---

📷 by @boys.and.prozac. 

REASON #1: CHATTERING LOCKJAW

Tap to listen to With Every Heartbeat by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Melbourne winter fog emitted from every laneway of Johnston Street as my Manhattan cocktail-soaked calves tipsily danced their way home to a soundtrack of Robyn anthems. 200 metres into my stroll, a flurry of woofs started to detour my motion. I sat for a moment on an empty sidewalk bench and began to inspect my potential suitors. A slightly alt looking art boy was offering the most memorable message foreplay, so I decided to accept his invitation to stop by and view his canvases.

Unsurprisingly fifteen minutes in we were both only wearing underwear. The arty guy kissed well, his touch was a little rough, but there seemed to be good chemistry, so I felt safe enough to continue to explore and my eggplant, well it was ready to make a salad or three. He told me to get on my knees, forced my head onto his eggplant and told me not to stop until he said I could. My jaw started to lock pretty fast, as his aggressive tone wasn’t my kind of intimacy. I attempted to come up for air which agitated him more. At that moment, the phantom pain of something felt as a teenager when forced by a stranger to do things I didn’t want to do began to flood back into consciousness, and my gap teeth began to chatter in fear. I took a breath, and as I did, his eyes became possessed with anger. Volatile verbal abuse unworthy of publication began to vomit from his mouth and his attempts to degrade me continued for what seemed like an eternity. But I stood my ground, while every hair on my body stood still in terror, put my clothes back on and exited as fast as I could, his aggression still echoing behind me. Once I was out that door with the soundtrack of him slamming the door repetitively piercing my earlobes, I ran and ran, and ran the back streets of Fitzroy back home.

No person deserves to be treated like an escort by another male, no male has the right to take their anger out on another simply because they don’t want to pleasure him the way he likes to play. But sadly #MeToo has become a phenomenon that too many of us have to endure and overcome.

The above encounter was one of the thirteen reasons why I chose to leave the gay dating apps in July 2018. The following twelve reasons haven’t been written to convince you that you should do the same. However, I have published them so that you too can know that no human needs to be forced into doing something that doesn’t align with your moral compass by another person.

REASON #2: STOCKPILING LOADS

Tap to listen to Love Kills by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

In 2009 the LGBTIQ community began to embrace sex in the mobile age. In Australia between 2008 – 2017 Gonorrhoea notification rates tripled from 36 to 118 notifications per 100,000 people. Since 2011 Chlamydia rates have increased substantially too, and in 2016 they reached a peak of 385 infections per 100,000 people.  As for HIV infections, since the introduction of PrEP, there has been a 7% decrease in the number of diagnoses in Australia over the past five years.  However, despite the previous statistic being a modern medicine triumph, what PrEP doesn’t prevent is other sexually transmitted infections.

Terms like breeding and multiple loads have become common buzzwords on the dating apps and between May 2018 – July 2018 while exploring LA, New York, Auckland and Melbourne I decided to keep a tally of the number of times that an individual asked me to fill their already fill peach with my load. On July 30 my poll was at 1,111 messages featuring that request, and 70% of those requests came through in the third message from a user.

While I’m an advocate for sexual exploration and applauded many of the THOT celebrations that I witnessed at various PRIDE events in 2018, this multiple load trend from a generation fortunate enough to have PrEP in their lives was a huge motivator in my decision to say Au Revoir to the gay dating apps.

REASON #3: POLYAMOROUS PLEASURE

Tap to listen to Indestructible by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

I am sex-positive, I enjoy it, I like talking about it, sometimes it makes me creative and connecting with one, two or even many people with passionate vigour is a pleasure that I savour when I’m lucky enough to find it. However, one downside of the apps is when a partner who wants monogamy must accept an open relationship for a season or three to satisfy the needs of the one they love.

Thankfully, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to let others into a romantic relationship of mine, but I did come close once, and in all honesty, it was my rejection of polyamorous pleasure that ultimately ended things with one of my greatest loves. I have however been that guy in an intense embrace with someone’s partner, who as their boyfriend lashes your neck with his lips and pulls your peach into their chest opens his eyes for a moment to see a teardrop from the eyelid of the partner caressing your nipples.

Not all three-ways or group sex situations feature partners who are uncomfortable with polygamy, and I’ve had many amazing sexual experiences where we as three or more have all embraced every facet of each other’s bodies and minds.  However, I am glad that I no longer need to be the reason behind a couple’s open season on the dating apps.

