I'm over it, Scruff'd Up, Groun'd down to a pulp. Sick of watching the pretty boys win the CraigsLust lottery and me sitting at home with a copy of Janis Ian's, At Seventeen. So I'm doing something about it. I'm tossing every Adam Fairly Adam off my iOS, bookmark bar and my life in 2014. That shit is for the birds. It's anti-community, and reduces dudes by their boring stats. It also creates liars, and relies on a whole set of rules that have nothing to do with human kindness, love or just getting off.
These sites push gays around, and I hate them. You want me, and I want you? We'll just have to meet in the real world. We'll just have to return to the bar, the club, the meeting hall, the planning committee, the political group, the activist organization, the service center, the gym, the mountain, the forrest, the field, the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathtub, a gas station, supermarket, library, park steps, the community center, wherever. All those places have turned into empty cathedrals after the electronic crusades crushed our sexual spirit. They remain intact, and I need some space to meet you.
Get the fuck off the phone. Get the fuck off the web. Come see the curve of my leg, feel the palm of my hand, come and smell me. Stop asking me questions by text message. I want to hear your voice. I want to judge for myself whether you're all that. And I want you to judge me by what I am. How I walk, talk, behave, watch you like a man, treat you with respect. I want you to see the whites of my eyes for fuck sake.
The dudes I meet online are all about disrespect from the get go. They disrespect you in their profiles, they slant themselves, everyone involved gets poked uncomfortable unilaterally. We've become hard core addicts to the game of flip screen love life. Who likes me, who do I like? Well who the fuck do you know anymore?
What a bore. What a loss. Is it any wonder we continue to see HIV infection rates rising? Men don't give a shit about each other online on any of these sites, and this is a terrible way to hook up. Men lie, because now there is a professional lying device to obfuscate the truth about who you are. We create profiles of who we want to be. And that is the wrong way to choose a mate, by how well he can lie or even worse, serve himself up on a platter.
I hope the next generation gets this. I hope the next generation of boys to men realize how homogenizing the electronic matchmaker. There are a lot of beautiful men out there, but you wouldn't know it by going to a hookup site. Online only the circus sideshow survives to get laid, le creme de le creme, or don't bother to knock. We reduce everyone by face, age, class; we sero-sort by disease and drug, and we hyphenate our needs to subset categories. Or we get lost, and addicted to the thrill of rejection. I'd rather be a door mat.
All the other ones: the humble boy, the smart one, the talented, the kook, the beautiful fem, the punk, the lost one, the undiscovered treasure, the illiterate, the one not fully ready, the one who's personality and sense of self is so empowering it towers over ten of the most physically appealing men. Those get deleted, and I hate that policy. Grind'r is a bully, Scruff is a circuit party and you weren't invited, all of them suck the juice out of our love lives.
So this year, 2014, is the year I get off, dump my online profile and let the fates decide. It's a resolution that may get me back together, talking again, and feeling what it's like to use a few senses other than "touch" and "screen" to explore my sexual pride and joy.