If you've got a business conference in a strange city, or you're visiting the in-laws' new vacation house and you and your man need a bar to escape to, where do you look to find a local watering hole? We've found sites like ClubFly.com, which maps bars and clubs in various cities and zip codes, and MapCidy.com, a new-ish entrant into the field of user-generated mapping (meaning you glob on to the locales other users already posted, then add your own). But what are some of your favorites? Is there another site that's a one-stop national resource that we don't know about? Tell us where you've gone on the web to booze when you're in a strange place. Or, if you live in one of those cities where we might have trouble finding a local spot (i.e. you just have to know where the one gay bar in town is), post it below. [ClubFly, Mapcidy]
PlanetOut's Gay.com spent untold sums of cash revamping its infrastructure in the past few months, which was most visibly seen with the relaunch of its chat program — easily the most used feature on the site.
Except ever since the gay hub debuted the new version of its site at the beginning of the month, Gay.com has been plagued by downtime. By our rough science, it's been offline more than it's been online. Quite embarrassing for a company that's already had its fiscal misadventures widely reported (Queerty included), but we imagine few of you care how this affects the accounting books than it does your online cruising.
So, you tell us: How has Gay.com going offline hit you? Fewer hookups? Are you just signing up for Manhunt.net instead? Or are you suddenly abstinent? Hitting the bars more? Or banking on monogamy?
Queerty will have more on the problems festering at Gay.com — but first, we want to know if it's really affecting you, or if Facebook already supplanted the site.
(And yes, we're prepared for any number of you saying how irrelevant Gay.com is, because it's just a place to hunt for sex, and why should you care. But that's idiot logic, because plenty of fags use the site quite often. Sometimes daily.)
And below, Gay.com's open apology letter to members. CONTINUED »
There's a new online social networking site for the gays. It's call Gays.com.
On Monday, we told you that at least 15 percent – still a significant portion – of reported AIDS-related deaths were from contracting HIV through gay sex.
On Tuesday, we told you U.N. officials reported that "despite a stepped up global battle against AIDS, the numbers of people newly infected with HIV are far and away outpacing the numbers beginning antiretroviral drug treatments."
Today, it's time for a little more school. The web video series HIV is Still a Big Deal, debuting today, is an attempt to bring HIV/AIDS education to the web. The hope? That the only thing spreading virally is the video. More about the series below: CONTINUED »
From The Editor: Some of you may be experiencing problems accessing the site today. If you're reading this, you probably aren't one of them. Luckily, I'm in Santa Fe, which seems to be impervious to the problems afflicting both coasts, so updates will continue, which means you'll have loads to read this afternoon! Lucky you!
No doubt the internet has changed gay life in the 21st century, but should it be blamed for the spread of HIV? A journalist at Britain's Channel 4 seems to think so… [The Inquirer]
Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority attempted to block the country's route to YouTube Sunday, but ended up cutting off the entire world's access: "The country ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam…The details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world. The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube." [BBC]
Too pious for Xtube and too sanctimonious for YouTube, right wing religionists often take to GodTube to voice their conservative grievances. And, like so many good nutjobs, many of the users use their home videos to blast the blasphemous gays. The site, however, won't publish the word.
Good As You offers the queer details:
…"Gay" gets banned as is it a curse word; "fag" and "dyke" are totally fine! And clearly SOMEONE had to have inputted the code and made the choice of which words to ban and which to allow. It's quite telling what their mind deemed offensive, and what it found kosher.
Kosher? Ha!
By the way, the censored words in the image above are: damn, shit, gay, fuck and whore.
Anti-gay activist Paul Cameron can't be bothered with fact checking and reputable science. No, rather than enlisting editors to publish their slanted, unscientific and dangerous reports on gay people, Cameron and his cronies at the Family Research Institute are starting their own online journal.
