One night this past February, over drinks and moody bar lighting, Eric Green and his friends were swapping stories of their recent hookups when one mentioned they’d used the app Sniffies to have public sex. A 30-year-old tattoo artist who works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Green identifies as a bottom, is a frequent user of dating apps, and has an active sex life—only, he’d never heard of Sniffies.
It wasn’t long after that night out, Green was overtaken by “complete and total horniness” while at home, and decided to sign up himself. When he opened the app he was reminded of Google Maps, only instead of restaurants and shopping recommendations, he was inundated with nudes and suggestions for the nearest pump-and-dump. “I expected it to be like Grindr and Jack’d, but after I checked it out I realized it was super accessible,” Green says, referencing two other popular queer hookup platforms. “More accessible than any other app.”
Access is Sniffies’ main selling point. A map-based cruising platform for men of all sexual identifications (gay, bi, DL, and straight-curious—yes, you read that right), Sniffies has become something like an adults-only Disneyland for queer men interested in sex-positive, no-strings-attached casual encounters. “We really focus on in-the-moment connections,” says Eli Martin, the company’s chief marketing officer and creative director. “On other apps, it’s not always clear what people’s intentions are—some people want to find a boyfriend, others just want to look around—but on Sniffies, we try to make it clear that people are fulfilling their sexual desires and fetishes.”
Sniffies is not your typical dating app, or a dating app at all, really. In lieu of the standard song and dance on Tinder or Bumble, where conversations are bogged down in endless chatter that often never lead to an IRL meeting, on Sniffies you can anonymously browse a map of men searching for sex with other men. Along with web-apps BKDR (short for backdoor), Motto, and Doublelist (think a more streamlined Craigslist personals), it has reignited an appeal in cruising culture that for so long had been taboo, even among certain queer circles. With the rise of social media, social technologies rewired how people search for connection. Cruising for sex in public spaces, and the need to be discreet about doing so, was no longer seen as the polarizing issue it once was thanks to a wider acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights and the popularity of hookup apps, which facilitated all manner of connection.
“Destigmatizing casual sex has been our biggest hurdle in general,” says Martin. “It’s been ingrained in us to be monogamous, but we should have this sexual freedom. Cruising doesn’t have to be seedy or something that only happens in back alleys.” Thankfully, he says, that’s changing. “In the last couple of years, we’ve been able to enjoy it more without as much judgment, but it was still hard on day one, because I was like, how do we create an app that’s [not only cool] but going to continually push people to engage in?”
Launched in 2018, Sniffies was the brainchild of former Seattle-based architect Blake Gallagher. A problem-solver by nature, Gallagher was fascinated by the way urban environments influence sexual interactions. He wanted to better augment natural human connection in public spaces, and decided to implement a map feature and geolocation technology as the basis for Sniffies—tapping into what author Jack Parlett calls “the democratic potential of cruising.” Gallagher first tested his idea in Seattle and, with the help of his brother Grant, a programmer, slowly built Sniffies into what it is today—a “cruising app for the curious” with an increasing global reach.
“We really push for the physical aspect of getting off your phone and out and about,” Martin says. And it’s paying off. According to data shared with WIRED, the US cities that see the most action—that is, the horniest cities—are Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta. (These figures are based on the highest number of sessions within a geographic area.) London saw a 475 percent growth in usership from 2022 to 2023, and Vancouver is Sniffies’ most discreet city. Perhaps most surprisingly, the app experienced a 290 percent increase of straight-identifying users in 2023.
Green says he uses the app twice a week “if I’m actually going to meet up with somebody, but I will go on there and scroll every so often.” (His last name was changed to protect his privacy.) According to the company, the average Sniffies user identifies as vers (25.6 percent of total users), has a penis size of 6.67 inches, prefers to cruise a park, restroom, or a residential tower of some sort, is into edging and cum play, and is most likely having sex on Mondays. Since joining, Green describes his time on Sniffies as “kinda calm,” compared to his friends. The encounters he has had, he says, have been “from apartment to apartment, nothing outside or in the gym.”
Cruising has occurred for centuries, and an app like BKDR is a “direct, no-nonsense product that allows people to get on and get off in a very literal sense,” says CEO Eric Silverberg. BKDR is another rising player among the burgeoning world of queer cruising apps. Silverberg says users on Scruff and Jack’d—sister apps to BKDR (all three are owned by Perry Street Software)—were articulating “a clear desire for a platform that prioritized sexual expression and sex.”
The demand certainly seems to be there—and the potential for such apps is only growing. Although BKDR launched less than a year ago, it has already expanded to Latin America and Europe. “It’s early days for us, but over 1 million people have visited BKDR in the past month,” Silverberg tells me, adding, “We think it will be the biggest product in our portfolio.”
Growth brings its own set of problems, however. A recent Reddit post detailed how a more conservative kind of user now inhabits Sniffies. “Now that [the app] is getting really popular in some places there are a ton of guys on the map in my area and most of them are just there to waste your time. I'm looking for [a] hookup right now,” user @curiousFriend2 wrote. “Sniffies used to cater to lowkey guys and even some cumdumps and the more sleezy side, but now the Grindr crowd [has] come in and a lot of them are not even into those things and publicly announce it.”
Sniffies took off following the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, and Martin believes the isolation of the pandemic led to users being more open-minded about cruising. “People’s mindset changed to realize that they want to take advantage of the moment,” he says.
That’s mainly what Green is after most days, though he says he tries not to use Sniffies as a crutch. “It’s cool to go on during my downtime—late at night or early in the morning,” he says, “because I actually have stuff to do, and I don’t want to throw my day looking for dudes,” he says, before adding that “if you’re solely looking for fun,” it’s unbeatable.
