Producing sexual cultures and pseudonymous publics with digital networks

Since the release of the Grindr app in 2009, interest in digitally mediated public sexual cultures concerning men who have sex with men has increased. Yet, digital mediation of such public sexual cultures through apps had begun more than a decade before Grindr was released. For example, Squirt, a desktop and mobile hook up site for men who have sex with men, was launched in 1998 and has always functioned to facilitate public hook ups. Using Squirt as a case study, I will build on the work of Mowlabocus (2008) in relation to our understandings of digitally mediated public sex, employing a version of networked publics (boyd, 2008a; boyd, 2008b) and thinking regarding the real name web (Hogan, 2013). Through an actor-network theory (ANT) informed analysis of Squirt, I will demonstrate how, in a U.K. context, networked digital media inform and allow for the co-existence of a spectrum of gender and sexual politics, sexual preferences and sexual practices. Such an analysis encourages further explorations of the theoretical potentials of networked publics, and in doing so, I present the concept of pseudonymous publics.