Gaydar – The death of an icon?
I used to be a regular on Gaydar chat. I enjoyed that it was all-encompassing; in that, I could elect to be in rooms that were either fetish or location driven and that I could see them all at the same time. Then one night it all changed as Gaydar had a makeover. Less of a makeover really, more of a demolition.
It went from being something similar to a magazine one might find on the top shelf in the newsagents and changed in likeness to the reading material in a doctors or solicitors waiting room.
It had metamorphosed into what I would describe as “coffee shop gay”, having been ethically and morally cleansed, and coming out the other side as Conservative with a small “c.”
There are those who are still reeling from the change to the site. I laid a small posy on my router to mark its passing. I sent an email to PinkNews asking they put a notice of obituary as a gesture at its loss.
Then came the attempted resurrection, the chat facility had a couple of new rollouts. Early indications suggested from my appraisal it had been written by someone in London who felt the place was the centre of the gay world as whilst there were rooms for every direction in the capital those of us from the provincial hinterlands were left out in the cold, though this was subsequently addressed.
I try it again every month or so. I miss it. Reminds of the line in the Billy Joel song Italian Restaurant “but you can never go back there again,” because it has changed and so have I.
Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.
Disillusioned and back in the closet man who likes other men.
Strongly opinionated, possibly outdated. Genuine, cynical, candid and consider I have a humourous outlook.
Older than acceptable in Gay circles, larger of frame than is fashionably desirable.
Looking for a platform to share my views and listen to others
Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you'd like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.
I rejoined to see if it had improved, having deleted my old profile as I could see I was never going to use it after they rejigged it. It has been destroyed basically. The only thing a website needs is traffic. Without that, you are toast. No one is ever going to log in, no advertisers, that’s the end of it…
They must have about 2% of the number of people logged in that they used to.
Just joined, and deleted pretty much after an hour. It’s completely different from when I last used it in february. I can’t edit my profile to have an age preference, and most of the features that were free now you have to pay for as VIP. i couldn’t even figure out how to delete a photo i uploaded. im sure you can, somehow… but i haven’t got time to figure out what seems like a load of morally pretentious bollocks
Its appalling now – I can’t believe anyone actually pays for it. They have decimated the chatrooms which was its only good feature – awful software so user unfriendly
Totally agree – I keep checking back in but it’s like they got rid of all the good features and only kept the bad. The chatrooms needed updating but now the software is actually so user unfriendly its like they have just given up