I used to chat a lot in Guys4Men. That was a 'wanton-living' time of my life. And then I met my partner for almost 5 years. And then I became single again. And then I joined the advocacy.
When G4M was bought and turned into PlanetRomeo, my interest in it weaned. What I liked about G4M was the video chat space which PR did not adopt. And even while some folks migrated to Downelink which had Userplane (the video chat utility used by G4M), it was never the same again.
The HIV advocacy, like most advocacies, required extensive knowledge about the community it was serving. In our case, we were proud about understanding MSMs (men who have sex with men). We'd always say (ala Karibal): "We know the market because we ARE the market." But that has its limitations.
Beyond the feedback we get from the community and the personal experiences we share with each other, we always have to keep abreast with the always-changing landscape of the community's behavior. I was in a planning session recently with QCHD and DOH, and an observation mentioned revolved around paid-sex transactions disappearing from the usual cruising areas and moving online. Indeed, a lot of M2M hook ups are more and more happening online rather that the usual cruising spots. This is a global trend, not just a local one, and is part of a larger trend of social computing -- how technology is affecting societal norms. But I digress.
I wanted to understand the dynamics of the community more to help the advocay better, but my personal knowledge was based on experiences I've had at least 2-4 years past. I wanted to immerse myself into that world. And so I opened a new PlanetRomeo account.
That was at least 7 months ago. Today I feel I have a good grasp of this online space called PlanetRomeo. It is arguably the biggest online dating/hookup site in the Philippines today.. well, maybe if you discount the amount of similar activity happening on mainstream social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Among the MSM-oriented sites, I feel it currently has the strongest offering: PR has robust platforms accessible by most desktops/laptops and smartphones (including Blackberry). Couple this with a very active base of users in the country, a lot of which do use the site to hookup with others. There's also a lot of drug-related activity that either emanates from PR or is promoted in it. And the amount of profile data made available and stored on the site allowed users to do power searches (location, proximity, looking for sex, sex role, dick size, fetishes, interests, partee, PNP, photos, etc.) to find guys they were definitely interested in, even before striking a chat conversation. This was definitely a formula for high-risk behaviour that is associated with HIV exposure. And it was definitely an area where the hidden population converged, mingled, yet has been underserved by most of the current interventions of the advocacy.
Like how forum sites behaved since the turn of the millennium, outsiders were easily identifiable and deemed unwelcome. There have been intervention attempts to put peer educators on the site to promote safer sex and HIV testing in PR. Yet once users get to talk to any of them, they get turned off and stop the conversation. Of course there's a lot of 'marketing' going around PR -- from callboys to masseurs to network marketeers to real estate, but that's seen as background noise. MSMs engaged in PR know what they want and go for nothing else -- to chat with other MSMs, and a lot eventually hookup either for 1-on-1 sex, for group sex, for sex with drugs, and all the permutations in between.
I had chosen to integrate into this community -- be one among them. Yet, I purposefully put wore my advocacy badge on my profile -- used my real nickname, my real photos, and aside from my sexual interests I had "HIV counselor. Ask me if you want to get tested for HIV" on my profile.
To put some context, I had been struggling with my weight the past couple of years, and after my breakup of an-almost-5-year relationship, I didn't have much confidence to put myself back in the game. Slowly though, after some successful hookups (all safer sex) I started to rediscover my appeal. Almost overnight, I had rediscovered that almost-wanton life I had lived before, but now being more sure about safer sex practices I was advocating. This I never hid from my peers in the advocacy, and soon I was dubbed Mr. SexPositive.
(to be continued)
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