What do you guys think about Manhunt? Did you know their founder donated to the John McCain campaign? Michael Joseph Gross has some things to say about it. He thinks that it may be destroying gay culture and wrote all about it in a recent article for Out magazine.

I’ve never been an avid reader of Out. It’s one of those general interest lifestyle mags that just doesn’t feature anything I generally am interested in purchasing and sells an ideal of beauty I honestly don’t find so attractive. I often also actually have difficulty figuring out the difference between Out, Details, and GQ? Seriously though, Gross’ article has honestly given me a newfound respect for the magazine. It’s ballsy, honest, and analytic on a subject that generally isn’t publicly discussed — the cultural prevalence of online cruising among gay men.

The couple times that I’ve dabbled on Manhunt were pretty much complete failures. I don’t own a digital camera and rely on what’s posted on my friend’s Flickr accounts making it impossible to create the sort of desirable, pornographic persona described by Gross, “a sexy image that stands separate from your physical self.” Besides, while I have no problem getting nude on the beach in public, I am extremely self conscious about posting a picture of my penis, a “dick pic,” online. Plus, who wants to see my tiny penis? It’s like a Ken doll down there.

I think Gross is entirely right to be frustrated with what cruising sites our doing to our culture of desire, and it’s a frustration I share. I didn’t even have to leave Out magazine’s web site to find a perfect example. Seen these ads recently? Because they’re all over MySpace as well, targeted at gay profiles. Read More!

This appears to be a week where I sit around and talk about meta-internet shit that no one else gives a crap about. One that note, Erin’s new blog about blogs that die after a single post, 1post1der.blogspot.com, is making me lose my shit. It’s like an elephant graveyard for infant blogs. She’s like the bone collector of blog fetuses. This blog is a beautiful refuse dump that provides some really excellent meta-commentary on blog culture and our age of new media. Basically I dig it hard. This one’s my favorite:

SPARKS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Wednesday, December 13, 2000
Finally getting a new personal page up feels great… I’ve been spending far too much time working on clan / squad webpages for all these damn games.. And I finally broke my crack addiction!
Crack: To be a game very addictive in nature. See: EverQuest, EQ, Verant Interactive.
Yeah, so I’m a hardcore gamer… F me. At least I’m not a geek, right?… ok maybe I’m proud to be a geek, but at least I can own people in quake3! …Maybe I should get back into playing Red Alert online… win more tourneys…

For those of you reading this who don’t know me well, I’m not just a gamer, I’m a DJ, spin occasionally at raves.. hardcore fan, an American Head Charge groupie (they’re a band in MN who recently were signed…), Ex-addict, gamer, … the list goes on, and hell, I’m even the father of a gorgeous 16 month old daughter who I just recently got visitation rights with!

Oh well, back to paying attention in class (hahaha visual basic is WAY too simple when you know C++ well)

The original entry is here. Now a point breakdown of why this wins in my mind. Read More!

Matt Richel writes for The New York Times today in an article on a new case where Google Trends may be introduced into evidence and set legal precedent.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.

I have to severely disagree with his comparison of the two word search term “apple pie” with the one word term “orgy.” The difference in popularity for search is arguably not as meaningful as they might seem. The motivation seems more driven by the use the term “apple pie” as a gimmick in his argument than showing meaningful statistics. He should have used “group sex” against “apple pie” to make his strings consistent and rule out the slim possibility of people looking for the 90s band Orgy so that they can download their hit cover of “Blue Monday.”

But the real reason this caught my interest has to do with the search terms that most often bring people to my blog. Read More!

Get ready for me to geek out. Probably two people who have ever read this blog will find this interesting. As a result, almost all of this is behind the jump.

So I work for an undisclosed company on undisclosed web projects. Point is, I saw a proposal from an anonymous corporate communications company today that made me vomit into a bag when I left my cubicle. Read More!

Hey, so what? I read missed connections. I am constantly waiting for someone to say, “Who was that hottie with a cheese stain on his shirt riding the L train having a nap in his seat after work? I was the one in the red pants.” Point being I read missed connections for more than just the ego boost (never happens) I want and this is the greatest thing I have ever seen.

Apparently this “Italiano fron Milano” loves to try and get guys to get in his van to buy his old junk rip offs of fashion labels, like suits and leather goods, and likes also to maybe try and get guys to have sex with him off the street?

My question is, which serial killer does this guy resemble the most.

The entire craigslist thread from missed connections after the jump. Read More!

So remember how I recently posted a video response to the ever popular animation skit about T-Pain and Akon because I just can’t understand how a butternut reduction is possible? Because it isn’t possible. A starch won’t turn into a reduction. It just won’t. Unless you’re some crazy gastronomy blogger that can figure that out, this is a chemical impossibility.

Well posting that to YouTube confronted me with a depressing fact. Commenting culture, especially on YouTube is really dismal. Just check out the screen shot below and cry for the sake of humanity’s intelligence at this point in time.

Yes, lilmissTP. Yes. I am very bored. Bored by your bad comments. And bored by yer bad interwebz spllng slayngz.

I think this speaks for itself. I am so sorry, lonelyBoyInPhoenix16, so so sorry. I would say you are definitely a very special victim, worthy of Dr. George Huang’s attention in the interrogation room, after Stabler roughs you up.

I am having a boring day. So boring in fact that I am blogging on a weekend. But I did find something stimulating that just took up the last three hours of my time. Fort Troff (NOTE: DEFINATELY DEFINATELY DEFINATELY NSFW. Unless of course you work at a place like Nasty Pig. Don’t say I didn’t warn you). Prepare for your entire sense of reality to mealt into a pool of rubber, silicone, leather, and poppers.

Much like my experience when I discovered the “No Homo” internet meme, my first thoughts were , “Why haven’t I heard of this before? This has obviously been around a long time.” My next thoughts were, “I don’t think that can fit in a human ass.” And my next thought was, “I need to send this to a friend.”

I sent an email with the link to good friend Paul Sepuya (who was recently featured in BUTT Magazine, check out the new issue!) which resulted in a lengthy gChat (AIM is for geriatrics and technophobes) about my next thought which was, “Could I actually get into any of this?”

Our full conversation in it’s original, vapid instant message format after the jump. Oh… and after the jump is also NSFW, but you’d only need that warning if you’re a total prude. Read More!

With the eyes and ears of a giant manbaby, I have a good amount of difficulty adopting the “New York attitude” of remaining ignorant to everyone and everything in public settings. That being said, it’s hard to not get caught up in some of the especially intriguing sights that happen specifically in New York’s underground lairs. Here are some of my recent favorites:

What’s MetroPlus? I think it’s exclusive to minorities. Oh, wait…

Floppy hair and football neck? Sign me up. Whatever, I like doctors appointments. And football necks. Read More!

You know what happens when society slowly starts to accept gays? My MySpace (oops! unnavoidable weird double possesive!) account inundates me with targetted ads for awful gay dating websites. Like the following:

Why hello amorous Smith_Twin1984! You know what’s really effective, mypartner.com? Featuring the mentally handicapped and physically deformed in your ads for a dating site. Also… “If you can lift him”? Apparently he’s morbidly obese on his right side that is turned away from the camera. I’m surprised by your sorry existence but not surprised that people aren’t trying to lift you.

I can’t help but make the following comparison re: his face –

Disclaimer: My condemnation of embarrassing gay dating websites is in no way a condemnation of my fellow writer’s desire to get a date.