About this episode
Before dating apps, swipes and DMs, if you wanted somebody’s number at a gay bar… you wrote it on a napkin.
This week on A Little Throuple Tea, we’re going back to the internet that raised us — from life before Wi-Fi, screaming dial-up modems and AOL chat rooms to MySpace, smartphones, dating apps, algorithms and now AI knowing way too much about us.
We talk about sneaking onto the internet after everyone went to bed, sharing one family computer, memorizing websites, and trying to get online without that dial-up sound announcing it to the entire house.
But for us, the early internet was more than slow computers and AOL discs.
Growing up gay in places where being queer could feel pretty isolating, chat rooms and sites like gay.com were some of the first places that showed us there were actually other gay people out there. Then MySpace arrived with profile songs, custom backgrounds and a Top 8 capable of destroying friendships.
And then dating apps changed everything.
We were around gay bars before and after apps took over, and the difference was wild. Before apps, you actually had to walk up to someone, talk, flirt and maybe leave with a phone number written on a napkin. Then suddenly you could stay home, open an app and skip the entire bar part.
Somewhere along the way, the internet stopped living on a computer desk and moved into our pockets.
