Manhunt, Adam4Adam, Craigslist – professional online cruising has helped millions of horny gay guys score an easy shag over the past 5 or 6 years, but the sex stories that come from these encounters can be pretty dull. “We met online, he came over, we fucked, he left.” It’s not just the Hunx and his Punx song we posted yesterday that’s got us pondering this. We’ve been hearing a lot of people lately complaining that they’re bored with online, have canceled their Manhunt accounts, and are going back to that tried and true method we all grew up on: real live street cruising. We still love all our Buttheads of course and encourage them to meet and shag and have deep philosophical debate, but for the rest of the general gay populous – is the regimen of stats, profiles, and private pics a thing of the past? Butt readers, please weigh in. Are you noticing this trend or are we just crazy? Is this old news? How are you getting laid?
Posted by Adam on Thursday, February 12, 2009 |
Ahmad added on March 2, 2009 :
A balding man serves me a glance, while jerking him off, thereby missing the glory of his hole; sharing.
How kind of you, stranger.
Impatiently he whispers, kom med det snot!
Cruising? Yes, but love!
Mark added on February 26, 2009 :
It’s true, online has become boring and uninteresting. Guys fake their profile pics. You never know who is going to turn up. Your looking for the guy in the pic, but when you meet turns out he has put on 50lbs gone bald and lost most of his teeth. I cancelled all my memberships in these online sites.
duane added on February 24, 2009 :
it’s no fun anymore.
i like a challenge
tomas added on February 22, 2009 :
I think we are experiencing just an evolution of choices for guys to find what they want in life. These sites give new avenues for guys who are in various stages of accepting their sexual desires from the married novice to the pervets to those who seek moving to the nesting phase of life. I will admit that cruising in alley’s, parks shopping malls bring back some hot fond memories.
leo added on February 22, 2009 :
deleted my gdar n romeo accounts a couple of months ago. really happy to get rid of my virtual constructions, online cruising is for freaks
Leon added on February 18, 2009 :
I think I have watched all these sites slowly become less and less popular, I remember when I came out at Uni back in 2001 and all my friends where asking me if I have a Gaydar profile yet, that was back in 2001.
I remember there was an excitement about it and urban myth was that on any Saturday night in the internet cafes in London and Manchester most the guys there were sat on the chat rooms looking for hookups that were usually sat behind them.
Eventually all these sites loose their reputation as ‘the place to go’ as the only people that seem to be on there are either ‘just’ 18 or older guys looking for the ‘just’ 18 year olds.
A new site launches and everyone rushes over to create a profile with the promise that ‘the guys here are hotter’.
Personally I have never had any success with these site and I don’t understand why, maybe because my photographs or profile details don’t fit what guys are searching for.
And when I have started talking to some one and it gets past the point of chatting on MSN and staring at each other through webcams it takes a lot of courage to go meet this person face to face.
I have never liked the idea that I can only really meet guys online and it leaves me feeling lost at where I am going to find my true love (if that’s what I really want).
I am hoping that the end is coming to these sites, any quick research on the internet shows that the highest website for a ‘gay audience’ is facebook, so does this show the end?
The excitement has gone, my friends and I are fed up of listing their stats and trying to write an award winning profile description of themselves so that someone can judge them and discard them in less than 30 seconds.
Great topic of discussion and great magazine!
Love you Butt!!
lEoN
Derek da Silva added on February 18, 2009 :
To quote Tony Buff, “I like to smell my prey.”
Hunter added on February 16, 2009 :
This is all really good news. Thank god the live cruise is making a comeback!!
shane allison added on February 15, 2009 :
Plus it has become so time-consuming. You have to jump through all these hoops just to hook up on a friday night. And most of them end up leading to nothing. At least when you meet a guy in a bar, you skip a lot of steps vs. what you have to deal with to meet someone online.
Alex added on February 15, 2009 :
Indeed. The online profile and social networking experiment is over, yet painfully and absurdly addictive, without a sense of the real. It has replaced desire with surface, interaction with selection and editing and good production values; sites like Dudesnude are just amateur porn, for guys looking for contracts with Titan, and ManHunt and Gaydar are just about how many times your profile has been checked. God if these hot guys in California aren’t getting laid then we are without hope. Facebook and MySpace are the inverse of socializing. It just allows people to market themselves endlessly. I don’t know how to cruise, I forgot. I don’t know how to talk to men anymore. My computer is my boyfriend. Why deal with real when the sanitized screen is so much more appealing? Over-and-out.
mike.d added on February 14, 2009 :
I have a m4sn account that I log into every now and again for shits and giggles but I’ve not actually met anyone on it in almost a year and before that it was at least two years. I don’t have a lot of sex. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m bored with what’s out there. Maybe I want to settle down. Maybe I’m just frustrated with the whole thing – the gay thing. I really just want to come home to the same person every night. Is that boring of me? Is that a betrayal to my community? Eh, I couldn’t care less. I’ll stick to the cam in the mean time. Safe, quick, fun to watch and be watched.
Derya added on February 14, 2009 :
internet aint over, its just cam sex instead of actual sex that we need. manhunts deadddddddd, dudesnude? maybeee? good videos and big dixxx butt i think internet cruising can’t die becuase webcams exist… i mean not to steal from b. benderson, but it’s kinda trueeeeeee
Walt added on February 14, 2009 :
I sort of feel the same way. I deleted my Manhunt profile a while ago. They offered to just put it on hold, but I told them I wanted it deleted. I no longer check my adam4adam mailbox, even though I know there is mail in there. I might read them once a week. The same for the other several profiles I have. I’m just bored with them. Sick of the wasted time going back and forth.