REASON #4: DRAINED PRODUCTIVITY

Tap to listen to Cobrastyle by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

The average millennial spends 10 hours per week on dating apps when actively seeking a partner, and on the GAPPS (Gay Dating Apps) that figure can be as high as 20 hours per week depending on a user’s needs.

I’ve secretly always known that my GAPP usage was affecting my creativity, social life and productivity outside of the office.  However, as a busy perfectionist with issues saying no to my colleagues, the GAPPs have always been an escape enabler from my responsibilities outside of the bedroom.

In my first week without the GAPPs, I managed to call three friends abroad, fit in two extra workouts, reduced my overtime on work projects by five hours, fitted in two more social catch ups with friends and edited the first 20 pages of a screenwriting project. Now, five months into life without the GAPPs, I call 3-5 friends and family members a week, do a total of 4 workouts per week, spend 6 hours on personal creative projects, catch up with 3-4 friends from different peer circles, and manage to fit in at least 4 hours of personal and professional reading. I didn’t delete anything else from my life to fit all of these more meaningful activities back into my schedule, all I did was put my head and heart before my eggplant by deleting two-time consuming apps from my mobile.

REASON #5: UNKIND PREJUDICE

Tap to listen to Fembot by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

One of the most toxic aspects of the gay dating app vernacular is the ‘About Me’ section. While many utilise this space to charm their prospective romances, allow users to tap through to their Instagram and showcase their unique wit. Many prescriptive members of our community will openly flaunt their racial, sexual and generational prejudices.

At least once a week when actively using the dating apps here in Australia, New Zealand and while in the United States, I’d receive a message from a friendly headless torso. We would start to chat and then when I requested a face pic they would send me a disclaimer message. It would say something like ‘I am Asian is that okay’, and when I’d tell them that personality turns me on more than someone’s looks, they would respond with statements like ‘That’s nice most LA guys just see me as their Latino Loadtaker’.

It still baffles me that as queer men who had to struggle with our own identity and endure the journey of coming out to those that we love, that we can be so hostile towards those who are more feminine than us, come from different cultural backgrounds or were raised in a different decade to us. However, I am grateful that this overt prejudice is no longer as visible in my life since departing the dating apps.

REASON #6: CHEMICAL CHARMS

Tap to listen to Crash and Burn Girl by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

When loneliness, drugs and new technology collide a phenomenon known as Chemsex can seduce a vulnerable queer dating app user within four notifications, and before you know it, you can be sitting in an STI clinic with one of your mates holding his hand as he recovers from a wild group rendezvous with his new go-to diva, Tina.

Drugs are part of our queer identity, whether they help us overcome viral infections or enable our peaches to loosen up during foreplay with a sizeable eggplant. Yet as app usage has grown and more queers began embracing love in the mobile dating age, I started to notice more men looking for wired sex. These men came from varying age demographics, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, and the one common bond that they all shared was a longing to escape the present and find euphoric sexual confidence with someone.

Most of us can avoid party play trysts, but sometimes when you least expect it and choose to say yes to some Sunday instant gratification mid-run.  You will arrive at a guy’s place and find a trio of men embracing the sensations of chemical pleasure, and instead of judging them or immediately walking out that door, you’ll sit on their sofa observing the sexual intensity of their current mindset with curiosity. While I don’t miss the party play emojis that regularly filled my dating app inbox, I did always wonder if there was more that I could have done to help those whose lives were controlled by their favourite private dancer, Tina.

REASON #7: UNINVITED AFFECTION

Tap to listen to Human Being by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Do you recall that Until We Belong campaign and what it represented for our community before the #YesVote announcement? A mobile-first accommodation provider committed to queer acceptance and equality, and as a consumer, this vow made me an advocate for this service provider. I believed that they were here to make a difference, well at least I did until my stay in Brooklyn during the summer of 2018.

My stay with Mr Forte Greene Park was my first longer-term stay in a host’s residence due to my extended vacation in New York.  Upon arrival, I was ordered to take my boots off immediately. The notion didn’t offend me as an indigenous male, but his tonality did.  The apartment was okay, smaller than expected, a little dusty which affected my allergies and his bathroom had a little too much plant life growing out of the walls. But aside from these initial observations, I was just delighted to be back in New York, the city that I loved.

