Then, using the instant message feature, he "IMs" the ones he likes, usually with an innocuous message like "Hey, I like your profile."Īfter a flurry of exchanged photos - "I want pictures of faces and bodies. Straight men tend to put "looking for female" in their profiles, so it's easy to distinguish gay profiles from straight. If the chat rooms are too busy, Steve will do a "member search" of men currently online who live in Atlanta and have keywords like "muscular" or "hung" in their profiles. "URABTTM," for example, asserts: "You seek control and domination by aggressive top." Double-click on the member profiles and there's even less confusion. It's a Darwinian process: If your screen-name doesn't attract the energy for fueling libidos, you starve, sexually.Īn effective screen-name - like "Opnwide4me" or "Uinmyass" - leaves little room for second-guessing. AOL forces you to use a maximum of 10 letters in your screen-name, which serves to weed out the creatively feeble. The best way to do that is with a descriptive screen-name that other chat members can click on to see if you have a fly worth unzipping. The point of being in a gay room is unmistakable: You're there to attract flies - literally. On repeated visits to different chat rooms, you'll find the public area of discussion silent. The first thing you notice upon entering a gay chat room is the absence of, well, chat. With a limit of 23 participants each, the six Atlanta rooms are always packed - Steve has to hit the "return" key over and over to get in. Steve often has trouble getting into the virtual meat markets like AtlantaM4M, AtlantaM4M2 or AtlantaM4Mnow. Paul doesn't care about AOL's technology but he likes the effect: "With AOL it's simpler to evaluate the merchandise."ĪOL's chat rooms are overflowing with gay men most nights of the week. Self-contained systems like AOL's always run better, faster and with fewer problems." "Which makes it more robust than other sites which use HTML or Java.
"AOL uses a local client software resident on the user's hard drive," he says. Rory O'Neill, president of Cybersite, which specializes in building online communities, says Paul isn't just imagining AOL's speed and ease of use. Nothing beats AOL for the immediacy of naked pictures popping up on your screen almost instantly." "It's just not that easy to exchange pictures. "I've tried other sites like Gay.com," says Paul. And then there's the system's legendary ease of use. Instant messaging, for example, allows private conversation in public rooms. The popularity of the gay penis prowl on AOL has more to do with the company's technology than any gay-friendly stance on AOL's part. "They have millions of subscribers, which would keep even the most active gay man busy." "There are a lot of other gay Web sites that have chat rooms, but they came after the fact, after AOL," says Ron, a San Francisco marketing consultant who maintains two AOL accounts - one for cruising and one for everything else. It turns out size does matter, and AOL has become the de facto online meet market largely because of its big member base. At 18 million members, AOL is so big you can find just about everything - or anyone - you're looking for.
"I don't have to get dressed up and go to a bar, drink, get my clothes full of smoke and wonder if anybody's interested." But avoiding the bar scene is only part of it.
"It offers an easier means to an end," says Paul, a health-care analyst in Atlanta who says he visits AOL's chat rooms nearly every day. But none of these has the reputation among gays that AOL does as the go-to place to get laid. There are, of course, several Web sites devoted specifically to the gay community - like gay.com and Planet Out. "GayOL," as many gay men have christened it, is home to hundreds of thousands of men "window-shopping" in the M4M (men for men) chat rooms. What AOL lacks in steam rooms and towel-wrapped men it makes up for in steamy chat and naked pictures zooming across its servers. (Like many of the men in this story, he asked that his real name not be used.) Within minutes of entering one of six AOL chat rooms designated for gay men in Atlanta, he exchanges naked photos with other men - some with their faces cropped out - and arranges a sex date. executive who cruises for men in America Online's chat rooms.
"I can have dick delivered to my door faster than a pizza," says Steve, an Atlanta P.R. For gay men, it's more like a 1970s bathhouse. But for heterosexuals, AOL is merely a swinger's lounge. Men and women alike are using America Online to pick up, peel off and put out with a kind of glee unseen since the summer of love.