Kindness Is Your Preference
- Xinmeng Jiang
- Nov 28, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 30, 2021
Campaigns in Grindr
In the modern world with such a developed social network, everyone may be labelled a tag and assigned to a specific type of person according to personal behaviour, preferences, identity or appearance. Some tags are sought after and become the darling of topics; some titles seem to be mentioned often, but they often drift on the margins of society and become synonymous with incomprehension; some tags play a role in publicity and make people listen to what did not be understood.
In gay, trans, bi and queer groups, there is another type of niche group that will be discriminated. They are often labelled with different kinds of tags, receive strange looks, and are even discriminated against and bullied by their groups, just because of their skin color, race, size, status, age, looks or – quite simply – being who they are. The emergence of Grindr provides them with a platform to make friends, to speak for themselves and this group, so that more people can know and hear their voices. Grindr launches the #KindrGrindr campaign to resist sexual racism on its platform and community.
Grindr launched this campaign in 2018 on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the slogan "it's time to play nice!", and aimed to resist racism and discrimination to ensure the establishment of an inclusive, equal, and respectful platform that brings users good experience regardless of their race, gender expression and appearance and so on.
Grindr created a series of videos to discuss the topic of sexual racism by inviting users to share their experiences and posted them to various social platforms and the Grindr community. Subsequently, more users have joined this campaign to share their opinions and support it through tag #KindrGrindr. The huge volume of topics has brought a lot of traffic and attention to Grindr, making more people aware of this platform, especially potential new users, and it has also played a positive role in establishing an inclusive platform for Grindr and protecting users.
#KindrGrindr - Grindr Users Talk About Sexual Racism | Kindr Ep. 1
At the same time, this is undoubtedly an adventure for Grindr. They selected representatives from the most discriminated communities in the Grindr app to serve as spokespersons for this campaign. I want to call it an "anti-influencer campaign". In the age of influence marketing that is a strategy to show your most loyal fans and potential followers, while the popular queer dating app, Grindr, decided to do the opposite. Emphasis that people’s negative experience with Grindr is risky, but it is trying to help Grindr community grow somehow and influence long-term behavior changes.
The Kindr campaign aims to raise awareness of the impact of hate speech and prejudice on the platform among the wider user base of the app. Showing faces that might be unacceptable to people on the other side of the screen hopes to realize that this is the first step towards empathy and thus kindness. This activity is risky and even different from the usual marketing rules, but it has caused a bigger wave and won many awards.
As a pioneer, there is still a lot of way to go to truly establish this goal.
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