The internet has its many beneficial properties. But what has a generation of young gay men who grew up with the internet become?
I get into “technology: good or bad” debates all the time. I typically argue for bad, however I understand the obvious benefits of the good. Technological advances pave the way for a broader reach in the world and allows for news and events to travel as fast as they’re delivered, creating a global instantaneous web of communication and information.
For every culture, the internet literally opened up the world to people. The lives of every person became a lot less solitary and suddenly you had access to a host of people just like you. This of course included gay men.
Before the internet dating in the gay world was no easy task. The term several decades ago wasn’t gay, but rather confirmed bachelor. Gay sex itself was and still is illegal in many parts of the world, and so announcing you were gay wasn’t usually an option. So how then did gay men date? How did they find other gay men without the annomynity of chat rooms and personal ads? It was no easy task, and you certainly had to earn your kill, so to speak.
But now we live in a world where it isn’t hard to find another gay man, in public or otherwise. In fact in some parts of the nation you can’t swing a dead cat without clobbering a handful of gays.
I’m going to get nerdy for a second…
In Quantum Physics there is a theory called the Law of Attraction. This is essentially that thoughts have energy and that by manifesting and directing these thoughts you are able to draw what it is you desire to you. Negative thoughts on the other hand — or thoughts of not-having what you want — create an undesireable result; you do not attract and thus cannot direct your energy at a specific source, causing it to build up inside of you.
So here is the proposed situation: Take a generation of people, repress their desires for a long period of time, and then give them unrestrained access to their desires. What happens?
If you said “BOOM!”, then I tend to agree with you.
At any given time there are hundreds if not thousands of gays online in your area. These gays are not hard to find; they have been cattle-called and frequent popular cruising sites, message boards and chat rooms. You log on, you see a cute face, you send them a message and say hello. As early as that evening you two can be laying horizontal doing the deed. As fast as it starts it can be over, and you can just go home and log back on to find another cute face.
Although I can’t blame people for acting in this way, it concerns me that the generation of gay men who have grown up only knowing dating through the internet might think that this behaviour is the norm, or as good as it gets.
Of course like all opinion pieces this is a gross generalization, however it is a common enough pattern to make note of. Has the internet possibly corrupted real dating and real courtship for the younger generation of gay men, or is this just how it has “evolved”?
We have definitely managed to achieve quantity in sex, but have we sacrificed quality? We are all fucking all the time, but for the most part we aren’t establishing relationships. And that doesn’t need to mean “serious committed relationships” — and I hate to sound all “back in my day” ish — but back in my day even if it was a one night stand you still had some connection to the guy you just boned. You acted on chemistry, not private pics.
Underneath the freedom that the internet has provided to the gay community I fear we have lost touch with what it was we were initially seeking in the first place — another human to make contact with.
