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Off Topic Forums => Off Topic Forum => Topic started by: GSOgymrat on July 23, 2012, 12:17:40 pm

Title: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: GSOgymrat on July 23, 2012, 12:17:40 pm
Global warming endangering the polar bears, the rainforest is being deforested and now technology is destroying the gay A-listers' "delicate social ecology".

GURL, GET OFF GRINDR!

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/grindr-fire-island-2012-7/

Every summer weekend, a contingent of New York’s gay society escapes to Fire Island Pines, the small vacation community perched off the coast of Sayville, Long Island. The Pines has long held a special place in the American gay imagination—a resort where pretty and rich gay men go to relax, party, and get it on amid beautiful houses and pristine sand dunes. The community, and its more woman-friendly neighbor, Cherry Grove, have survived the AIDS epidemic, recessions, and, most recently, a fire that destroyed the Pines’ legendary nightclub. But now residents are worrying about a new menace, one that announces itself with a distinctive electronic chime.

“Grindr has changed everything,” says Keith Shore, a buff 38-year-old hairdresser and long-term Pines summer resident. He does not mean for the better, and he’s far from the only one to make the complaint. Critics say the popularity of the gay hookup app is ruining the island’s unique and delicate social ecology.

Log in to Grindr on Fire Island, as you would anywhere else, and you’ll see a grid of 100 smiling faces and headless muscled torsos, a catalogue of men accessible from the comfort of your summer share’s living room. (Although cell-phone service on the island can be spotty, most houses are equipped with Wi-Fi.) The app has been called a “virtual bathhouse” and been pegged by some as a reason for the decline of the gay bar, but in a place like Fire Island, it may be especially destructive. Aside from the beach, a large part of the attraction of the Pines scene is the opportunity to rub shoulders, and maybe sleep, with attractive and powerful gay men. “Not long ago, you’d walk around here and everybody would be cruising each other, not anonymously, but face to face,” said Sal Occhipinti, a tanned 43-year-old, at a recent afternoon “high tea” dance party in the Pines harbor. A few feet away, on the largely empty patio of the Blue Whale, a group of three men were busily typing on their devices next to the bar. According to Occhipinti, even the Meat Rack, the notoriously cruisy wooded area between the Pines and Cherry Grove, has been taken over by glowing iPhone screens.

As Occhipinti and others see it, Grindr is an intrusion of digital artifice into what was once an analog gay Utopia—a place free from traffic, straight people, and, to a large extent, technology, where you could meet other men with a freedom and spontaneity that were impossible almost anywhere else. Grindr, with its easy-to-use interface, robs that experience of its risk, but also much of its thrill. For Javier Muñiz, a first-time visitor from Florida, it makes him wonder whether the Pines may one day become irrelevant. “What’s the point?” he asked, before wandering off to check out the Blue Whale, “if everybody is on Grindr?”


PS. - I just checked and Windows Phone doesn't have a Grindr app. I guess gay Microsoft nerds like myself don't get laid.
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: Hellraiser on July 23, 2012, 03:29:50 pm
Don't you have an Ipad?
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: GSOgymrat on July 23, 2012, 03:36:20 pm
Don't you have an Ipad?

Ooh! I do! I didn't think of that.
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: thunter34 on July 23, 2012, 05:06:26 pm
Heh....I read yesterday that the incoming Olympic athletes caused the Grindr network to crash from over use.
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: bmancanfly on July 23, 2012, 05:48:50 pm
I love love love Fire island.  I don't think even grindr could ruin it. 
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: Bbnb on July 26, 2012, 01:27:32 am
Interesting article.  I like grinder, scruff, and other apps like it. Although , I do see the benefit to a live  area like a bathhouse.  You don't have to travel so much to others houses or  meetup places.  Less travel costs, lol.

I have to say I have enjoyed social networking sites that allow you to get together with a group for an activity that isn't always sex or alcohol involved, i.e. a bar. There is one in my local area that is about lgbt doing outdoorsy activities that I plan on joining. Hypocrite that I am though, I woulnt say no to fun with the right guy by meeting guys on these activities, lol.
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: Oceanbeach on July 26, 2012, 09:08:27 pm
I would NOT be a WHORE if it were taped... I'd be an ACTRESS!!

The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints
 8)  Have the best day
Michael
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: GSOgymrat on July 27, 2012, 12:20:21 am
I would NOT be a WHORE if it were taped... I'd be an ACTRESS!!

The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints
 8)  Have the best day
Michael

 ;D I will have to remember that one.
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: red_Dragon888 on July 27, 2012, 10:08:11 am
from dark alleyways, to bars, to bathhouses, to Grindr's,  Ohhh My!!!  lol
Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: GSOgymrat on July 27, 2012, 04:18:12 pm
This has nothing to do with Grindr or the fall of Fire Island but I think you'll forgive me.

 Olympic Bodies - NSFW (http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/8136693/image/1/carlos-bocanegra-2012-body-issue-bodies-want-espn-magazine)

Title: Re: It's Grindr's fault
Post by: red_Dragon888 on July 27, 2012, 07:32:33 pm
This has nothing to do with Grindr or the fall of Fire Island but I think you'll forgive me.

 Olympic Bodies - NSFW (http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/8136693/image/1/carlos-bocanegra-2012-body-issue-bodies-want-espn-magazine)
Yes, The Ancient Greeks had the right idea, Keep it Naked!!!  and take pictures at different and better angles...