By Scott King
Episode 1: The Land Before Grindr – Hooking Up
Hooking up. It’s not what makes us gay — that would be our same-sex desire — but it’s certainly part of what makes gay life worth living. Love is love, yes, but the body is the garden of the soul, and my garden needs regular tending, from the handsomest of gardeners.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Drag Race, Madonna Ciccone, Bowen Yang, and Matt Rogers as much as anyone else, but if that were all there was to gay life, I would probably find something better to do with my time. And energy.
So: hooking up. Lately, I’ve been hearing lots of complaints from the gays that hooking up feels overly transactional. Sometimes dehumanizing, sometimes delightful, yet ultimately un-nutritious — like enjoying a birthday cake when it’s not actually your birthday. I have some news for you, gays: that undeserved birthday cake has always been there waiting for you, both before and after Al Gore invented the internet. Contrary to popular belief, the internet did not invent transactional gay culture. It merely allowed those transactions to occur from the comfort of our own homes.
Before the internet — before apps, websites, and before everybody had a glowing rectangle in their pocket — if you wanted to interact with another gay person, for whatever reason, you generally had to leave your house. You had to go to a bar, a club, a bookstore, a park, a gym, or some friend-of-a-friend situation where gay people tended to gather.
For the average gay man in the late 1990s, hooking up still involved navigating an obstacle course of logistics, social signals, and weird little moments of gay courage. People today often imagine the pre-app world as somehow more romantic or less superficial. It wasn’t. Gay hookups have always been highly visual and highly transactional. Please understand, dear reader, that I am only talking about hookups. I’m not talking about romance or friendship or gay culture in general — just the simple act of getting it on.
I recently heard Bowen Yang jokingly explain to Marc Maron that, in the gay community, you don’t really need “game.” You just need the body parts the other person is looking for in approximately the correct shape. That was true before the internet as well. Back in the day, attraction existed inside a larger matrix of circumstances. Let’s say you walked into a gay bar by yourself and stood there alone. Immediately, other calculations kicked in. Were you mysterious? Awkward? Confident? Dangerous? Desperate?
If you were absolutely off-the-charts hot, you could neutralize most of those concerns. But if you were merely somewhat handsome, as most of us are — or at least fancy ourselves to be — standing alone could actually lower your stock. Fair or not, a lone gay man at a bar carried a faint matrix of “What’s wrong with him?” red flags. And then there were the existential considerations. Who drove? Who could host? Were friends waiting? Was somebody too drunk? Did anyone have enough money for a cab?
Back then, there were no Ubers floating through the city waiting to ferry two fairies to a discreet apartment complex. Back then, actually managing to hook up with someone you met at a bar felt like seeing the face of Christ on toast: miraculous, yet wholly real.
Flash forward to 2026. Grindr. Scruff. Whatever. Pictures. Descriptions. Text messages. DMs. Let’s go! Or is it really that simple? Are his pictures AI or real? Is he on steroids? Where did he get them? Why can’t I look like that with the push of a button, just like he did? Is he an influencer? Is he here to hook up, or just to add subscribers to his OnlyFans?
Do you see how these concerns barely existed in the ’90s? The suspicions, jealousies, and reasons not to trust a handsome stranger are fundamentally different now. Modern hookup culture has eliminated many of the old logistical barriers while creating entirely new psychological and spiritual concerns. Take that same reasonably attractive meet-cute couple from 1998 and drop them into 2026. On paper, it should be easier than ever for them to connect. They can exchange pictures instantly. They know each other’s interests, body type, HIV status, location, and preferred sexual position before they even meet.
Let’s get it on, am I right? Not necessarily. Because now both men possess infinite optionality. The entire world exists in their palms. That is the good news — and, of course, the bad news. At any moment, somebody hotter, closer, richer, younger, or simply newer might appear three blocks away. Or maybe I’ll just stay home and scroll instead.
I am no longer chained to the logistical realities of Friday and Saturday night at the cluuuurb. I can theoretically get it 24/7 with a couple clicks of a couple buttons. Modern gay life often operates under the strange psychological assumption that possibility itself is an infinitely renewable resource. In short, the analog pre-internet world was full of the mystery of the unknown. The modern world — the world of 2026 — is full of the mystery of the known. The internet did not invent or eliminate transactional behavior. It simply minimized friction.
Sounds nice, right? But be careful what you wish for. A lack of friction can leave you completely untethered. It is my sincere hope that, over this series of articles, you come to realize that neither life before nor after the internet is inherently better than the other. They are simply different. If you are pining for the way things used to be, I hope you take a real look at the advantages of the way things are now. And if you cannot imagine life without smartphones, hopefully these articles will show you — quite literally — how to imagine such a life.
It really isn’t — and wasn’t — all that bad.