two people made grindr accounts to embarrass a gay politician. which means two people made grindr accounts.

via the Rochdale Times, the Oldham Times and PinkNews.

Think about the logistics for a second. To leak a gay man's Grindr profile, you first have to be on Grindr.

Paul O'Neill, a Labour council member for North Heywood in Rochdale, thought about it too. After screenshots of his profile turned up on social media alongside some pointed commentary, he posted on Facebook that two people had "decided to visit a gay men's dating app I'm a member of, create an account for themselves, and then find my profile," before sharing what they found. He did not name them, and neither will we. They have had a big enough week.

Then the line that did the rounds: he is "not remotely ashamed to have a social and dating life, and it obviously affects not a jot my work as a proud ward councillor." PinkNews reports he signed off with a nod to the old Murphy's stout ads, "not bitter," which is the most northern English way imaginable to win an argument.

His colleagues piled in. Fellow council member Tom Besford called it a "great and classy response," and the comments under his post, as both local papers describe them, were a wall of support.

This is a genre now. A gay man in public life is caught being a gay man in private, someone expects him to resign, and he declines to be embarrassed about the one app every gay man over 18 has deleted and reinstalled at least nine times. Grindr has had a rougher year than he has.