Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods

Abstract

Developments in mobile digital technologies are disrupting conventional understandings of space and place for smartphone users. One way in which location-based media are refiguring previously taken-for-granted spatial traditions is via GPS-enabled online dating and hook-up apps. For sexual minorities, these apps can reconfigure any street, park, bar, or home into a queer space through a potential meeting between mutually attracted individuals, but what does this signify for already-existing queer spaces? This chapter examines how smartphone apps including Grindr, Tinder, and Blued synthesize online queer encounter with offline physical space to create a new hybrid terrain predicated on availability, connection, and encounter. It is also a terrain that can sidestep established gay neighborhoods entirely. I explore how this hybridization impacts on older, physically rooted gay neighborhoods and the role that these neighborhoods have traditionally played in brokering social and sexual connection for sexual minorities. Few would deny that location-based apps have come to play a valuable role in multiplying opportunities for sexual minorities. However, the stratospheric rise of these technologies also provokes questions about their impact on embodied encounter, queer community, and a sense of place. A decade on from Grindr’s release, this chapter evaluates the impact of location-based media on gay spaces and reflects on what the increasing hybridization of online and offline spaces for same-sex encounter might mean for queer lives of the future.

Who Are the People in Your Gayborhood? Understanding Population Change and Cultural Shifts in LGBTQ+ Neighborhoods

“…Digital connectivity has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Miles et al 2021). We conclude this section by noting that various generations of LGBTQ+ individuals engage technological change differently, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further influenced the way nearly everyone engages technology (Miles 2021). Consequently, we expect that people's response due to coronavirusrelated lockdowns will further shift how LGBTQ+ people cope with and embrace technology vis-a-vis the places in which they reside (Miles et al 2021) and frequent.…”

“…Established gay neighborhoods now embody a virtual dimension for LGBTQ+ connection (Miles 2021), perhaps redefining the importance of physical place. Compared to mainstream heteronormative communities, LGBTQ+ communities fostered early adoption of technology as a means to augment/enhance physical communities.…”

“…Today, most everyone can be connected digitally, since gay dating and hook-up apps transform "any street, park, bar or home into a queer space by brokering a meeting between mutually attracted individuals" (Miles 2021, 207). In this way, any physical locale can acquire a queer overtone when it is employed as a meeting place relating to LGBTQ+ online/virtual connection (Miles 2021), and technology is used creatively by LGBTQ+ people as they inhabit gay spaces other than gayborhoods (Wu and Ward 2018). In this way, gay neighborhoods could emerge as neutral and safe "meeting grounds" for hookups and dating.…”

“…In this way, gay neighborhoods could emerge as neutral and safe "meeting grounds" for hookups and dating. For Miles (2021), this creates in gayborhoods a "hybrid reality" formed from layered physical place and digital space. Consequently, a gay neighborhood can be created anyplace, enabled by "pre-screening" of people and places in social apps.…”

Traversing TechSex: benefits and risks in digitally mediated sex and relationships

“…1,25 Further, the internet enables people to explore new sexual practices or fantasies in safe ways 2,26 and has been an important space in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and other genderdiverse people have sought community and connection. 22,27,28 This paper presents findings from an Australian survey that explored people's engagement with a range of online sexual practices and their perceptions of the benefits and pleasures, as well as the risks, associated with those practices. The paper has two aims: 1.…”