Big changes are happening over at Grindr. In January, a tech company in Beijing paid $93 million to acquire 61.5% of the app. Earlier this week, the company announced it will purchase the remaining 38.5% stake for $152 million.
All this has got Steven Blum over at Vice feeling nostalgic about the days before Grindr, when chatrooms like Gay.com, AOL, Yahoo messenger, and Craigslist were all the rage.
“For gay men, the birth of online chat rooms changed everything,” Blum reflects in his new think-piece Cruising Online Was Actually Fun Before Grindr Ruined Everything. “The gay-friendliness of your hometown didn’t matter; all that mattered was that you had a stable dial-up connection and access to a keyboard.”
Any gay man who came up during the the mid- to late ’90s/early ’00s remembers these chatrooms well. It was how we connected with other guys, honed our cybersexing skills, and arranged hookups.
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“It’s all old hat in the age of Grindr and Scruff,” Blum writes, “but back then, it was a revelation.”
Related: Bathhouses And Beyond: A Brief History Of Gay Cruising
During its peak popularity, Gay.com attracted over 1 million users a day.
Mark Elderkin, the site’s founder, tells Vice, “Chatrooms were less about trading pics and more about being witty and having a back-and-forth banter with people.”
Perry Miller tells Vice his chatroom of choice was Craigslist, though he admits the platform was rather chaotic.
“It was a pain in the ass because I had to have a separate email address and copy and paste the sender’s address, attach my photos, and send it from my email,” he explains. “It was just a mess.”
But, he says, it worked.
Related: End Of An Era: Gay.Com Chat Rooms Are No More As Of Today
Then came Grindr (launched in 2009), then Scruff (launched in 2010), then Hornet (launched in 2012), and all those other hookup, er, dating apps that, in total, have attracted tens of millions of users around the world. And with them, came the death of online chatrooms.
Last summer Gay.com announced it was killing its online chatrooms after coming under new management. (The chatrooms were later reinstated after significant public outcry, but they’re still a ghost town.)
The M4M pages on Craigslist have also become less active, much to Miller’s disappointment. He still thinks Craigslist was more efficient than Grindr.
“On Grindr, [there is] all this back and forth,” he tells Vice, “but on Craigslist, it was just there for the taking.”
Related: Queerty Readers Relive The Gay.com Chatroom Glory Days
“While it’s easy to wax nostalgic about the relative intimacy of the early gay web,” Blum writes, “it’s also worth remembering that everything that happened online went on against a backdrop of intense homophobia.”
And he’s totally right. Chatrooms were all the rage when the idea of same-sex marriage was just that, an idea, DADT was the law of the land, gay jokes were being made on network television, and nondiscrimination laws were still considered novelties.
“Many of those who fled to AOL chatrooms, Craigslist, or Gay.com’s teen forums had to keep their online lives secret because of the stigma that swirled around homosexuality,” he continues.
He recalls:
When I was in high school, for example, I maintained a relationship with an older guy I’d met off Gay.com. We first met in a Starbucks’ parking lot and had sex—my first—the day we met, which felt illicit and thrilling at the time, but, in hindsight, was insane. What’s even more insane is that I didn’t tell anyone about him until college.
Related: Party Like It’s 2002: A Look Back At Gay Culture In The Aughts
In hindsight, he says, the whole thing made him feel “lonelier.”
Which, of course, begs the question: Now that chatrooms have been replaced, are apps like Grindr or Scruff any less lonely?
Share your thoughts in the comments below…
Heywood Jablowme
Craigslist a “chatroom”? I don’t see how Craigslist is (was?) a chatroom, much. Anyone reading M4M, they were either interested in doing Sex Act __, or they didn’t reply. (Or maybe chuckled to themselves at home and didn’t reply, I guess.) There wasn’t much “chatting” about it. Was there some button on CL that I never clicked on?
Out of curiosity I just looked at CL M4M and there are over 100 posts today alone in my not-very-big city. Maybe not like 15 years ago, but CL is apparently still active.
And it’s ridiculous to think of, say, the year 2000 as a time of “intense homophobia”! Calm down, honey.
ChrisK
Craigslist is still very popular. However, most of the ads are probably fake with profiles like the wife is away for the wknd and looking for company.
I’m surprised Manhunt wasn’t brought up. In the early 2000’s it was considered the king. Just like Grindr and Scruff today. It’s funny sometimes I’ll visit it for old times sake and it’s the same profiles and pictures of guys from 10 years ago.
jhon_siders
I miss the real bar cruising now guys just hide behind there phone .They have forgot how to interact face to face it seems now .
NateOcean
AOL? Yahoo? Manhunt?
What about the old dial-up BBS systems *before* the internet?
300-baud modern. Local phone number. Text based profile. Dial-Your-Match rocked!
It was the early 1980’s, but that’s how we rolled.
Danny595
It might seem puzzling at first that a website like Queerty so relentlessly promotes commercialized promiscuity. But then you realize where the money is. Grindr’s venture capitalists made a fortune off of marketing promiscuity and Queerty has owners and investors as well. There is no profit for them in fidelity and commitment.
ChrisK
Hey loony. You do realize that no one gives a shit right?
Heywood Jablowme
You always say that, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, but many of those basic sites are free. (You seem unfamiliar with them first-hand, and you probably won’t deny that.) To the extent they make money, they make money selling porn. And porn, ironically, keeps guys at home, whacking off and NOT engaging in promiscuity… not doing much of anything, in many cases, except whacking off with the “death grip.” Hey, that should make you happy since they’re not having sex!
In your previous incarnation ad Danny527 or whatever (not much of a change), you were always mad about gay bars too. Not much commercialism there and anyway, they’re going out of business at a steady clip.
Most guys in their 20s and early 30s aren’t interested, YET, in settling down. Yeah yeah yeah, you feel superior to ordinary people because you’re in a relationship. (Or so you say.) Let that be enough for you.
I see the exact opposite of what you contend. Queerty relentlessly promotes marriage, marriage, marriage and promotes THAT as the new norm.
Kernos
I began interacting online with other gays in the mid 1980’s using a 300 baud Hayes Smartmodem (much better than using an acoustic coupler) and connecting to private BBS’s (bulletin board systems). These were individually served and required knowing the phone number. These could be found in The Advocate classifieds and local Gay newspapers. Many were all text; some allowed very low-res pictures (2-4 bit usually). Some were free, many asked for donations, some required subscriptions.
I made friends, made online dates for the BBSs to send texts and met physically. The tech was different, media poor but still exciting, but the basics were similar to today. The BIG difference was the lack of corporate control, malware and advertisements. They were a lot more private too.
After that when IRC and Usenet became easily usable mostly due to development of decent software most of us switched to those. AOL and CompuServe were possible, but many of us did not trust the corporate control.
htx82
Also missed IRC in the article, like Kernos mentioned. The image used is someone using mIRC. Many sleepless nights were spent staring at that screen, talking to people from all over the world. I was young when I learned how to use IRC, only a year or two shy of the age most young adults nowadays are getting (authorized, legitimate access) to Grindr and all the apps. The only difference is that most young folks now already have the notion of how small their world/community is. Back then, like others stuff have said, there was a different kind of excitement about it.