Tom Holland, Reno Gold, Jack Kirby, Sampson McCormick, Jennifer Coolidge, Flame Monroe, Lane V. Rogers, and More: #GAYNRDDAILY

Savas Abadsidis August 28, 2022

#GAYNRDDAILY Our sometimes daily, but always relevant round-up of news, art, tweets, anecdotes, and ephemera from around the world and social media for August 28, 2022.

ROMANCE

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COVER BOY

i smile sometimes pic.twitter.com/Kk9VgaxMvU
— Ayce 🍿 (@flyin_casual) August 23, 2022

SECRET IDENTITY Why do some gay men have hypersexualized online personas? Them: many queer men present themselves online as uber sexual beings when that’s far from reality, or just one small aspect of who they are. For some, there’s a pressure to present as the hottest and horniest regardless of how you may feel inside. According to psychotherapist and certified sex therapist Todd Baratz, projecting an inflated sense of sexual confidence online is common for queer men because it’s become engrained in gay male culture. “Many gay men experience shame around not being this sexual machine that we’re often depicted as or encouraged to be,” Baratz tells me. “We are usually represented in one way: hyper-sexual, with abs, in leather, or showcasing some other kink.” You know this depiction well: Think of Tom of Finland, the early 2000s Queer as Folk, or any poster promoting a gay event.

it’s worth noting that the majority of people lie online: In one study published in Computers and Human Behaviour, only 16 to 32% of the sample reported self-honesty. “Online deception is the rule,” the study concluded, “not the exception.”

Of course, this influence isn’t limited to queer people or sexual content. Research discussed in Psychology Today found that social media is much more influential than face-to-face groups when it comes to radicalizing opinions and behavior in general. For example, someone who is pro-life could end up more pro-life as a result of social media. Reasons are varied: there’s the design of social media platforms themselves, which incentivizes engagement and leads users to compete for the attention of mass audiences; then there’s the fact that we’re spending more time online in general, which leads people to encounter these extremes more often and normalize and emulate them. In either case, social media and increased internet use is leading many users to act in more radical ways online, which, of course, extends to how we act sexually, too.

Practicing promiscuity solely online has become so common that Vice’s i-D recently coined this phenomenon the “slut (non-practicing)” era. The assumption is that this practice is a direct result of younger generations spending most of their lives online, making desirabity more appealing than actually having sex. “To be a slut-in-vibes-only,” the writer Tom George explains, “is an ownership of a sexuality that is completely our own, expressed through the way we dress, the way we strut down the street whilst listening to Doja Cat, our horny bookstyling and thotty digital footprint.”

Although George was writing about people of all sexualities, this reading can take on particular meaning for queer people. Many of us were never allowed to express ourselves how we wanted to as young adults. Now, the internet offers a chance to make up for lost time. “Acceptance and validation has not historically been the experience that most queer people have had,” Daniel Olavarria, a psychotherapist in New York City who specializes in identity and oppression, says. Posting sexually charged content online can play a dual role for some people: It can be a way to seek validation while also reclaiming one’s sexuality as a perfectly healthy aspect of our identities.