Get Out of the Rabbit Hole

Am I the only gay
man on the planet who doesn’t believe the Internet
will provide a solution to all the problems in the
LGBT community?

Most gay
bookstores are struggling to stay open, and while our
widespread support of them has been lackluster at
best, the real culprit behind their demise is turning
out to be the Web. Online retailers are crushing
brick-and-mortar bookstores across the country, without
regard for race or sexual orientation. (One of the
latest victims is the Lambda Rising bookstore in
Baltimore, which closed in May after two decades in business
because of slumping sales.)

While most
writers and readers I meet are coming to terms with this
hard fact, many are also desperate to believe the
Internet is somehow going to be a replacement for the
actual gay bookstore, like some giant salon where we
all commune over our favorite reads. I don’t buy it.
Gay bookstores are not just retailers. They are the
secular temples for a community that is understandably
averse to organized religion. They are places where
knowledge and spiritual experience are exchanged in an
environment that isn’t driven primarily by the
pursuit of sex. If we abandon them to market forces,
we had better replace them with something vital, and
currently, there aren’t any real alternatives.

Don’t get
me wrong. I have no problem with the technology. (I have
over 400 Facebook friends, only 20 of whom I have
actually dined with.) But I have a problem with the
incredibly limited way in which most people use the
resources they find online. While notorious hookup sites for
gay men are often associated with drug-fueled, unsafe
sex, the sad reality is that most of their members
aren’t interested in meeting anyone at all.
(Yes, I was once a member of one. My tenure was brief and
unsuccessful.) Sure, users of these sites devote hours
to taking strategically lit self-portraits, which
range from the suggestive to the explicit. But the
majority of member profiles contain denunciations of
“flakes and time-wasters,” suggesting
the presence of a large group of men who are all talk
and no play. Need proof? Take a look at the amount of time
most of these men spend online. They never log off
long enough to have sex with anyone. The real thrill
for these men is engaging in a form of detached
exhibitionism while carrying on prolonged Internet chats
with people they’ll never meet, men they turn
into a fantasy based solely on the superficial
attributes each person has listed (and often lied about)
in his profile.