Grindr — yes, Grindr — won the WHCD party circuit
Grindr — yes, Grindr — won the WHCD party circuit
Grindr——没错，就是 Grindr——赢得了白宫记者协会晚宴的社交场
The “gay dating and hookup app” is now courting Washington insiders. 这款“同性恋约会和交友应用”如今正在向华盛顿的内部人士示好。
by Tina Nguyen | Apr 29, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC 作者：Tina Nguyen | 2026年4月29日，世界标准时间晚上10:00
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about technology, politics, and technology learning how to politick. If you’re not a subscriber but would like to support our work, please subscribe here. I promise that your money will not go toward paying for a drone-proof ballroom for The Verge staff, no matter how much fun we’d have throwing parties there. 你好，欢迎阅读《Regulator》。这是一份专为《The Verge》订阅者提供的通讯，内容涵盖科技、政治以及科技如何学习政治。如果你还不是订阅者，但想支持我们的工作，请点击此处订阅。我保证，无论我们在那里举办派对会有多开心，你的钱都不会被用来为《The Verge》员工支付防无人机宴会厅的费用。
Speaking of parties: The Verge normally wouldn’t do a party report from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner week, also known as “Nerd Prom,” because it’s a bit too much Washington insider circle-jerking for normal people to stomach. (This year was weirder than most, considering that the dinner was targeted by an attempted shooter, it was immediately canceled, and the media insiders kept partying anyway.) But I will make an exception for the party thrown by Grindr — “a midsize tech company that happens to be gay,” as Joe Hack, Grindr’s head of global government affairs — which took place the night before the dinner and can therefore stand on its own. 说到派对：《The Verge》通常不会报道白宫记者协会晚宴（也被称为“书呆子舞会”）周的派对，因为这对普通人来说，华盛顿内部人士的这种“自嗨”实在让人难以忍受。（今年比往年更诡异，考虑到晚宴遭到了枪手袭击未遂，随后立即被取消，但媒体内部人士依然继续狂欢。）但我会为 Grindr 举办的派对破例——正如 Grindr 全球政府事务主管 Joe Hack 所言，这是一家“恰好是同性恋的中型科技公司”——这场派对在晚宴前一晚举行，因此可以独立成篇。
And really, there’s a lot to unpack with this event: In an era of resurgent LGBTQ panic, why did a gay dating app with a reputation for facilitating hookups decide to throw a house party for those Washington insiders? Why did they do it this year, during peak Washington insider social season? And why did they let the media cover it? 说实话，这场活动有很多值得深究的地方：在 LGBTQ 恐慌情绪复燃的时代，为什么一款以促成约会而闻名的同性恋交友应用，决定为华盛顿的内部人士举办一场家庭派对？为什么他们选择在今年，即华盛顿内部人士社交季的巅峰期这样做？又为什么他们允许媒体进行报道？
If someone had said that lobbyists for a publicly traded tech company were hosting a cocktail party on the eve of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, no one would pencil it on the calendar. But when Grindr began sending out invites, Washington immediately convulsed with thirst: Grindr? The “gay dating and hookup app”? Throwing a party? The scandal-hungry TMZ interviewed Hack for a segment and sent their Congress reporters to ask Republican officials for their opinions. The Advocate wrote about the power jockeying inside LGBTQ circles to get a ticket. Writer Josh Barro tweeted that he couldn’t RSVP in time. The Onion wrote an article about the “poppers lobbyists” expected to attend. DC seemed to vibrate with a hope that this party would be somehow different from the usual fare. 如果有人说一家上市科技公司的游说者要在白宫记者协会晚宴前夕举办鸡尾酒会，没人会把它记在日程表上。但当 Grindr 开始发出邀请时，华盛顿立刻陷入了骚动：Grindr？那个“同性恋约会和交友应用”？要举办派对？渴望丑闻的 TMZ 采访了 Hack，并派他们的国会记者去询问共和党官员的看法。《The Advocate》报道了 LGBTQ 圈内为获得一张入场券而进行的权力博弈。作家 Josh Barro 发推文称他没能及时回复邀请。《洋葱新闻》写了一篇关于预计将出席的“Poppers（一种娱乐性吸入剂）游说者”的文章。华盛顿似乎在期待这场派对能与往常的活动有所不同。
