How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet

March 10, 2020 9:30 PM

Blued (pronounced “blue-duh” or “blue-dee”) has a reported in-country user base of some 24 million, suggesting many Chinese have opted for some middle ground. It is easily among the most popular gay dating apps in the world. Like WeChat, Blued aspires to be a Swiss Army knife for its users, absorbing features from other apps, like newsfeeds and livestreaming functions — as well as real-world resources like H.I.V. testing and a surrogacy service called Blue Baby — and integrating them as quickly as possible.

Also see: My Life Is My Answer, a Blued commercial that will make you cry.

posted by storytam (5 comments total)

I'm glad to have learned about this. Thank you for bringing this here!
posted by PMdixon at 6:28 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh my GOD that commercial.
posted by mittens at 6:48 AM on March 11, 2020

oooooof - that commercial is beautiful (cn: watch with tissues ready)
posted by kokaku at 7:24 AM on March 11, 2020

That article does a great job getting into what a Chinese company is like, particularly one at the edge of social acceptability. We tend to look at the Chinese Internet as a world of clones of US products. "Blued is Grindr for China". But it's not really like that any more. Certainly not from a marketing point of view, but also the products and even the technology is often quite different now. (Also the irony; Grindr is now owned by a Chinese company, with not awesome results.)

Blued is available in the US, at least for Android. Found a lot of people using it near me in Sacramento, too, I'd say maybe half folks of Asian heritage and half of European. The app was quite aggressive in what permissions it wanted though, and then locked me out for no reason, so uninstalled already.
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

This South China Morning Post article (from here in Hong Kong and usually an...okay...source of information on what's happening on the Mainland) doesn't do a great job of explaining what the app does, but its headline gives you a clue of the kind of wider societal resistance to this kind of thing the editors of the paper assume their readers hold:

Chinese gay dating app Blued puts hold on new users over HIV/Aids fears for minors
posted by mdonley at 8:27 AM on March 11, 2020