I don’t know…maybe it’s just a phase, but I don’t have the energy for it all anymore. I got tired of the racism and all of the personal information people demand, even if you or they state in the profile that friendship is what they are looking for. I don’t hand out copies of my medical records to strangers or my coworkers, so why do you think you are privy to that information when I am not trying to fuck you. All of the prerequisites for all of these profiles with the expectations that you should be a gorgeous muscled white west hollywood clone gave me a headache. I’m getting one now, again, just remembering it all….good lord! THANKS BUTT!!!
BOO-BOO added on February 13, 2009 :
I’ve been saying for more than a year that traditional ‘cruising’ is making a BIG comeback here in San Francisco. The on-line cruising is a huge bore and nothing is more frustrating than hooking up with someone only to find out that their posted photos were 5 years old – I can’t tell you how many times that happened to me. There’s something ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’ about street and park type cruising that is super cool. It’s also fun to ’shop’ for that perfect hottie and when you find him maybe letting another join in – or watch. The on-line cruising geeks have no idea what they’re missing.
Wilfred added on February 13, 2009 :
Craigslist is great for all the guys into sniffing undies, running shorts, whatever fetish. Straight-to-the-point.
I have a friend who runs a gay chatline – like, phone chatline. He said he’s always preferred that because when you’re talking to someone you can find out if there’s chemistry between you. Online you have no idea if you ‘click’ with someone. And let’s be honest, no matter how big his dick is or how hot his bod, if you don’t connect with someone it’s not half as good.
SCB added on February 13, 2009 :
I think the day of online cruising is drawing to an end. With the plethora of requirements to create a profile and the back and forth of emails, pic exchanges, and the like, you could just as sooner jack off and stick a dildo up your ass and get off quicker than online cruising. Also, the internets are saturated with these sites so you may find yourself belonging to 10 different sexual-social networking sites as opposed to good ole aol messenger, back in the day. So in my opinion, yes….it’s over. It’s time to man-up and take it to the streets or more safely, to your watering hole or coffee shop…though I never understood cruising at a coffee shop….love your mag.
Christophe, DC (Butthead)
Eliot added on February 12, 2009 :
@Shane:
14?? That’s ridiculous. Wow. I was, like, picking my butt and watching cartoons then…
I have NO IDEA how to cruise. I did it once and nearly had a heart attack.
Social anxiety is totally how I cruise. Meaning I don’t. …Er, can’t.
Matt added on February 12, 2009 :
I think before something dies, it can be dying for a very long time, so I’m not so sure Manhunt, Craigslist, et al, are going anywhere anytime soon. That said though, the sentiment is shared among my friends and I too – the online cruising game is a bit demoralizing, threatens to be an enormous time-investment, and certainly doesn’t match the thrill of meeting strangers in real life.
I let my Manhunt subscription die, and only use it to meet the occasional guy for a drink, which, if it leads to more, is usually more exciting, and if it doesn’t, is usually more satisfying than mucking through an awkward hookup…
thomas added on February 12, 2009 :
i know that using the internet started going downhill after i turned 20.
either something major happened in society (2005), or else i was just “old.”
once i hit 22 i quit getting emails on most of my personal profiles.
i would guess that the internet cruising community is dying, but maybe not?
i do not live in a small town, but this is also not a city. suburbia, i suppose.
add to that the conservative nature of society in these parts…
anyways, i have not had sex in almost two years.
South Carolina is really bad about that, though.
erik added on February 12, 2009 :
yeah i tots agree. if you live in a big city you dont really need to. i spent six months in barcelona and there was def lots of cruising, on regular corners, not like al pacino-cruising type alleyways, or like the docks. but in small towns? ugh
Freimut-Johannes added on February 12, 2009 :
It`s over….. I quit Gayromeo and try to get my cruising-power back now…its more fun/exciting and challenging in the real world…
shane allison added on February 12, 2009 :
I have been cruising parks, sex clubs and campus bathrooms since I was 14. I never stopped. There’s nothing quite like it. There’s just this rush of adreneline that flows through you with the anticipation of hooking up with a hot stranger in a public place. I sucked off a guy just last week in a bookstore bathroom. We were both scared of getting caught, but that’s the charm of it all. But it does get old when you end up seeing the same guys you’re not so into, or the guys you had a good time with the day or week before, but he wants fresh trade, and not you anymore. In my experience with chatrooms, I think it’s all about geography. I live in a small town, so dick is few and fasr between. I only get a few responses and even those turn out to lead to nothing. When I was in New York, I practically had to beat them off. They were serious about hooking up. In my small town, it’s hard to find guys that are into eating ass, which I love, but I think in a bigger place, it’s easy to find an ass-pig.
I am all about meeting guys face to face. Bucause that way, there’s no bullshit. No hiding behind ads. I prefer meeting a guy at a bar and having a drink. Everything seems to work in reverse. Talking, drinking, all while getting to know each other. Yet getting or giving head in a dark alleyway while cars zoom by, is very hot. Can you tell that I love to be watched? Yum!