But even if they were horny for, well, horniness, they’d be temperamentally incapable of expressing it. Washingtonians, Republicans and Democrats alike, are too afraid to ever break decorum in social settings, because their coworkers, bosses, or James O’Keefe might be lurking around the corner with a camera. (James O’Keefe later insinuated that he sent an undercover mole to the party.) By the time everyone was kicked out at midnight, the most risqué thing I’d witnessed was one passionate kiss (no tongue). The shenanigans were pretty much limited to people thinking about jumping into the pool fully clothed in suits and cocktail dresses — but only, they shrieked, if people put away their cameras. 即便他们对“那种事”充满渴望，他们在性格上也无法表现出来。华盛顿人，无论是共和党人还是民主党人，都太害怕在社交场合打破礼节，因为他们的同事、老板或 James O’Keefe 可能正躲在角落里拿着摄像机。（James O’Keefe 后来暗示他派了一名卧底潜入派对。）当午夜所有人被赶走时，我目睹的最出格的事情也只是一个热情的吻（没有舌吻）。所谓的闹剧仅限于人们考虑穿着西装和鸡尾酒礼服跳进泳池——但他们尖叫着补充，前提是人们必须收起摄像机。
Still, this was the Grindr party, the hottest ticket of Nerd Prom, and every journalist, senior administration official, politician, publicist, staffer, lobbyist, influencer, you name it, had been trying to get on the invite list for the past week. For once, the social order was flipped: Sure, a tech company was throwing a party to curry influence in Washington. But this time, influence was begging to be let in. By 9PM, when I arrived, the line was already out the door, and well-connected people arriving in black cars were directed to the end of the street. “We’re at capacity,” the PR assistants at the front told me, frowning at their iPads, and for a moment I wondered whether they were strategically implementing artificial scarcity. 尽管如此，这毕竟是 Grindr 的派对，是“书呆子舞会”中最抢手的入场券。过去一周，每一位记者、政府高级官员、政客、公关人员、职员、游说者、网红，你能想到的所有人，都在试图进入邀请名单。这一次，社交秩序被颠倒了：没错，是一家科技公司在举办派对以在华盛顿寻求影响力。但这一次，是那些有影响力的人在乞求入场。晚上9点我到达时，排队的队伍已经排到了门外，乘坐黑色轿车抵达的权贵们被指引到街道尽头排队。“我们已经满员了，”前台的公关助理皱着眉头看着 iPad 对我说，那一刻我甚至怀疑他们是否在策略性地制造人为的稀缺感。
It turned out that the party was at capacity. I just had to do some aggressive name-dropping to get in and go past the foyer. 事实证明，派对确实已经满员了。我不得不通过强硬地搬出一些大人物的名字，才得以进入并穿过门厅。
There’s a general slate of high-end fancy places that party planners fight over for the week— Meridian House! The Four Seasons! The French ambassador’s residence! — but this unassuming Georgetown mansion, built in 1840, was new to the scene. In 2022, a luxury real estate group purchased the mansion for just under $9 million, gutted the 11,000-square-foot Federal-style interior, and reopened it in late 2024 as a high-end rental aimed at the modern, discreet billionaire or Saudi royal: soothing beige walls, designer statement chandeliers, massive tables for huge floral arrangements and pyramids of boxes of boxes of burgers and french fries. But the gardens. Oh, the gardens. Somehow, over the past two centuries, the owners had carved out a full half acre of real estate in Georgetown and transformed it into a lush paradise of wandering pathways among boxwoods and trees, burbling fountains and marble statues, terraces enclosed in hedges, hidden greenhouses, and a swimming pool behind ivy-covered walls about two stories tall. 在这一周里，派对策划者们会争抢一系列高端豪华场所——子午线大厦（Meridian House）！四季酒店！法国大使官邸！——但这座建于1840年、不起眼的乔治城豪宅却是社交圈的新面孔。2022年，一家豪华房地产集团以不到900万美元的价格买下了这座豪宅，拆除了其1.1万平方英尺的联邦风格内部结构，并于2024年底重新开放，将其作为面向现代低调亿万富翁或沙特皇室的高端租赁场所：柔和的米色墙壁、设计师款吊灯、摆放着巨型花艺和堆成金字塔状的汉堡与薯条盒的大桌子。但花园，哦，那花园。不知何故，在过去的两个世纪里，业主在乔治城开辟了整整半英亩的土地，将其改造成了一个郁郁葱葱的天堂：黄杨木和树木间蜿蜒的小径、潺潺的喷泉和大理石雕像、被树篱环绕的露台、隐藏的温室，以及一堵约两层楼高、爬满常春藤的墙后的游泳池。
And the gardens were packed with hundreds of DC’s “power gays” (as UnHerd’s John Maier put it) from across the political spectrum, all of whom had been working in Washington for decades and knew the traditional party spots, but had never known this mansion even existed until now. 花园里挤满了数百名来自不同政治光谱的华盛顿“权力同性恋者”（正如 UnHerd 的 John Maier 所言），他们都在华盛顿工作了几十年，熟悉传统的派对场所，但直到现在才知道这座豪宅的存在。