I WAS BORN IN 1991. I remember a world without social media. I also can say with increasing certainty the world I remember from my childhood and early teens seems to be moving further away as the days and years go by.
I’ve realized as you get older you don’t meet people like you used to. When you’re young everything and everyone is new and exciting. As you age, the time and opportunities for friendships to develop seem to grow thinner like oxygen as you ascend the mountain.
There’s still a handful of stalwarts, but mostly it’s a series of friend requests, short pithy instant messages, and ubiquitous posts.
I only vaguely recall life before hookup apps and social media. I can’t imagine how we navigated it or how we could go back. Still, there was something to be said — more than something, everything to be said — about going to a gay bar with your friends and meeting someone new.
Now many of us don’t even have to leave our couch to snag a date or, more accurately, a hookup or whatever.
I just accepted that as the way things are now. But I learned the hard way what is missing in these digital interactions and hours of scrolling and notifications: body language, demeanor, energy transfers, a whole intuitional knowledge of the person you are interacting with. You are left with just pictures and words on a screen that paint a picture, but often the narratives they tell are pure fiction.
I would say I am an introvert with some extroverted tendencies. I enjoy my solitude, but I thrive off the deep connections I keep with special people in my life.
Maybe that’s why apps like Grindr rarely worked well for me.
I wasn’t there solely to
