Why Gay People Love the Internet: four reasons

by Petit Fours

Lesbian and gay people are more likely to be on social networks and more likely to read blogs than their straight counterparts, according to a survey out last week, which confirmed my long-held suspicions about how the internet is the natural medium for gay. Gays are consistently more likely to be on all the main social networks and are more likely to read blogs of all sorts.

To quote the survey-makers, Harris International:

The report found that a majority of gay and lesbian adults read blogs online. More than half (54%) of gay men and lesbian respondents read some type of blog, compared to only 40% of heterosexuals.

Gay people were also more likely to be on every social network going…

- Facebook: A remarkable three-quarters (73%) of gay and lesbian adults state they are members of Facebook, compared to 65% of heterosexual adults.
- MySpace: 32% of gay and lesbian respondents report being members of MySpace, compared to 22% of heterosexual respondents (albeit a shrinking number of both groups from past years).
- LinkedIn: When it comes to the business-oriented social networking site, LinkedIn, 22% of gay and lesbian respondents report being members, while 16% of heterosexual adults state they are members.
- Twitter: Nearly 3 out of 10 (or 29%) gay men and lesbians report they are members of Twitter, while the same can be said of just 15% of heterosexual adults.

I didn’t need statistics to tell me that gay people are more keen on the internet. I guess the reason I picked up on these survey results (and wrote about them for the techie blog I do) was that they chimed with my own experience. Though my friends on Facebook are probably 50:50 gay/straight, it’s the gay ones that are all over it, uploading pictures, statuses, making chats and staging epic flash-mob comment attacks. Gay people know more about youtube, and have almost definitely signed up to an internet dating site (it still counts even if you deleted it).

Hell I love the internet and I’ve always connected it with being gay. And Facebook really helped me come out. I didn’t have the guts to actually tell anyone for ages, but changing my Interested In preferences from a drop-down menu was super easy. Googling “lesbian” doesn’t always come up with the most informative results, but hey that’s how I discovered the Queer Youth Network and my local gay youth group. And what “scissoring” was,  that oral sex was a real thing, and… well, this is a train of thought for another time..

Anyway… musing, as I occasionally do, I just wondered why gays like social networks, blogs and well, the whole internet so much. And after delving deep into my own psyche and the social implications of the internet, one of my favourite topics, I stumped up about four reasons:

1) The Internet is a New World -  and if you don’t like the current world very much – you’re much keener to forage out into a new one. It’s like the way the disenfranchised people of Europe dashed off to America as soon as it opened up back in the 1800s. Well it’s sort of like that. Let’s face it, a lot of the real world is not a gentle place for gay people, so the vistas opened up the virtual one seem more appealing. This is probably the same reason awkward geeky kids of any orientation enjoy the internet too.

2) You Can Meet & Socialise With People from Other Places - If you belong to a very thinly-spread community, (whether that’s gays or Marvel Comic afficionados) the internet is an important way to connect with people. It’s a quick easy way to build up networks. Hence the constant Facebook presence. I swear gays post more than straight people. I swear.

3) Gay people are more used to having to look for what they want… There is a very slim chance that Mr/Ms Right is going to be the boy/girl next door. Gays are much more used to having to trek around looking for the other gay in the village etc, so having to do a little investigative googling to find a good music review is not that much of a hurdle, hence the fact that gays are a bit more adventurous in delving through the blogosphere, or ploughing through those youtube videos until they find the really good hamster one. (This is the really good one.)

4) The internet is a place to recreate yourself.. online it’s very easy to tinker with different identities – and that can literally just be changing your Facebook profile picture.  And a bit of identity experimentation is something gay people often have to do to come to terms with themselves.

Do you agree?

NB: this is turning into a behemoth of a blog post, but Cat M commenting on my orginal post, made a couple of  interesting points – suggesting how what happens online feeds back into real life. She suggests that the sudden flowering of east London scene could be down to Facebook, and probes into just why gay people like to document themselves so much. I’m just going to quote her directly:

I think it’s also about marking out queer space. Firstly, the physical landscape is heteronormative and slow to create space where queers find their physical niche, whether that’s Stoke Newington (being replaced by Clapton, the new Park Slope of London!) or Vauxhall. The web is an infinitely expanding space that in theory is ungendered and has no sexuality. It doesn’t require wrestling into being queered.
More interestingly perhaps, I think it’s to do with asserting a gay identity over straight space. I find it really interesting how documented queer nights are, or even just regular social occasions populated by a bunch of gays. Those photos go straight up on the web. I was there. We were there. The gays occupied this space. It’s a way of leaving a gay trace. I think it’s no coincidence that a far stronger queer community has developed physically, and geographically particularly in East London, at pace with advances in social networking.

Well I don’t what she’s saying about Clapton, but that makes a lot of sense for me.