Bleeding boundaries: Domesticating gay hook-up apps

Hook-up apps such as Grindr and Scruff have become important sites for the negotiation of sex between men, in that they shape the ways intimacy cultures are practised and become visible (Mowlabocus, 2010; Race, 2014; Duguay et al., 2016). While such apps enable different intimacy cultures, they also come paired with anxieties. In the epigraph the interview participant James1 expresses concerns about the how the hook-up app Scruff might restructure the boundaries of privacy and make him vulnerable to exposure. Such technological ambivalence is central to domestication theory, which focuses on the processes through which media are controlled. As Berker et al. (2005) argue: ‘These “strange” and “wild” technologies have to be “house-trained”; they have to be integrated into the structures, daily routines and values of users and their environments’ (p. 2).