Positive Life NSW

Greg Page explores the evolution of internet dating and why mobile dating (or iDating) might be the next big thing.

Illustration by James GlimourSomeone told me over brunch the other day that internet dating is over. I looked aghast. “You mean, if I go cruising for cock online at lunchtime when the boss has gone out, that I’m quite literally passé?” He raised his eyebrows and sighed, “No, darls, what I mean, is that no one’s doing internet dating anymore, everyone’s doing mobile dating.”

Yes, readers, things have truly moved on, whether you were aware of it or not. While video may have killed the radio star, it looks like it might be the iPhone that quite literally nails Gaydar and Manhunt in the butt. The hottest iPhone application (or ‘app’ in iSpeak) is Grndr, in case you weren’t aware.

Grndr allows you to set your location and find men keen to meet other men wherever you are. It takes the idea of instant dating to a whole new level. You could be sitting in a restaurant, switch on your Grndr, see if the hottie at the next table has his on as well, send each other messages, do the business in the toilets or under the table, and all before the bill comes. Now that’s a meal deal indeed!

Of course, Grndr will eventually be superseded by some other application, perhaps even some kind of TV/internet/mobile contraption that fits into your pocket and folds out to be the size of a plasma screen. Hey, we’re sure there are tech boffins in some distant laboratory already working on this.

Internet dating has been a fixture of the gay scene for at least a decade now, if not a little longer. If you want a good reason why no one goes out anymore, blame it on the gay dating sites. Why trudge all the way to a bar, spend your hard-earned dollars on alcohol and have a potentially messy night ahead of you, when you can sit at home, all nice and cosy and just order up a hottie (or hotties!) and have them delivered to your door?

Gay men have always been early adopters and when it came to dating online, we were well ahead of the curve. It’s only in the last few years that straights have realised how advantageous going on something like RSVP can be. No more time wasting propped up against a wall waiting for Mr or Ms Right – this time you find the ones who have the same interests, the same sexual appetites and possibly even the same musical tastes as you. Very important, shoppers!

I know numerous couples who met online and are still together. I always poo-pooed the idea of meeting someone online for a serious relationship, but it keeps happening again and again to people I know. In fact, I found my last boyfriend in an online chat room, even though he was in Tel Aviv. We met when he arrived in Australia and managed to have a five-month relationship until the difficulties of having a long-distance romance finally kicked in.

Can we mention at this point that Skype is perhaps the greatest invention since the internet itself? Every night you can have amazing sex with the most gorgeous men from places as varied and far-flung as Caracas, Toronto, Capetown, Dubai and even Melbourne. Forget chatting and waving to mum and dad back home – cybersex never got so good until it got Skyped.

Little wonder that every gay bar on Oxford Street is turning straight or, even worse, mixed these days. The best thing of all is that no one asks your status, no one cares if you cum in their mouth (because there’s a cyber wall between you) and you don’t have to make them breakfast either.

Online dating for HIV+ guys also got a lot more interesting in recent months with the arrival of two new sites: www.pozvibrations.com and www.beonecity.com

Beonecity even managed to score a big plug in gay glossy magazine DNA promoting “hot HIV+ dudes”, unfortunately the problem with this “global positive community” site is that all the hot dudes live in Nebraska or Baltimore and are not exactly handy.

The more hardcore fetish sites like Recon and the various bareback dating sites obviously attract a lot of interest from HIV+ men, but from experience many people on these sites are a tad on the unreliable side, the pictures are often either doctored or taken 30 years ago and yes, as has been the case for me personally, they’re high when you meet them. Such are the drawbacks of cyber dating.

Most of the mainstream gay sites ask people to either reveal their status (giving no answer or omitting it is usually taken as a sign of acknowledging your HIV+ status, incidentally) or ask you to make a statement about where you stand on safe sex (Most of the time? Always? Never? When appropriate?). Perhaps the site that best puts things in a modern perspective is gay Israeli dating site Atraf, where members can add a little red ribbon on their profile to show they are ‘HIV friendly’. It would be nice to see some of the big dating site players locally and internationally taking a similar stance. This might go some way to eliminating the need for a number of HIV-negative people to write in their profiles that they are ‘clean’ and only looking for ‘clean’ partners (read: very HIV unfriendly).

Like the internet, and the world itself, internet dating isn’t going anywhere but appears to be fragmenting and moving into more and more niche groups. Men who like men who like panties! Guys into guys with pierced scrotums! Or, my favourite, Guys with iPhones, which is actually a real site (guyswithiphones.com). What will they think of next? Whatever it is, the gays will be on to it. You read it here first!