Apparently, all it took for Grindr to have an outage was a convention of Republicans.

The Republican National Convention (RNC), a convention held every four years since 1856 that officially nominates the Republican candidates for the general election, was held in Milwaukee, Wis. last week. Users on the queer hookup app reported an outage on Tuesday.

However, Grindr was never reported to have been down according to their incidents website until Saturday—two days after the RNC was over. Prior to that, the latest incident report happened in May.

Still, over 1,000 users around Milwaukee around 4 p.m. on Tuesday reported the app was down due to influx of users, according to online service status website Downdetector and as reported by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Additionally, an anonymous source in the area told the outlet on Friday that they noticed more profiles than usual—particularly blank ones, which amongst frequent users typically indicates accounts who prefer to be unidentifiable.

The situation sparked fire when a satire account The Halfway Post on X claimed it to be breaking news, and that “An executive of the gay dating app Grindr says the Republican National Convention is “basically Grindr’s Super Bowl,”” the account posted, despite no statement from Grindr’s executive.

Still, a Grindr user at the convention posted a video in response to The Halfway Post swiping through the app, revealing many users who are zero feet away and therefore were also in attendance of the RNC.

The irony in this discretion is not lost; the Republican Party’s very own former primary candidate and Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis was the one who spearheaded what is now nationally known as “Don’t Say Gay” bills. Earlier this year, Gov. DeSantis announced the suspension of his campaign, endorsing Pres. Trump for the Republican party.

“Don’t Say Gay” is one angle of many that make over 625 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced on the legislative floor this year, which is an all-time high record of conservative efforts to bar rights for queer, trans and nonbinary people.

Furthermore, the crux between Republicans and the LGBTQ community goes beyond the irony of Grindr users. On Wednesday, Rachel Maddow critiqued Pres. Trump’s Vice President pick J.D. Vance for his rapid ascension in the political landscape due to his ties to tech billionaires.

Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies Peter Thiel is an openly gay billionaire. But most of all, he is an active endorser of Vance, notably through his $15 million contribution that successfully locked in Vance’s Senate seat for Ohio.

This is not the first time an influx of users on Grindr aligned with the RNC. In 2016 on the night before the first day of the convention, VICE News reported a 120% surge in user activity on the app in Cleveland, Ohio where it was held that year.

For openly gay and Republican ex-Congressman George Santos, who was ousted from Congress last fall for criminal charges, the surge of Grindr users at Republican conventions is nothing new.

Contrary to Santos, an X user views the situation to be quite sad. Rather than making a spectacle out of potentially closeted—if not private—LGBTQ Republicans, the user offered a perspective that speaks to the unique challenges of self-love faced by many people of the queer community grappling with their gender and sexuality.

Above all, the real stake amongst the LGBTQ community was on stage amidst the Grindr outage, particularly at the very hands of the Republican figures who openly denounce LGBTQ justice.

Imara Jones, founder of award-winning and trans-led news organization TransLash Media, reflected on the RNC’s anti-trans rhetoric having “real world consequences.”

Out of the 625 anti-LGBTQ bills, 116 are active today, and 47 have already passed.

It is unclear what the increased LGBTQ presence at the RNC could suggest regarding any shift in the dynamics amongst the Republican Party. At the very least, however, the ongoing trends of spike in Grindr usage at the RNC could hint at a growing—albeit complex—overlap between queer and trans justice and anti-LGBTQ conservative rhetoric.

If anything, perhaps it could signal a dire need for the Republican party to address and reconcile these contradicting realities, especially as it continues to harm today’s most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ community: trans youth.

Meanwhile, queer and Filipina author, cultural critic and podcaster Karen Tongson took it to X last week, wondering if this contradiction of high Republican presence on Grindr during the RNC is solely a sign of self-interest politics.

“All this affirms for me is that a lot of white gay men are willing to throw the rest of us under the bus for proximity to power.”