Hooking up with friends: LGBTQ+ young people, dating apps, friendship and safety

Abstract

Research exploring digital intimate publics tends to consider social media platforms and dating/hook-up apps separately, implying distance between social and sexual communication practices. This paper troubles that delineation by drawing on LGBTQ+ young people’s accounts of negotiating safety and risk in dating/hook-up apps, in which friendship practices are significant. We explore four key themes of friendship that arose in our analysis of interviews and workshop discussions: sharing mutuals (or friends-in-common) with potential dates/hook-ups; making friends through apps; friends supporting app negotiations; and friends’ involvement in safety strategies. Through analysis of these data, we firstly argue that friendship is often both an outcome and an organising force of LGBTQ+ young people’s uses of dating/hook-up apps, and secondly, that media sites commonly defined as social (e.g. Instagram) or sexual (e.g. Tinder) are imbricated, with friendship contouring queer sex and dating practices.

Flirting and Friendship at the Periphery of Hook-up App Research

“…Despite their reputation as sex apps, hook-up apps afford making friends as well as communicating with existing friends (Byron et al 2021). Furthermore, our app-based encounters are often workshopped with friends, demonstrating that friendship is a guiding force in many queer lives (Byron et al 2021;Nardi 1999;Weeks et al 2001).…”

“…Despite their reputation as sex apps, hook-up apps afford making friends as well as communicating with existing friends (Byron et al 2021). Furthermore, our app-based encounters are often workshopped with friends, demonstrating that friendship is a guiding force in many queer lives (Byron et al 2021;Nardi 1999;Weeks et al 2001). As Race notes of hook-up app use: "sharing of captured images has emerged as a pleasurable activity and form of bonding among friends and acquain-tances in its own right, in activities informed by genres of gossip, boasting, archiving, memorabilia, humour, illustration, evidence, exposure and betrayal " (2015b, 504).…”

“…Existing friendships, flirtations, and other intimacies established in other spaces also seep into hook-up app communications. 3 These are porous spaces, less bounded than we sometimes want them to be, though users seem to be increasingly comfortable with bringing their app profiles into contact with their social networks, as per sharing Instagram links on their profiles (Byron et al 2021).…”

“…I offer these examples not simply to reference how friendships mediate hook-up app use (and non-use) but also to foreground the possibilities of researching with friendship. I am not suggesting that this method suits all circumstances, and the above examples are notably specific to hook-up app research, referencing the friendships that commonly support app use (Byron 2021, 144-169;Byron et al 2021). While these peripheral data may be specific to my friendships, this particularity is useful where it is understood that distant observation or detached surveys will likely produce less intimate data on the mediated intimacies we research.…”

The Three Dimensions of Unsolicited Dick Pics: Men Who have Sex with Men’s Experiences of Sending and Receiving Unsolicited Dick Pics on Dating Apps

“…Stereotypes about male sexuality (e.g., Snell et al, 1988 ) may also impact MSM’s consent practices, as research has shown that MSM feel pressured to engage in sexual activities, even when they feel ambivalent or uninterested (McKie, 2015 ; Sweeney, 2014 ; Beres et al, 2014 ). However, it is important to recall that many MSM enjoy receiving unsolicited DPs (Marcotte et al, 2020 ; Tziallas, 2015 ) and that MSM engage in a variety of socio-sexual interactions that blur the lines between platonic and sexual (Byron et al, 2021 ; Race, 2015 ). In the case of unsolicited DPs, MSM’s online interactions may complicate and obfuscate their consent practices, while also trivializing and perpetuating TFSV.…”