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From then, the company pledged to tighten age and content controls. In 2019, it temporarily had to freeze new user registrations after local media reported that underaged boys had been using the app. Its parent company, BlueCity, has managed to go for a cautious approach in raising mainstream awareness and tolerance of the LGBTQ+ community.Īmong other things, BlueCity runs an online platform that sells HIV diagnostic kits and brokers consultations with doctors as a move to tackle the stigma around the virus, which has played an important part in the discrimination against gay men and prevented people from seeking medical care-something not so different from the way the rest of the world reacted to HIV in the 80s and 90s.īut the dating app still faced its fair share of problems. Today, Blued has more than 58 million users in China and other countries including India, South Korea and Thailand, which put it beyond US-based Grindr.īlued’s impact on China’s new generation of datersĭespite its predecessor being repeatedly shut down in the first few years of its existence, Blued has largely avoided conflict with the authorities. As soon as it launched, Danlan members were quick to try it out. Then, in November of the same year, Ma launched Blued, his own dating app using smartphones’ GPS capability to find gay men nearby-think of it as the Chinese version of Grindr. To be more precise, in 2012, he first founded the company BlueCity (evoking memories of the coastal city Qin Huangdao where he trained and worked as a policeman). This prompted him to leave the police force in 2012 to focus on Blued, which was launched the same year as mentioned above. “Everyone was scared of being found out by others,” explained Ma.Īs his blog gradually expanded into an influential online forum for LGBTQ+ people in China to share lifestyle articles, health advice and short stories, increasing media coverage of the website outed Ma to his co-workers. At the time, there were few places in China for gay men to socialise. The app’s journey started in the early 2000s when Ma began writing on, a blog and forum about his life as a gay man, where he was known as ‘Geng Le’. In July 2020, Blued went public with an $85 million debut on Nasdaq-“a remarkable tech success story from a country that classified homosexuality as a mental illness as recently as 2001,” writes The Straits Times. Launched in 2012, the dating app caters specifically to the gay community. Described as “one of the biggest gay dating apps in the world” by The New York Times in 2020, Blued was founded by 43-year-old, ex-police officer Ma Baoli who, decades ago, had suffered from the sheer volume of online pages telling him he was a pervert, diseased and in need of treatment, simply because he was gay.
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Through a quick Google search, you’ll stumble upon the dating app Blued easily, as well as all the hype that surrounds it. We have no rights but our money is taken away by these companies,” said Fan Popo, a filmmaker, writer and activist from Shandong when talking to the BBC.īut that would be ignoring everything that Blued, China’s largest gay dating app, stands for. They know we have money and they want to take our money. ” Nike has also been known to sponsor t-shirts at the Shanghai Pride run.īut many Chinese citizens saw these pledges of support more as a consumer trap than genuine progress. According to the BBC, in 2015, e-commerce giant Alibaba “staged a promotional event to send seven same-sex couples to the US so that they could marry. A 2016 report published by the United Nations Development Programme found that no more than 15 per cent of LGBTQ+ people in China had come out to their close family members.Īs a result, in recent years, a number of big companies have shown their support for the LGBTQ+ community (and for the potential market the community offers). But same-sex marriage is not recognised, and some LGBTQ+ people still struggle for acceptance, especially when it comes to close family members with traditional expectations.ĭiscussion of LGBTQ+ issues remains contentious, with activists complaining of tightened restrictions on public discussion in recent years. Homosexuality has been legal in China for more than two decades and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry, which is the largest organisation for psychiatrists in the country, stopped classifying it as a mental disorder in 2001.