Has The Gay Culture Moved On-line?

Has Manhunt.net really changed us as a community? What about Gay.com? AOL M-4-M rooms? According to one essayist, at least, they sure as hell have.

It's an idea I've heard before, but one that I've never really given much thought to. Maybe it's because I'm part of the generation that has grown with web tech, and the first time I even seriously flirted with another guy was in an AOL chat room, but I've never really looked at the Gay Web as a deterioration of gay culture. I didn't know gay life when the only way we could relate to each other was in a bar or at a protest rally. I don't know what it is like to know that just exploring gay culture came with the huge risk of exposure. I've always had my safe haven, my computer and my internets.

The article is a great read, so you should absolutely check it out. The basic idea is that sites like Manhunt, which makes ridiculous amounts of money, have facilitated a complete change in the gay identity, for better and for worse. We have been able to minimize the absolutely sexual tones of the bars and clubs because we can move that on-line, and in the process, have made our nightlife more about friends than hunting. The author suggests that we have been able to become more "normalized" into society because we've been able to be more secretive about our sex lives. We can be happy, essentially sexless people in public, but in the privacy of our homes, we can chase down that hotty we saw in the chat room and pray that his picture isn't 11 years old.

Whether we've actually gone through with a hook up before, I'm sure we've all been on Gay.com and/or Manhunt and been propositioned or propositioned someone else. But what do you think? Has our community been drastically changed by the Interwebs? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Even outside of hook-up sites, what about dating sites? I rarely meet a LGBT couple anymore that didn't meet through a website (even if they try to lie about it initially). Give us your thoughts!