Reddit Is a Hookup App Now

Reddit is a deeply horny website. There is a community to be found there for every possible legal kink and fetish, no matter how uncommon. Most people presumably treat these pages like PornHub, a repository of adult content to use when the mood strikes. One improvement, though: On Reddit, there are no ads lining the side of the page or pop-ups promising singles in your area who want to fuck. And as it turns out, Reddit may actually be the better place to find these singles (or couples, or married individuals looking for an affair). 

Other social media sites like Twitter or Instagram are used for dating, hookups, and friendships, but Reddit has yet to build that reputation. Lately, though, dozens upon dozens of location-specific NSFW subreddits, known as “r4r” or Redditor for Redditor groups, have grown with the intention of connecting Redditors looking to meet online and off. These groups have quietly become a significant source of Reddit’s daily activity: According to SubredditStats, r4r groups and location-specific sex communities are among the fastest-growing subreddits in the last year.

Routinely, r/dirtyr4r is the NSFW subreddit with the most posts per day. Over the last 24 hours, 1,785 Redditors across the globe have offered themselves up for other Redditors, be it for sexting and exchanging nudes or in-person interactions. “20 [F4M] tampa - Wanna rub my gothic body?” one recent post reads. Thirty minutes later, there was another: “55 [M4A] -- Los Angeles/Online : Mature, assertive man looking for younger playtoy.” With 1.4 million members, its scope is massive. 

Those who want to up their chances of finding a local have plenty of other options. Every state in the US has its specific r4r group, and most are broken down even further by city or region. Las Vegas has two general r4r groups, two swingers groups, a gay meet-up group, a hotwife group, and one called “VegasSluts.” Each has several thousand members. And it’s not as though Sin City is a particularly active locale for internet hookups—New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago get similar treatment, too. Even less-populous Vermont and New Mexico have highly active swingers subreddits in addition to the usual r4r options. 

Posters in most r4r groups are required to state their gender, and the divide is noticeable: Women more frequently post requests for digital connections, whereas men make up most of the IRL-seekers. The significant majority of posts on r/dirtyr4r come from women, most of whom seem to be looking exclusively to sext from a distance. Some are covertly promoting an OnlyFans, paid sexting, or escorting services. Surely, some may be men catfishing as women, and some appear to be bots. 

Beyond their advertised gender, age, and general location, there is usually minimal indication of who exactly is beyond any account. Most accounts appear to be used exclusively for posting in groups such as these. Rarely do posts feature any identifying images of the user; usually, they’re rather sparse. While some offer up detailed fantasies, with paragraphs about their kinks and desires, many post a single line of text about looking for some sort of hookup. Overall, very few r4r members have built up their profiles to be anything like a dating app, and yet they are using Reddit for these purposes, just the same.

What about Reddit specifically makes it so rife for dating and sexting? Numerous apps cater explicitly to these purposes, and most seem far more efficient, even if requiring slightly more effort than writing a single horny sentence. Grindr and Feeld, for example, allow users to filter according to their specific interests and distance from other users. It seems much more promising to log onto one of these than to post for an audience of upwards of one million in hopes that someone local might spot it. But even if one is genuinely looking for in-person interaction, there is a thrill in itself to posting something that could be seen worldwide. Simply making a listing on r/dirtyr4r can be an erotic experience in itself. 

Among the more niche groups, there is an added community element. It seems easy for a couple to become a main character of, say, r/ElPasoSwings and enjoy the fun of posting and receiving attention there, regardless of whether they pursue actual swinging. If you do find other couples to hook up with, great. If you don’t, you’re still playing with the concept of interacting with the people around you. This sense of community might be why some Redditors participate in these broader groups in the first place: You can be your usual horny, anonymous self around thousands of other people doing the same thing. 

All across the website, people are seeking human connection. Arguably, every subreddit, from a hobbyist group for flashlight collectors to even just r/AskReddit, is a place for this. Likewise, not every group devoted to meet-ups focuses on sex.

Some, like r/ForeverAloneDating and r/4r30Plus, have strict rules about posting that make them more like a traditional dating site. Platonic groups like r/MakeNewFriendsHere and r/penpals are even more rigidly non-sexual—in the former, you’re not allowed to post at all if you have a Reddit history of commenting or posting on NSFW subreddits.  

But now, with growing popularity, r4r groups with the clear purpose of sexual connection are how a big part of the site is used. It feels like a return to an early internet era when one could throw up a quick Craigslist ad and get a blowjob out of it, or at least exchange a few messages with a stranger playing into the fantasy. There’s no need for a manicured dating app profile where you pretend to have hobbies and interests and share photos of yourself next to a dog to suggest you’re not a sociopath—just pure anonymous horniness. For all its flaws, Reddit remains one of the last social sites where your true identity doesn’t matter. The trend of using it for dating and sex could suggest that some of that facelessness is breaking down—but maybe it only highlights what is so erotic and freeing about internet invisibility in the first place.