Due to work catch ups, explorations with friends around the city and an awareness of my host’s work hours; we managed to keep out of each other’s space and based on his earlier vibes, I was more than happy to maintain this distance because something didn’t sit well with me about him. A few nights in this suspicion about his intentions was confirmed when he made a pass at me. I blew it off, and he seemed pretty accepting to the dismissal. However, sometimes unspoken actions can be just as intimidating as verbal abuse and a few days after me declining his advances, local bears in the neighbourhood began sending me less than cordial messages on the dating apps and asking when I’d be moving on from his accommodation. Uncomfortable in a city on the other side of the world, I booked an earlier flight home, using a relative’s health crisis as the rationale for my flight rescheduling and notified my host of my new check out date.

I was reluctant to leave him a review, as I felt we both had no polite words to share with the app’s audience. However, the nice guy in me decided to give him a star rating and review based on the space only. I hoped this decision to be the bigger person would rectify any ill feelings and allow us to move on. Unfortunately, he opted for revenge as a remedy to rejection and left a less than pleasant review about me. Frustrated that a 40 something male didn’t have the awareness to be accountable for his actions, I contacted the accommodation app to get the review removed. They replied within 4 hours with one sentence; the response stated that “Based on his past ratings from guests, we believe this ‘Super Host’ has left an honest review, and we will not be removing it from your profile”.  I was pretty devastated to discover that an organisation whose campaigns had inspired me as a marketer, would choose to support a host instead of looking out for a guest’s safety.  All I wanted, was to have the review removed. However, they decided that he was more beneficial to their business than me.

REASON #8: IDENTITY DYSMORPHIA

Tap to listen to Who’s That Girl by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Like our social feed and various other forms of media, gay dating apps are an environment where people can inflict their body insecurities onto others. A message from a healthy bear can prompt a himbo with a preference for guys with defined muscle to respond in a manner reserved for teenage playgrounds, and the judgement of strangers can too easily make us feel that we are unworthy of affection, romance and sexual stimulation due to what some view as defects in our body type.

Regularly when chatting with more real men, ones who don’t hang their identity on their gym membership or end their third message with DTF? As we shared images, a disclaimer would come through. It would highlight that they were chub, didn’t work out or weren’t in the best shape. Then they would apologise for their body type and offer me the opportunity to stop chatting to them, stating that they would understand if I wasn’t open to that type of guy.  Each time I received that type of message, I’d always assure them that my connection to someone was dependent on multiple factors and that I’d rather they be them than someone who they aren’t. However, each time I witnessed someone self-deprecate themselves my dissatisfaction for gay dating in the mobile age intensified.

Gay apps were made to simplify the dating experience, yet the more I used them, the more I saw them as incubators for men to harm other men within our community’s wellbeing, pride and self-worth as they used their bias to belittle those who didn’t conform to their authoritarian body type.

REASON #9: SENSUAL NUMBNESS

Tap to listen to None of Dem by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Remember what it felt like to quiver with arousal when someone who you were dating touched your skin, kissed your lips or undressed you? The sensation was like the Cruel Intentions soundtrack in the late 90s and every moment from then on felt like intense pleasure.

But the more we indulge in something, the more immune we get to its sensation. This numbness began to set in the more frequently I used the apps as an escape or tool for stimulation, and sex became a numb feeling devoid of tactile sensations and passionate connection.  The feeling of being tongue-tied with a guy suddenly had an emptiness to it, the pleasure of my eggplant being caressed by another no longer filled me with giddy excitement and someone tickling my peach, well it felt like an overplayed album skipping on a record player, familiar yet uninspiring.

While sometimes I do miss the apps’ ability to act as an Uber Eats for sexual arousal. The intimacy that I’ve experienced since vacating the apps has been more connective and devoid of the numbness that consumed me for many years post app ejaculation.

REASON #10: DANCEFLOOR SERENADES

Tap to listen to Dancing On My Own by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

When was the last time someone caught your eye in a crowded bar, undressed you on a dance floor with their gaze and then filled you with a sense of euphoria as their fingertips touched your body during the chorus of your favourite song?

Before the dating apps became a queer essential, we were free to move with rhythmic liberation as we explored the weekend nightlife with our mates, searching for something or someone meaningful. Sometimes we found what we were yearning for and other times we found ourselves dancing on our own with pride, satisfied that while we may still be single at least, we were loved by those in our inner circle.

Over the past year, while exploring the cityscapes of New York, San Fran and LA what I rediscovered were communities of men who were choosing to ditch the apps and embrace romance on a dance floor again. They all had different reasons for culling the apps from their mobile devices, but each guy did share a similar value, they wanted to feel and share something real again with a human who could exist and be with confidence outside of their mobile device.

