Hookup culture has become an accepted style of human connection. The desire to have sex without strings has always been a thing — proudly searching for just that it is just way less taboo than it was when your grandparents were dating.
The dedicated hookup app is the horny person’s vessel for hot instant gratification. But the cool thing about using such an app for sex purposes is that they can still be customized to how much you’d like to know about the person in your bed. The butterflies of meeting someone new are still there — they just might be happening in a different region of the body.
The online hookup atmosphere is full of horny anxious people
“Hot vaxxed summer” represents the idea of, well, being hot and doing whatever TF you want this summer — potentially in a flirty social setting while wearing something fancier than sweatpants.
It seems like the perfect scenario for a mass release of all that pent-up sexual tension. But in reality, people are nervous.
Hinge actually coined the term Fear of Dating Again to encompass people’s uneasiness to get back in the dating scene. Many feel like they lost their game during isolation, and even though meeting up with strangers is technically acceptable again (depending on vaccination status, that is), there’s an invisible hump that many online daters still need to get over. Time feels more valuable, and even those who are DTF may be more closely considering the authenticity and personality of prospects. Tinder and Hinge will still be crawling with users, but baby steps between messaging for the first time and arranging a booty call may be the norm for now.
What makes a good hookup app?
Things can be kept as anonymous as taking a nameless person home from the bar or as intimate as ensuring that the person getting to see you naked doesn’t have the world’s worse sense of humor. The latter is especially helpful for setting up a regular friends with benefits type of situation. Though many of these apps make it obvious that people are looking for *that,* people on more generalized dating apps can avoid a lot of messiness if a head’s up about intentions is given within the first few DMs. You’ll want an app that skips the 10-minute questionnaire about romance and future families, but you should choose an app that has ample space to showcase what you’re looking for — and maybe turn a few people on with your sense of humor.
Photos are also a huge factor in good hookup apps. Some apps and dating sites hide people’s pics unless you have a paid subscription, and we don’t really love that — for physical attraction reasons and safety reasons. Apps that show the full view of someone’s profile are the way to go.
Whether you want to pay for a hookup app or not is totally up to you, but we will say Tinder and Hinge have great free versions of the app. You can likely find a hookup by the weekend without paying a cent.
Whether you’re looking for casual sex or are simply looking to exchange nudes, here are our picks for the best hookup apps right now:
