for a chat, for a date, to market your business and even for the occasional drug dealers and escorts- yes grindr is of many uses to its users. Now that you know what grindr is, or at least understand slightly how it operates, let's take a deeper look into the “diamond emoji boys”.

A few days ago, i was suspended from Grindr, the suspension came along because of a little out of taste sarcastic joke i placed on my profile info. In the section where you are meant to write in 250 characters or less about yourself, i wrote “is it me or is grindr now an escort agency?” This was meant as a sarcastic question, as i have noticed that in the past few months the number of little diamond emojis on profiles has grown exponentially, but Grindr did not care about that, they were livid at the fact i used the word “Escort”, and less than 25 minutes after i changed my profile info, I was, as mentioned before, suspended, even though from a first read you could obviously see it was meant as a joke. I received an email from Grindr customer service, accusing me of soliciting, in other words “ prostitution” which left me livid as I pay 10.99£ a month to use it’s extra perks and i was not about to let my money go to waste. I sent an email to grindr explaining how my suspension was unfair and how i expected the money i payed for Grindr xtra to be reimbursed to my bank account seeing as my account that made use of that service was currently suspended. After about 8 emails back and forward, Grindr’s customer service agreed to reinstate my profile. Finally they understood that my use of the word escort was not in anyway going against their terms and conditions, let's say I came out of this suspension with a proverbial unneeded slap on the wrist, which got me thinking, if i know that the little diamond emoji means escort, i am pretty sure the guys on the Grindr customer service must know as well, but why can’t they do anything in regards to shutting down those profiles if it is very clear they are run by escorts and even just mentioning of the word can lead to a brutal suspension. Ok brutal is an exaggeration, but it was a suspension nonetheless. So i kept trying to make sense of all this and decided to ask the escorts themselves why the diamond emoji, which meant, of course first finding an escort willing to talk to me about his choice of profession. Living in London, the gay capital of Europe for now at least, (thanks Brexit) I thought it would be easy since the gay Mecca is so rich of diamond emoji boys, but no. Every single diamond emoji boy i tried to approach at first, had a very aggressive response to me asking about their "business", some would simply not reply, others would throw slurs at me and a couple actually agreed to talk but only if I pay their working fee of 150£ per hour plus uber to my place and back. All that would set me back at least 200£ for just a conversation, which I found absurd, so i kept looking until eventually i found Renato. Renato is a 22-year-old Brazilian with a boyish face in a man's body. In Brazil he was nurse student, but in the gay Mecca he was Latino bottom 22. His London story was very different from the one he had in Brazil, he came to London on a tourist visa a year ago, persuaded by friends who promised to help him get settled. So he came. He had big dreams of London, but those dreams were crushed at the very start. Those same friends who encouraged him to move to London were not as helpful as they promised to be, so broke and slightly alone Renato decided that he would make use of his boyish look and hot banging body to change his financial situation. He changed his Grindr profile from a normal “fun” seeking 22 year old to a diamond emoji boy whose entire body was on full display to attract customers. While speaking to Renato, I could sense that prostitution was not an ok thing for him, but being in a foreign country with no family it was the only way he felt he could make a bit of income. Renato’s story is not entirely unique, a quick swipe through grindr will surely introduce you to a couple masseuses that provide a happy ending or a straight up diamond boy who states in his profile all his measurements, height, weight, feet and dick size.

It is a complicated subject to wrap your thoughts around. I do not wish to come across as judgmental or patronizing towards those who feel the need to use their bodies or simply do it because they enjoy, i do not hold that right nor do you currently reading this article. All i am trying to do is understand the exponential growth of guys doing so, and what i gathered from talking to them and analyzing grindr is that most do it because it’s simply an easy and quick way of making money. Plus if you are quite good at it you can make upwards of 200£ per fuck, who wouldn’t want that? The 200£ part not the fucking old smelly men. But putting the money and fucking of old men apart, i was able to reach a few conclusions: firstly escorts come in all shapes and sizes, most state the usage of Prep, a drug used to prevent HIV, secondly the more attractive the more money they are able to ask for, an example of such is the diamond boy I mentioned in the start of the article who asked me for 150£ per hour plus uber. He was insanely attractive, the type of attractiveness that makes even Chris Pratt feel a little uneasy about his looks. And thirdly, there is a very large number of young Brazilian and Italian sex workers in London- no other nationality is as heavily represented as those two are on Grindr’s diamond emoji sex trade. All together I gathered a new understanding and respect for those who grind in the oldest profession on the planet, but at the same time I feel slightly uneasy with it being done so very openly on grindr, turning my Mecca into a proverbial Sodom and Gomorrah.