Since leaving the dating apps, I still haven’t met my McDreamy on the dance floor, but I have rediscovered that energy that comes from those moments when you are dancing chest to chest with someone whose worldview you are intrigued to unwrap behind closed doors.

REASON #11: FLORAL CELEBRATIONS

Tap to listen to Show Me Love by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

I’m not sure whether it was the YES Vote announcement or witnessing so many of my peers building a life together with someone who puts the happy in their ness. But more and more the cynic in me, the one who fled from commitment in fear of being hurt, has started to be more open to the possibility of giving my all to someone who may not be perfect, but who has a sense of kindness, loyalty and passion that makes me smirk with glee.

This sudden yearning to find a love worth celebrating and committing to influenced my decision to flee the apps. Not because I didn’t believe that he wasn’t on there, but because of the hopeless romantic in me, the closeted Charlotte York who I had run from for so many years as I slept my way through the dating apps. Wanted my journey with him, whoever or wherever he may be, to bloom outside of an app and beyond the bedroom.

Many of my dates since departing the dating apps have still stemmed from Instagram, but lust hasn’t been the primary motivator, and as for the inciting moment beyond the first ten messages, well it’s unfolded in gardens, exhibition spaces, at local festivals and within creative spaces that inspire us.

#REASON #12: ALTERED REFLECTIONS

Tap to listen to Honey by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Sometimes as we grow, as we adventure and as we seek someone to love us we stray from who we once were. Heartache and misfortune can create a reflection that is a shell of our former self and the person looking back at us is nothing more than a used body, emotionless to affection yet ready to perform for the right invitation.

I saw this reflection every Monday for what seemed like an eternity.  My scent had become fused with an aroma of others, my eyes had lost their spark and my heart, well it cared for my friends, family and the work projects that I was passionate about, but it no longer had any self-love.

Leaving the dating apps didn’t miraculously restore my reflection to a more authentic version of myself. However, when I look in the mirror now the cum stains, and love bites of others are no longer the only imprint looking back at me. What I see instead is a man who no longer needs affection to belong, someone who doesn’t need to use sex to escape and a human who is ready to someday soon, share this mirror with someone who feels right.

REASON #13: MISGUIDED DELIRIUM

Tap to listen to Missing U by @robynkonichiwa while you 📖 🎧.

Every time we meet someone new, put ourselves out there and allow ourselves to be vulnerable we are at risk of being hurt. For many years, I had put myself out there and been fortunate enough to survive a date or hook up unscarred in cities that I knew well and ones that were foreign to me. Until that night in late July at least.

It started like any other app conversation; you seemed genuine, sincere and a little lost like me too. When you picked me up, you weren’t quite who I expected, but I didn’t want to be another unkind soul who treated you like the guys you had mentioned to me in the app, so I did it, I went back to your place to chill. I didn’t expect your housemate to emerge after a few sips of that drink, and I didn’t think that a simple hit of 420 would lead to so much despair. You’d think I would have learnt my lesson as a 14-year-old when I woke up naked with some stranger’s cum on me from laced marijuana. But twenty years later, the residue of something long forgotten was making my hairs stand upright again as an unfamiliar high overtook my body.

I should be grateful that I got out unharmed, that I had the awareness to leave your place and that the effects of what you gave me kicked in while I was in an Uber and struggling to walk down Bridge Rd. But there’s this emptiness that remains with me since that night. The residue of you made me feel unsafe everywhere, made me doubt myself, made me anxious and made the touch of another on my chest, send me into the same teenage panic that I once felt many years ago.

Slowly though, with Robyn’s Missing U in my headphones that residue of you began to disappear. I deleted the dating apps, ran out my fears along the Yarra River and openly spoke with friends who didn’t judge me for what happened but were there to help me heal. And as for you, well your nothing more than a destructive delirium that I dared to overcome.

In May when I first heard Robyn preview, Missing U at This Party is Killing Me in Brooklyn, I knew I had just witnessed my single of the year. What I didn’t realise is that this song would become my band-aid to overcome sorrow and how Robyn would help me turn sadness into courage. Who knows maybe in a decade the dating apps may be meaningful to me again and while there are some moments that I’d rather forget from the apps, in all honesty, I am grateful for how the dating apps allowed me to grow into my sexuality and explore colours, tastes and sensations that I had never experienced before.

But for now, I’m content reacquainting myself with that person who can dance solo to a soundtrack of Robyn anthems wearing a smile that beams hope, until some kind honey interrupts my clumsy moves.

Written by Samuel Elliot Snowden.