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Abstract
It is through storytelling, Walter Benjamin believed, that wisdom and experience are shared, letting open narratives achieve an amplitude that information lacks. And Charles Baudelaire considered the window-shopping flâneur to be the observant ne plus ultra of urban modernity. By combining these two literary modes–storytelling and flânerie–<em>Looking </em>engages a new media object of the 21st century: Grindr. On the gay male geosocial app, a user's common opening line in a chat is "Looking?" meaning, "Looking for sex?" But what else are the men on Grindr looking for? This meta-critical essay and memoiristic narrative explores not 'what has happened' but rather 'what is happening' in the arcades of gay male virtual spaces today. By drawing on 19th-century Paris, summers in New York City, Roland Barthes, Edmund White, more gay men, and field notes after dinner, <em>Looking </em>details new experiences, paints a new picture of modern life, and looks at new ways of being together and being alone.
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Not Reviewed
Publication Date
2014-01-01
English
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