Russia's AirBNB-clone billed as the anti-Grindr

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February 3, 2017 | Online

Russia's AirBNB-clone billed as the anti-Grindr

Putin gay Imagine planning a romantic trip with your wife or heading off for a weekend adventure with the kids, only to find that the home you are renting is in a town swarming with gays! The horror! Your life will be ruined and now you'll never get into heaven.

Well, in Russia -- which has all the best vacation spots -- people can turn to an online house-share site called MyLinker. It is basically an AirBNB clone with one difference: you can filter out towns with too many homos.

"We have seen that the western model of doing business in the short-term rental housing market, for example Airbnb, is not suitable for Russia because of the differences in mentality," argued MyLinker project leader Novikova Svetlana Vladimirovna. "We decided to do everything possible to make sure the owners and the guests had all the necessary information about each other, which allows you to decide whether to take a particular guest accommodation."

How is the level of gayness of a town determined? Data is pulled from gay porn searches in Russia; the higher the number of searches per capita in a given area, the less desirable it becomes. Now that's some quality science!

"What about the freedom of choice? To deny gay people -- it's fine if we're talking about freedom of choice," added MyLinker.ru spokesperson Rodion Kadyrov.

You know all those closeted husbands are going to be using the site to find places to increase their Grindr hits, so in some ways it could be helpful.