Earlier today, Grindr took a brave new step into the world of emojis, unleashing unto the world cutesy images for bears, booty calls, amyl nitrite, and every kind of dick size imaginable.
“We now live in a world in which @Grindr has emojis,” tweeted @winedrunkgay (hell yeah). “I am officially dead.”
Look, they’re great. Particularly that eating ass one. Something about the aesthetic set-up of a knife and fork around a juicy peach really appeals to me.
But plenty of users were quick to flag the inclusion of a ‘T‘ emoji, which is apparently a slang term for crystal meth in the states (i.e. ‘Tina‘).
So @Grindr has added its own emojis. Is there something else T stands for other than Tina (crystal)? That’s how it’ll be used. Helpful ?? pic.twitter.com/GVR23WdFpa
— Tom [PositiveLad] (@PositiveLad) March 14, 2017
Grindr has a capital T emoji on their app now? Y’all sissies need Jesus. pic.twitter.com/N7QALUHKUw
— ENIKO DONT PLAY! (@turnandstomp) March 14, 2017
There’s been some debate around what the ‘T’ means, with some reckoning it simply stood for ‘tea / shade’, i.e. terms that have been part of the queer lexicon since the 80s ballroom scene and these days frequently appear on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race‘ / all over the internet.
Then you have further debate over whether it simply stands for ‘top’ (but then why would the only other letter be a ‘D’, and not a ‘B’ for bottom?), or if it stands for ‘trans’, or something else instead.
Grindr didn’t respond to PEDESTRIAN.TV questions about the intended meaning of the emoticon by the time this piece was published, but the ‘T’ appears to have been removed from the app.
Photo: Grindr.