Fucking The Dead (-Inside)

There's a common discourtesy I've encountered. It involves guys checking their grindr messages during the hookup, establishing prospects for future satisfactions even before the bed has cooled. I'm not exactly offended (is it really discourteous in the parameters of casual/anonymous?), more concerned its symptomatic of an attention deficit intrinsic to the rapid gratification grindr provides. More than grindr, I think this describes a mind made berserk by the umpteen online spaces we move through in the course of a day, and the compulsive appetite for distraction these engender. With sex embedded as a possible outcome of 'trolling', it's easy to segue from need to habit, and finally addiction. But can an addiction be recognised in a culture where such behaviours are in the process of socialisation? 

We are all guinea pigs. Gone is media of an analogue form where exposure was a more volitional interface, replaced with immersive facilitation of every facet of our lives, begging rigours without precedent should we choose to practice selectivity. So we are clear, preference is not discernment. Preference is a user-modality internal to availability and the mechanics of consumption. 

Being guinea pigs, the job of wading through the possibilities of this brave new world with anything resembling ethical conduct, is one we've been passively assigned by the commercial run-off installing these new platforms in the first. The question is, what will they be platforms for? Will they simply meet existing needs, or will they also implant new ones for which we'll require future solutions? 

The originary premise of an app like grindr shouldn't limit it's use. The willing subject should, like with anything, be capable of repurposing it to clarify (and enrich, fingers crossed) its own existing problematic scripts. If grindr proves to have little transformative value, if the subject feels hindered as opposed to supplemented, the artefact in question (grindr, tinder etc.) should probably be discarded. Or refitted, depending on its footing in the zeitgeist. 

Anyway, I've had an unfortunate experience. Recently I met someone outside grindr. This person was really very cool, I surmised quite accurately despite being drunk, having this later confirmed for me during an arranged (and sober) meeting a few days later. As conversation followed coffee (the two alternating with swooning grace), times passing had us more and more agreeable to fates frivolous suggestion, namely the crossing of our paths. We jumped to an unmissable connection with gusto, unfurling majestically from our imagined coolness and opening up like strangers rarely do. With good reason, so it goes. I don't know what I said but some coin dropped about my sexual habits and he's since given me the shrug, being a 'one guy kind of guy'. Only the second time we'd seen each other and he felt confident enough to judge me the kind who strays not commits. What the fuck does that even mean? I just wanted to hang out (and we could do still), only he'd extrapolated a year into a fictitious future in which I slew his feelings by betraying a commitment we were nowhere near making to one another, and is consequently no longer open to the possibility. 

That's some delusional shit. That also happens to be some pretty fucking regular shit. Confabulating doomed futures from your own anxieties/insecurities, choosing to waste effort on fearful scrutiny of tenuous and unpleasant fantasies (serving what purpose?), rather than exacting pleasure from the moment (available for a limited time)? 

What a fucking idiot. 

But he's done me a favour. He's made me value the nature of grindr and its users streamlined to a shared love of sex no strings, that in my experience and with amicable frequency can blossom into friendships and more, connections that differ from the established relationship conventions in shape form duration and number, but are no less important or satisfying in being so. 

So fuck you you fucking fuck, take your scared unemployed ass (sadly true) back to the sheltered white-picket subdivision you came from. Some of us have living to do.