 |
By Trevor |
There's an interesting article this month in Out Magazine (yes -- I did just say the words "interesting article" and "Out Magazine" in the same sentence) on Manhunt's rise to dominance in gay men's sex cultures. It's an interesting piece, though it's highly moralistic (no surprise, of course). The piece's title -- "Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?" -- really could have dropped the question mark and switched the first two words. It even features a quote from the original gay-sex-culture-basher, Larry Kramer!
But despite it's shortcomings, I found a few things here interesting. In particular, I was surprised to learn that the site is the second "stickiest" on the Web, meaning that users spend more time on average per visit to Manhunt.net than they do on any either site on the entire Internet -- except for a lone gambling website:
The seemingly endless stream of available men on Manhunt is, according to marketing director Henricks, “addictive, like a slot machine. You keep hitting next, to see another screen of profiles, thinking you’re gonna get lucky sevens.” This drive, according to Alan Downs, a psychologist and author of The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World, lies at the core of the appeal of online cruising: “Variable payout schedule, which is used in slot machine designs, is the most addictive form of psychological conditioning, because you never know when you’ll get paid. It could be every 10 times you play, or every hundred.” In the same way, Downs adds, “every time you log on, you never know what you’ll find. That’s why it expands to fill a person’s time. Last night was a bust, but who knows who will be online this morning or tonight.”
How vulnerable are Manhunt users to its addictive quality? “We’re the second-stickiest website in America,” Henricks boasts. “Stickiness,” he explains, is slang for attention ranking, the measure of the amount of time a user spends on a website each time he visits. According to Compete.com, the Web’s Nielsen equivalent of attention rankings, the average Manhunt user spends 40 minutes on the site per visit. That’s about twice the amount of time the average Facebook or MySpace user spends on those sites. And, back to the slot machines, the only website in this country that is stickier than Manhunt is the wildly popular gambling website Pogo.com.
It's worth a read, if you can stomach a bit of judgment-day talk. I actually think that the author is on to something quite right --- that hundreds of thousands of gay men in the US have an addiction to these websites. Not really to sex, I think. But to the never-ending hunt. So while the author here concludes that we need to stop having so much sex, my suggestion isn't to stop fucking -- but to begin building a sexual culture that is pleasure-focused. As opposed to Manhunt's culture of quantity and efficiency, which often results in hookups that are less than satisfying.
|
You're right, it was an interesting read, and yes a bit judgmental. Your other entry is a perfect compliment to this one, about the Roxy in NYC. With the rise of websites like Manhunt the bars, which served as the meeting place are going online. Which does mean the lost of an important part of queer culture, but also the start of something new.
I don't think sex is the problem, but rather the efficiency in which one can find a new partner. The bars were no better, they were just face to face and you could have an occasional conversation, which you can do at Manhunt as well (though unlikely). Why spend the time going to a club, when you could just stay at home? Manhunt is great and all, but you cannot/should not sustain yourself on that alone.
The remedy I think is to find another thing for us to gather together, beyond the local bars to look for partners. The bars were the community centers, and that what the community has a whole needs to work on (again).
Meh. I think the author is making an unfounded assumption: that the time people spend logged onto manhunt is actually time they're paying attention to it. From a completely unscientific survey of my friends, most of them log in and minimize the window, checking it every few hours, if even that often.
And it's not like people actually hook up on Manhunt any more. That's so 2005. In this area (ann arbor) people log in, never chat, and (again, from my unscientific survey of friends) rarely, rarely hook up. Mostly it's just window shopping and I don't think that's going to be the end of gay culture. :)