Chasing the Digital Gay Sex Dragon

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One of our favorite pastimes here at Queerty is chronicling the The New York Times‘ slow transformation into a college literary magazine by way of self-mythologizing “culture” pieces about the writing staff’s various crippling addictions. Previously, we told you about Susan Cheaver’s irritating and erroneous dry drunk conclusion that New Yorkers never drink. While we wait for Bill Kristol to write a 1,000 word essay on how he discovered the true heart of conservatism by way of a fourteen day LSD odyssey on the banks of the Russian River, the Times has fed our own personal addiction for awkward belles-lettres by way of Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ account of his super-entertaining sex addiction via online gay sex sites.

We could go on about the tickle in our throat we got while reading Lewis’ imagined dialogue with his addictive personality (Eg: “I will make Benoit lie and manipulate and chase sex every hour of every day, until he can’t feel anything anymore, until everything good and decent about him is removed. He needs me”), but the real question running through our head is, “If Benoit Denizet-Lewis was an online sex whore who would drive hundreds of miles for a hook-up, how the hell did we never see him on any gay sex site, ever?”

So, we pulled up all our old hook-up site accounts and decided to take a walk down memory lane to see where we missed out on the chance to take advantage of America’s favorite homo cultural anthropologist’s uncontrollable (but now controlled, congrats/alas) desire to examine the nooks and crannies of every boy on the ‘net.


Bulletin Board Services
Heyday: 1995
Long before the Internet took over, nascent gay sex-cruisers would dial up to their local BBS to get off. However, without photos or a real way of searching for guys, early online hook-ups were more a novelty than anything else.

AOL Chat Rooms
Heyday: 1997
In ’96, AOL changed its billing structure to an unlimited plan. Between that and the bazillion mailer CDs sent out, the service exploded to a staggering 10 million users. Online hook-ups hit the big time with M4M chat rooms catering to every locale and flavor you could possibly want. And while AOL caught flack for their willingness to hand over personal information to authorities (Naval officer Timothy McVeigh was booted from the service after AOL turned over his account, for instance), it was the first, best and really only game in town.

XY
Heyday: 1998
Peter Ian Cummings’ twinkariffic magazine hosted one of the early online hook-up spots, with a user base of 12 young guys and 3,000 or so, “admirers”. You had to pay, but the promise of young love managed to give the poorly-designed site a life all its own.

PlanetOut
Heyday: 2000
Long before it gobbled up The Advocate, Out and all of gay media (only to be gobbled up by Regent last week), Planet Out’s primary existence was as the first gay-specific hook-up spot. PO managed to be the Wal-Mart of sex sites; you could find a boyfriend, a one-night stand and everything in between.

Gay.com
Heyday: 2001
A rival to Planet Out, Gay.com offered much of the same, but with a more international flavor, with regional versions of the site available for the UK, US and Europe. The site was the first to offer extensive categories, finally making the quest for 21-24 year old brunette bottoms with a thing for leather as easy as point and click.

Friendster
Heyday: 2002
Constantly “in beta,” Friendster made it easy to find out who all your friends have been sleeping with—and using them to introduce yourself. Friendster made it a lot less skeevy to pick-up guys, since you knew where the guys were coming from. But, of course, that’s also what made it totally useless for anonymous sex. If you wanted to remember the name of the guy you were doing, Friendster was your best bet.

Manhunt
Heyday: 2004
Larry Basile and Jonathan Crutchley’s 200-pound gorilla of online sex has been accused of destroying gay culture, but it really just took the crusing scene into the 21st century. If early gay sex-pioneers were all about privacy and discretion, Manhunt boys were all about showing all the goods—and often. People imagined privacy somehow existed on the site, but as Perez Hilton and Andrew Sullivan soon learned, putting your penis on the Internet is about as discreet as standing on top of a bar and dropping trou.

MySpace
Heyday: 2006
MySpace is like Friendster, but uglier. But when the herd moves, you follow. It offers all the same appeals of Friendster, except with 100 million users and counting, your “friends” list is 2,000 people long.

Craigslist
Heyday: Determining a ‘heyday’ for Craigslist is tricky– best to think of it as a chronic and lingering condition.
Craigslist’s old school appeal (minimal search functions, lots of text) makes it the go-to site for closeted celebrities and others looking for old-fashioned anonymous sex with strangers. The downside of the anonymity is the high likelihood that the hot muscle jock you’re talking to is actually a 60-year old pic collector. The simplicity of the site, combined with users not needing to sign-up for an account means it will never die.

Connexion
Heyday: 2007
Connexion’s main appeal is that it’s a lot less tawdry than most gay sex sites. In fact, if you’re actually looking to go on a date– that is, you want to talk to your sex partner and be seen publicly with them, Connexion’s still the place to go.

Facebook
Heyday: 2008
See Myspace, Friendster.

Adam4Adam
Heyday: You have it open behind this window.
One of the top 5000 websites in the world, Adam4Adam takes the Manhunt model and makes it free, making its money off of advertising. It’s less a hook-up site than it is a giant database of sex, with every size, shape and predilection available at a moment’s notice.

So, what sites did you troll and when? We know we missed a lot of the interest specific (Bears411, for instance) places- any hidden gems? What’s on the horizon? And are gay sex sites going to turn all of us into sex addicts like Benoit?