Unsafe dating

Originally posted on http://sexandtherecession.co.uk

Since the recession hit we’ve all had to curb our spending and something that seems to have become a thing of the past is dating, most probably due to the amount of money it costs to actually attend said dates. Due to this as I mentioned in my last blog, hook ups on mobile phone apps seem to have become increasingly popular.

But with the internet and mobile phone apps increasing in popularity due to their accessibility, it leaves us with the question; has the recession and in turn it’s savior, the internet, made dating unsafe?

It appears that dating companies have latched on to the fact that people can’t afford to go out as much these days, which narrows their chances of finding dates and then sex. So now we are constantly bombarded on a daily basis by advertisements offering us free subscriptions and free trials in order for us to sign up to the latest internet dating fads such as Match.com and plentyoffish.

These websites fill the gap and offer us dating at our fingertips, which could lead to a relationship and plenty of sex, or even just a one-night stand. But in this climate, with sex lives feeling the pinch, who’s complaining?

Well it appears that many people are complaining due to spate of news features over the last few years on the perils of internet dating, which have seen people killed in the worst case scenario.

But is this simply the case now, that because of the recession and our apparent lack in contact with other people due to it, are we becoming more careless?

Just think about it we don’t know these people we’ve met, our friends most likely haven’t so they can’t warn us about them and do they really look like their picture? We believe these people because we have no other choice as without these portals to dating and sex we probably wouldn’t get any due to the constraints on our wallets at the moment.

It appears that in the gay world online dating is a place to find dates or sex and it can be a very dangerous place, especially with some of the people you come across on them.

In my next piece I will be taking a closer look at Gaydar, the popular online dating website for gay men, to see just what this website entails and just how safe it is.

Are we grinding differently?

Originally posted on www.sexandtherecession.co.uk

Since the recession hit back in late 2008 everyone in the country has been tightening those purse strings and holding on to their money tighter than ever.

This however hasn’t come without its setbacks. With people now limiting their expenditure on luxuries such as new clothes, shoes and dining out they have almost become a thing of the past for many people, even everyone’s Saturday nights out have become a victim of the recession and in turn so have their sex lives.

With casual sex no longer being a taboo, in facts it’s far from it with most friendship groups discussing it in the hope they sound oh so Sex and the City, a Saturday night out is where thousands of people around the country get their rocks off with the nearest person on the dance floor. However with these nights out being cut back on considerably, many people who once enjoyed a carefree casual sex life have seen it dwindle dramatically.

Gay men in particular have often been considered as having extremely care free and casual sex lives and in the wake of the recession, with the fear of cut backs on nights out arising, a new creation for the smartphone generation emerged … Grindr.

Grindr is a geosocial-networking app that gay and bisexual men can use to find other gay and bisexual men in a close proximity, in other words they can use it to find the closest quickie. That’s right,Grindr has helped cut out the middle man, in this case the middle man being the club and the alcohol, and has allowed gay men the world over to access sex at the click of a button.

So Grindr has seemingly emerged to save the sex lives of gay men everywhere, after all there are now over two million people using it in 192 across the globe. So even though the recession has hit and people are suffering and cutting back on luxuries, thanks to a free app for most smartphones, the iPod and iPad gay men can still enjoy the free pleasure that is sex.

Many people I know have used this app and continue to use it everyday and their reasons for doing it? It’s quick, easy and best of all free, showing us that the recession has not only hit our bank balances and sex lives, it has also changed the way we approach sex and dating.

There isn’t a version for straight people yet, but with the popularity of Grindr and the way it’s expanding around the world, along with the never ending recession and cut backs and not forgetting our newly developed approaches to dating, it won't be long before everyone is grinding in a completely different way.

Against Gaga

Originally published on www.differentscene.co.uk

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock or in a small cave for the last three years then you’ve definitely endured the bid for world domination by one miss Lady Gaga. She has enjoyed huge success with sell out tours, platinum records galore and has every gay within a 50 mile radius of her falling to the ground in a Gaga induced mess. But doesn’t she just get on your nerves?

Now I, like most, am guilty of being drawn in by the perfectly crafted pop songs she’s launched over the past few years, and I am most definitely guilty of trying to emulate the Born This Way dance (that kind of resembles a chicken jumping over hot coals) on a drunken night out.

But amongst this plethora of songs, dance routines and bat shit crazy outfits you have to admit that she is quite possibly one of the most annoying people to hit the pop charts in recent years. Originality seems to be one of the main words that follows Gaga around, and this association is one thing that really annoys me about her, so lets look at this shall we? First of all lets just get something out of the way, Madonna did it first and Madonna did it better, way better!! The way she has crafted her huge theatre-esque stage shows are a complete rip off of what Madonna started way back in 1990 with the Blonde Ambition tour, the way that she uses sex and sexuality and juxtaposes it with religious themes was something the Queen of Pop herself started way back in the 1980s before Gaga was even born, does anyone recall the Like A Prayer video, the one that was almost banned by MTV? Yeah thought so. Well without this we wouldn’t have Lady Gaga because to be perfectly honest nothing that she has come up with has been totally original it has all been rehashed from someone who did it years before.To be honest we could probably detect where her career is going next by just looking at what Madonna did next.

Her original fashion isn’t even original. Yes I know she has worn a number of shocking outfits, the meat dress is the first that springs to mind and yes in her defence this was very original, but the attempt to shock with an outfit wasn’t. She recently dressed as a man for the MTV awards something else that was done back in the 1980s by Annie Lennox and then again a few years later by Cher, and I believe Madonna did something along the same lines in her 1989 music video for Express Yourself. Another musical icon she has ripped off is musical psycho Grace Jones, who even denied Gaga the chance of a duet due to her ‘copying her style’ you only have to look at photos on Google to see where she’s coming from.

Now I can’t spend forever looking at how Lady Gaga’s originality is anything but original, otherwise I would probably be here for a pretty long time, and I mean pretty long. So I’m going to look at one more thing about her that really annoys me, her self riotousness, lets be honest she pretty much thinks she’s god, and why wouldn’t she with everyone putting her on a pedestal and bowing down at everything she does. The woman could probably release an album filled with noises her body makes while she sleeps and it would probably sell a million copies, but I digress.

The woman is catering for the gay market, which is good there’s nothing wrong with that, look at Cher she’s done pretty well out of it. But Gaga has aimed everything towards gay fans, almost pigeon holing herself as a gay artist but to be perfectly honest this just appears to be some form of cleverly crafted PR, because if she appeals to the gays in every way possible, whether it be musically or politically, she’s tapped into an extremely lucrative market with quite a lot of disposable income who will buy her records. She does deserve a round of applause for that in all fairness.

But at the end of the day, when you watch her on TV or a video of her concert you just want to grab her, slap her and tell her that this isn’t a political rally, we don’t care about what you have to say, just shut up and do your job which is singing. This is one of the reasons I am yet to see her live, although I would probably enjoy two hours of listening to her music performed live I would have to resist the temptation to crash the stage and slap her when she decided to give some speech to the audience mid way through a song. It’s almost like she thinks she’s is some modern day Martin Luther King JR, Mother Theresa or even Jesus.

Yes I do love me some Gaga, but I just wish the woman would disappear for a while and come back with her own look and just sing and perform, instead of just rehashing someone else’s career whether it be a political career she’s rehashing or a pop career.