Vitrine Virtual: comunicação, práticas corporais e sociabilidade no Grindr

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the use of the Grindr app as an online environment of communication and construction and development of gay sociability. We seek to understand how the exposure of bodies in Grindr participates in the definitions of the possible relationships between subjects. More specifically, we analyze the communicational tensions between secrecy and visibility from that app. As a theoretical framework, we left the cabinet conceptions of Sedgwick and Miskolci, Levy’s cyberculture, Lemos’ cybercity and Mauss’ “prestigious imitation”. As the methodological framework, we conducted ethnographic research with 23 users of Grindr, but analyzed nine in this article who live in Belem (PA). The results allowed us to explore and analyze definitions around users’ sexual preferences, body and behavior and relate them to the studies on the homoeroticism in cyberspace. Keywords: cyberculture, Grindr, gay sociability, body.