Out Magazine: Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?

Out Magazine's September 2008 issue is in newstands right now with hottie Neil Patrick Harris on the cover. Michael Joseph Gross, a contributing writer for the magazine, wrote a clever yet insightful article about how Manhunt has literally distroyed gay culture's dating habits. I have included the beginning of the article as well as a link to finish reading the article.

Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?
A cost-benefit analysis of our quest to get laid.
By Michael Joseph Gross

If you are a single gay man in search of a mate, and if you are at times prone to discouragement, you probably have friends who reassure you that someday you will find a man who’ll cherish every part of you -- even your weaknesses, even your flaws.

If you have been wondering whether to believe this, wonder no more. There are in fact at least a few dozen guys out there who cherish your flaws. They work in Cambridge, Mass., in a historic building topped by a golden statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in an oak-paneled office suite where a grandfather clock marks the passing of the hours. Here the guys who delight in your weaknesses oversee Manhunt.net, the world’s fastest-growing gay website, which is quietly abetting a revolution in social and sexual mores, under the slogan “get on, get off.”

The phrase evokes the product Manhunt sells: a fix of quick sex -- easy in, easy out. To partake, men market themselves in a style shaped by the site’s profile template. Profile names, which tend to be histrionically masculine or graphically sexual, appear next to pictures, usually of a beefcake or X-rated variety, often with heads cropped out, accompanied by brief, blunt descriptions of sexual tastes (“I need oral and anal sex all the time”). Beneath these entries lie a series of boxes that can be checked to signal “What I’m Into” (27 options, including “JO”, “Exhibition,” “Pig Play,” “LTR” -- long-term relationship -- “Feet/Socks”), “When I Want It” (the box most frequently checked is “Right Now!”), “How I Like It” (top, bottom, etc.), “Where It Happens” (“Your Place,” “My Place,” and the popular “Anywhere”), and “What I Got” (age, build, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, HIV status, and height). To that last category will soon be added penis length and girth -- “a controversial issue within the company,” says Manhunt’s recently resigned director of marketing Phil Henricks, “because men lie.”

This wealth of information makes Manhunt seem the most efficient place for its target customers to find sex, because the site’s comprehensive search function can produce in seconds a list of, say, brown-eyed bottoms within one mile of your zip code wanting to get it on “Right Now!”

Manhunt’s apparent efficiency owes even more to its staggering number of members. The site’s other advertising tag line, “If he’s out there, he is on here,” is only a slight exaggeration. In the United States, Manhunt now has nearly 1 million members, and the site receives more than 400,000 unique visitors per month. If you are among its target customers -- younger, hotter, and richer than average gay men in big cities -- Manhunt is the club that the proverbial everyone (meaning, the guys you’ve always fantasized about) belongs to.

Who knows? You might even find a boyfriend there. If it’s true -- and everybody says it’s true -- that sex is the gay handshake, then one of these days maybe you’ll hit the jackpot. Thus, even many of the most overbearingly erotic profiles also haltingly express a dream of emotional connection. The headline of one man’s ad, next to a big close-up of his butt, asks, “Are you The One?”

To finish reading the rest of the article please visit: "Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?"