The internet HIV risk?
Updated on 26 March 2008
Thousands of gay men risk getting HIV through internet organised "bareback" sex
More 4 News will tonight explore the downside of internet social networking as part of its dot.com decade series of reports by showing how technology has normalised extreme forms of sexual behaviour.
Gaydar and other gay "hook-up" websites were popular long before the launch of mainstream social networks like Bebo and Facebook boast millions of British members.
As More4 News will show, users are able to search for a partner based on a variety of criteria: hair colour, eye colour, height, weight, even penis size.
Watch the report
The frank nature of the site has had an impact on the gay scene, with bars and clubs scaling back, some even closing down completely as users opt to locate a partner online rather in real life.
As one user says:"It's like take-out pizza, you just order in sex."
The websites also allow users to search for people willing to have unprotected, so called "bareback" sex. Within minutes online, More 4 News was able to find thousands of British gay men willing to have bareback sex. On one website, 613 men said they only have bareback sex
Using language that can not be broadcast, users set their "status" with "adverts" such as "XX HUNG BARE BACKING PIG - CONDOM FREE ZONE" and "Lets get raw and bare"
One 19-year-old boy says he is a "boy for older daddy to use and abuse". Shockingly, an 18-year-old boy says he is looking to "BUGSHARE." Another 18-year-old says he is a "young teen poz bottom for poz top guys."
'It's like take-out pizza, you just order in sex'
As More 4 News reports, the Health Protection Agency are warning of a rise in a so called super virus where someone is infected with two strains of the HIV virus.
Gaydar director David Muniz told More4 News: "We don't dictate to individuals how they are going to change or how they are going to act. We work within the confines of the law.
The ability to search for and locate sexual partners who are willing to engage in the same forms behaviour has only been possible thanks to the technology of the web.
Despite the negatives, some believe that the websites have revolutionised gay life in a positive way. Labour MP, Chris Bryant was revealed a user of Gaydar in a tabloid frenzy in 2003.
He told More 4 News: "30, 40 years ago [for] most gay men and lesbians who lived in a rural area or a district like mine in the South Wales valley as soon as they knew they were gay they would disappear off to Cardiff or one of the big cities and nowadays they can go online and find one another on the internet"
Social networks aimed at the gay community were trailblazers, in technology terms laying a path that the mainstream social networks would soon follow. But they also stand as a warning to society as mass mainstream online social networks take off.
