Following a Foucauldian approach, this paper analyses how LGTBQIA+ dating apps carried out measures of collective care and information during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis in similar ways to those learned from the joint fight during the emergence of HIV-AIDS. Not forgetting that their main concern was keeping their users on the apps as long as possible for economic reasons, hook-up apps such as Grindr, Scruff, Wapx, and MachoBB provided the LGBTQIA+ community with a series of supporting and protecting services against COVID-19: enabling digital socialization to share worries and feelings; offering free professional psychological assistance; recommending sources of help to isolated LGBTQIA+ elders; providing information about COVID-19 and special protective measures for HIV+ people; organizing digital events and virtual dance parties; and giving emotional support and advice to chemsex users. At a greater scale, when HIV-AIDS first appeared in the early 1980s, activists rapidly responded by creating care and education centres, and undertaking initiatives that gave support and combated the stigma. Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualization of biosurveillance, ethics, and the politics of resistance as backbone and methodological frame, this paper analyses how the LGBTQIA+ dating apps responded to COVID-19 through lessons learned from the early fight against HIV-AIDS.
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