Via Box Turtle Bulletin:
FRI is doing something exciting — we are starting an online scientific journal! It is entitled the Empirical Journal of Same Sexual Behavior (EJSSB)
…
Not too many years ago, launching a scientific journal was a colossal undertaking. First, you had to assemble an editorial board and get capitalized sufficiently to be able to print and ship the journal. Then you had to find a way to get libraries of the world to subscribe — hopefully covering all or most of your costs. Daunting to put it mildly.
Daunting? Try terrifying! Now Cameron, who apparently admired the Nazi's anti-gay ways, can spread his "empirical" observations without having to worry about editorial oversight. God bless the internet.
HIV's getting loads of press today - all of it bad. This morning we heard about infection inflations in New York City. Now Hong Kong's health director, PY Lam, says the territory's being slammed with new cases.
While New York's cases are being blamed on the closet, Lam's pinning the trend on technology:
The number of HIV cases in Hong Kong has surged partly because of men finding sexual partners over the internet and spreading the virus, [Lam] said Wednesday. [He] told a World Health Organization meeting in South Korea that there had been a worrying rise in the number of reported cases as more gay men met for casual sex, often using no condoms.
…
"We have seen three clusters of HIV among men who have sex with men," Lam said. "In this information age they find new ways to meet each other and have relationships sometimes on a very casual basis, while condom use is very low."
One of the three geographic clusters contains 50 men who contracted the bug from one man.
Where do they find the time?!
Obviously Elton John's whole internet-induced social stagnation theory ain't airtight:
Hundreds of super-powered lesbians and gays let their magical hair down at a new LGBT prom recently. They danced, flirted, elected a prom king and (drag) queen, played outdoors in their underwear at a mountain ski resort, and levitated with robotic boots and angels' wings until they crashed the server.
Crashed a server? That's, like, the craziest, nerdiest party ever! And when we say "craziest" we mean "looniest". Nerdiest, however, remains the same.
Good news for moneyed geezers and gold digging twinks: a new gay dating website goes live today: Gay Arrangement.
Marketing guru Lucy McGoldrick (ha!) celebrates the symbiotic site's launch:
Sugar Daddy sites have been around for while but we wanted to create a site exclusively for the gay marketplace. Let's be honest; it's human nature to desire someone attractive and perhaps younger than oneself, or to hope someone will spoil you rotten. Gay Arrangement makes this possible without any awkwardness. It's a simple concept and is already proving extremely popular. The feedback we've had from the gay community has been excellent.
One satisfied daddy exclaimed, "My kept boy's the hooker that keeps on giving!" Said boy would have replied, but he'd stuffed his mouth with caviar covered cock. And, miraculously, showed no signs of awkwardness! What a pro.
• Clay Aiken fans take their obsession to the extreme-ly dorky!
• British gay Asians, Arabs get own website. MySalaam.com founder Simran explains the site's name: "I chose the name salaam because it is a word of greetings, peace and love that is shared by many peoples of Middle Eastern and Asian heritage."
• Gay radio is all the rage!
• Windows Media President Peter Polimino leaving for "personal reasons" (read: company's tanking). To be replaced by three "co-presidents" (read: patsies).
CONTINUED »
Michael Downs likes all American guys. In fact, the St. Petersburg-based business man likes them so much, he founded an entire website around celebrating all American guys and their sweet, supple flesh: All American Guys! (Cue the Star-Spangled Banner)
CONTINUED »
The internet's a dangerous place. Not only are there sexual predators, neo-nazis, scientologists and other assorted baddies, but you have to worry about sicko fuckwad shithead faggots like us.
As you can see, Blog Rater gave us and our potty mouth an NC-17 rating. Apparently they object to our use of the words "gay," the same word in the plural form "lesbian" and "zombie", which we blame on that shitting kid.
We're a little disappointed, actually - we were hoping for an XXX. Do we have to slaughter and eat a straight person, or something?
Meanwhile Blog Rater slapped our source, AfterElton, with an NC-17 rating. Surprisingly, ex-gay homophobes Exodus International received a G: all ages admitted. Ain't that sweet?
