“No Pic/No Chat”
“Just looking for friends (no one over 35)”
“STR8 acting only, Masc only, no Fems”
The list goes on. The above are some of the phrases commonly seen on all gay social apps. This tends to make a person nervous for fear of rejection or, worse yet, no response at all. Also it seems to have become increasingly popular to say ridiculously rude things to people in response to a friendly message so that the chat can be screen captured and shared for a laugh on Facebook.
I am guilty of all of the above. I’ve had bad days and put nasty messages in my profile like “Do not start a conversation with me by saying sup”. I have not responded to people if they had no picture or if I didn’t find the picture attractive. I have screen captured a conversation because I was lonely and thought I’d get some “likes” on Facebook for it. I regret all of that. Now as time goes by, I receive fewer and fewer messages. Well, I can see after all of that why people would hesitate to message someone like me.
Not too long ago the LGBT community existed mainly in homes and only in public at night in the safe friendly bars. This was before my time but I can imagine if I were alive and in the scene and I met a new LGBT person it would have felt like meeting a new member of my family. Now I feel like we’ve taken it for granted. I had to stop and think for a moment and remember that there is a real person on the other end of these messages. Someone saw me, took a moment of their life, and reached out to me from one human to another. I felt horrible knowing that I had completely disregarded that persons time and interest by ignoring them or being an asshole to them.
This morning I received a message on Grindr that said “You are beautiful. I would date you”. This made my day and really provoked me to think on this topic. My intention is to pay it forward with messages that are similar in nature to others, regardless of the response (or lack thereof)
Thanks for reading!