{"id":157,"date":"2019-09-03T11:16:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lshtm.ac.uk\/depth\/?p=157"},"modified":"2019-09-03T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:23:48","slug":"exploring-locative-dating-technology-and-queer-male-practice-based-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lshtm.ac.uk\/depth\/2019\/09\/03\/exploring-locative-dating-technology-and-queer-male-practice-based-identities\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring locative dating technology and queer male practice-based identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our latest blog, DEPTH<\/a> researcher Sam Miles<\/a> discusses his latest publication for new social science collection\u00a0The Geographies of Digital Sexuality.<\/em>\u00a0Sam’s chapter explores the practices of men seeking men on online dating apps and argues that these practices can be categorised into different identities, or ‘typologies’, of user.<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"geogs\"I was invited last year by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Catherine J. Nash to write a chapter for their new book,\u00a0The Geographies of Digital Sexuality<\/em>. I thought for a long time about what to write about. My work has been moving over time from\u00a0queer male technologies<\/a>\u00a0and fieldwork\u00a0ethics<\/a>\u00a0to sexual behaviour, and from there to sex and sexuality more generally, as our new\u00a0ACCESS\u00a0<\/a>project at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine<\/a>\u00a0develops. I\u2019m still fascinated by technology, sex and relationships, but looking globally at some of these relationships in very different contexts \u2013 marginalised populations, challenging settings, and complex geopolitical environments in the global South.<\/p>\n

We know that gay and bisexual men in Europe and north America are a comparatively privileged sexual minority (although MSM – men who have sex with men, but don’t identify as gay or bisexual – are often less privileged), especially compared to lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. The lives and experiences of a wider range of people need further amplification \u2013 especially given common misunderstandings about technology use in socioeconomically disadvantaged settings; people are often surprised to hear that smartphones are used almost everywhere in the world. This includes within seriously deprived settings, where it may be the single most important object for a family\u2019s livelihood or income. That does not mean it is not\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0used for communicating, partner-seeking, or pornography in any number of these settings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Martin Tod, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Nevertheless, one of the things that people still ask me a lot about when they hear about my PhD and its research into smartphone dating apps is about people\u2019s behaviour online: things that people complain about seeing again and again. It\u2019s as if there are a list of the \u2018usual suspects\u2019 to be wary of when using dating or hook-up apps, from the ubiquitous\u00a0time-waster<\/strong>\u00a0(\u2018talk, talk, talk, and yet never agrees on concrete plans to meet up) to the\u00a0catfish<\/strong>\u00a0(\u2018Amazingly good looking but interested in me!\u2019, or \u2018keen to meet but there\u2019s something weird about the photos\u2019). It provoked new questions based on online identity: Could we sketch out different \u2018types\u2019 of dating app user? Would those \u2018types\u2019 translate between queer and heterosexual? Do different apps host different types?<\/p>\n

My qualitative fieldwork suggested that male-male apps contained \u2018types\u2019 that were far more specifically defined, and more commonly recognised by a whole range of users, than anything I was reading about being theorised elsewhere, so I looked into it further and developed three \u2018types\u2019 of user: the\u00a0Embracer<\/strong>, the\u00a0Timewaster<\/strong>, and the\u00a0Minimalist<\/strong>. Whilst the vignettes I write in the\u00a0chapter<\/a>\u00a0are fictional, they are amalgamated from a range of real-life users I spoke to, augmented by the profiles of\u00a0other\u00a0<\/em>users that my participants discussed repeatedly (and usually in strongly positive or strongly critical ways). These profiles build an interesting picture of different modes of use for a market-dominant app like Grindr or Tinder. These ‘types’ of user, and the strong feelings they provoke in others, also speak to an argument I bang on about a lot: that the social codes of these GPS-enabled apps have\u00a0yet to catch up to their digital sophistication<\/a>. The result is user enthusiasm for what these platforms can offer in meeting new people \u2013 especially important for sexual minorities \u2013 tempered by real frustrations about other people not taking the app seriously, or taking it\u00a0too<\/em>\u00a0seriously, or just\u00a0not reflecting the user\u2019s desired path to encounter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even more fascinating perhaps is the finding that the Timewaster \u2013 an app user who is keen to chat, seemingly reciprocates interest, and yet keeps postponing a date or other physical meeting, seemingly content to exist only in cyberspace \u2013 is almost universally criticised by users. Yet many of these same users\u00a0sometimes exhibit precisely this behaviour themselves.\u00a0<\/em>This paradox serves to emphasise that we must not think of \u2018types\u2019 or user typologies as somehow fixed, but instead flexible categorisations that users might adopt, consciously or not, at different times in their app use over time. You may not see yourself as a time-waster because it\u2019s not a trait you think is very attractive, but that\u00a0doesn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0mean that sometimes you\u2019re not that person to another frustrated user.<\/p>\n

\"dating<\/p>\n

The picture built up by this qualitative work is one of seriously mixed feelings. Users characterise their time using online partner-seeking apps with as much ambivalence as enthusiasm. Thinking more about what the categories I have sketched out above might mean for online partner-seeking, and how social and\/or sexual connection happens (or doesn\u2019t happen) online can help us to think about larger questions far beyond the scope of dating apps. These include who we are when we\u2019re online, and why that still feels \u2018removed\u2019 or disembodied from what should by now be a more taken-for-granted, hybridised digital-physical reality.<\/p>\n

The chapter is called \u2018Going the Distance: Locative Dating Technology and Queer Male Practice-Based Identities<\/a>\u2019 and you can read it\u00a0here<\/a>, or view the full book listing\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This post has been adapted from Sam’s original blog at Sexuality & the City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What do you think? You can comment below (if you\u2019re reading this article on the DEPTH blog mainpage, click on the title of this post and comments will open at the bottom). We\u2019d love to hear from you.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our latest blog, DEPTH researcher Sam Miles discusses his latest publication for new social…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":736,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76090,76436,76429,76425,76437,14017,9261,50003,7383,28433,12966,58198],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-depth","tag-digital-technology","tag-geography","tag-grindr","tag-lgbt","tag-lshtm","tag-public-health","tag-qualitative","tag-research","tag-social-media","tag-social-sciences","tag-technology","odd"],"yoast_head":"\nExploring locative dating technology and queer male practice-based identities - DEPTH @ LSHTM Research blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lshtm.ac.uk\/depth\/2019\/09\/03\/exploring-locative-dating-technology-and-queer-male-practice-based-identities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exploring locative dating technology and queer male practice-based identities - 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