In high school, a physics teacher who had all three Roth
children in his classes reacted to seeing my name on his roster by saying, “You’ve got some awfully big shoes to fill.”
Since its launch in 2009, the geosocial networking service Grindr has become an
increasingly mainstream and prominent part of gay culture, both in the United States and globally. Mobile applications like Grindr give users the ability to quickly and easily shareinformation about themselves (in the form of text, numbers, and pictures), and connect with each other in real time on the basis of geographic proximity.
I argue that these services constitute an important site for examining how bodies, identities, and communities are translated into data, as well as how data becomes a tool for forming, understanding, and managing personal relationships. Throughout this work,
I articulate a model of networked interactivity that conceptualizes self-expression as an act determined by three sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting sets of affordances and constraints:
(1) technocommercial structures of software and business;
(2) cultural and subcultural norms, mores, histories, and standards of acceptable and expected conduct; and
(3) sociopolitical tendencies that appear to be (but in fact are not) fixed
technocommercial structures. In these discussions,
Grindr serves both as a model of processes that apply to social networking more generally, as well as a particular studyinto how networked interactivity is complicated by the histories and particularities of Western gay culture.
Over the course of this dissertation, I suggest ways in which users, policymakers, and developers can productively recognize the liveness, vitality, and
durability of personal information in the design, implementation, and use of gay-targeted social networking services.
UPenn gave a PhD for that disgusting garbage.
From the 'all about me' intro:
In high school, a physics teacher who had all three Roth children in his classes reacted to seeing my name on his roster by saying, “You’ve got some awfully big shoes to fill.”
Knowing they were all CLOWNS.
Synopsis
ABSTRACT
GAY DATA
Yoel Roth
Sharrona Pearl
Since its launch in 2009, the geosocial networking service Grindr has become an increasingly mainstream and prominent part of gay culture, both in the United States and globally. Mobile applications like Grindr give users the ability to quickly and easily shareinformation about themselves (in the form of text, numbers, and pictures), and connect with each other in real time on the basis of geographic proximity.
I argue that these services constitute an important site for examining how bodies, identities, and communities are translated into data, as well as how data becomes a tool for forming, understanding, and managing personal relationships. Throughout this work,
I articulate a model of networked interactivity that conceptualizes self-expression as an act determined by three sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting sets of affordances and constraints:
(1) technocommercial structures of software and business;
(2) cultural and subcultural norms, mores, histories, and standards of acceptable and expected conduct; and
(3) sociopolitical tendencies that appear to be (but in fact are not) fixed technocommercial structures. In these discussions,
Grindr serves both as a model of processes that apply to social networking more generally, as well as a particular studyinto how networked interactivity is complicated by the histories and particularities of Western gay culture.
Over the course of this dissertation, I suggest ways in which users, policymakers, and developers can productively recognize the liveness, vitality, and durability of personal information in the design, implementation, and use of gay-targeted social networking services.
The further dehumanizing of the human experience.
Got a Phd in gay pedophilia, took it with him to Twitter. Sounds legit.
Shilling for Grindr. Reads more like a sales doc than a Ph.D. dissertation.
Link: https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/60981d118b006454de9222b2/61d364a68536fc3f5cf77933_Roth-Dissertation.pdf
https://archive.ph/8neeU
Puke.