Let’s be real. The current STI contact tracing system is completely disconnected from how we actually live. It expects you to remember every face, save every phone number, and send an anxiety-inducing text message weeks after a hookup. It puts the entire burden of tracing on you right at the exact moment you are stressing over a positive test.

If you met at a sauna, a dark room, or had NSA bareback sex off Grindr without exchanging Instas or numbers, the contact tracing chain breaks completely. The medical “honour system” is just too awkward and heavy to actually use in the real world. But we shouldn’t have to choose between enjoying anonymous sex and looking out for our community’s health.

I don’t have a perfect, finished solution yet, but I see the gap and I know how we can fix it. The idea is a simple app where, right before or after a hookup, you and your partner hold a button and physically tap your phones together for three seconds. The phones use a quick tap to exchange a randomised, meaningless mathematical code. That’s it. No awkward exchange of numbers required.

This isn’t a government tracker. The app won’t ask for your name, your number, or track your GPS, and it won’t keep a master list of who you sleep with. It works like a blind bulletin board. If one of you tests positive months later, you hit a button, and the system anonymously flags the mathematical codes it interacted with. You get a notification to go get tested, without ever knowing who sent it or when.

This isn’t a sterilised, clinical tool being handed down by a health board as a favour. It’s an idea born from the inside out, by and for LGBTQ+ folks who actually understand hookup culture. We know exactly where the old systems scrape and fail. Instead of waiting for a broken bureaucracy to understand us, let’s build the tool we actually need to protect ourselves autonomously.

Right now, the app doesn’t exist yet. Before writing thousands of lines of code, I need to prove to the healthcare organisations and grant boards that our community actually wants this. I need your voice.