Abstract

MARENTES, Maximiliano. Flirting technologies and erotic circles. Usages of Grindr among gay men from the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Mora (B. Aires) [online]. 2023, vol.29, n.1, pp.8-8. ISSN 1853-001X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.34096/mora.n29.1.12766.

This paper aims to analyze how Grindr, an online dating and hooking-up app used by gay men, runs within a wider erotic circle framed by its relationships with other flirting technologies, both virtual and inperson. The work derives from a qualitative research conducted from October 2017 to November 2018 that sought to reconstruct love stories of 30 gay men living in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Considering Grindr as a flirting technology which belongs to a wider erotic circle enables to observe four characteristics based on how these men use the app. First, how it is thought in opposition to in-person spaces. Second, revealing its hegemonic charac-ter when examining how it becomes a generic of all virtual apps. Third, how this hegemony is cracked when the difference with other technologies turns up. Fourth, how previous distinctions are underestimated when focusing on the jumps among those technologies. The paper concludes on the need to reconsider these technologies as producers of erotism and restore the circular aspect of erotic exchanges.

Keywords : Grindr; intimacy; erotism; gay; apps.

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