Hey, I’m a gay guy and I’ve used grindr in the past - it’s absolutely nothing like Tinder, beyond the concept of connecting with people over the internet for some kind of relationship.

Tinder has the whole swipe left, swipe right thing going on, and all that sort of stuff. Grindr is way more straight forward, just a screen with a bunch of profile pictures of online LGBTQ+ guys near you.

It’s also much less about dating, Grindr is generally much more social, I know loads of guys who just chitchat on there with other guys, without any expectation of a relationship or sex.

As for other apps - they all do it, I don’t know of a single mainstream “””dating””” app that doesn’t let you choose your own gender and your preferred gender separately. But there’s like a thousand dating apps, and compared to the number of singles in a given area, when you’re gay you have a lot less people to work with. Imagine if 98% of the single women in your region all paired up and got into a relationship together leaving only 2% of them - and then if you flirt with the wrong one, she gets really offended and might attack you - that’s kind of like what it’s like being a gay guy trying to date. So yeah, it’s helpful to have a de-facto place to find people who are also men who are into men.