Thedigital bathhouse ? an essay on the possible disruptive influence of gay apps on homosexual venues

The aim is to examine the possible disruptive influence of gay apps on homosexual venues. Based on the work of Licoppe et al. (2015), the main argument indicates that location-aware technologies such as gay apps combined the immediate availability and the disembedding of spatial contexts afforded by social networks toprivatize sexual encounters with strangers and redefine the urban experiences of gay men.Instead of being initiated and taking place in uncertain public places, the sexual encounters – which operate within a sexual script of the fastsexual consumption of objectified others– can be organized and occurindoors, separately from other domains of sociality. At the same time, userscan use gay apps for having potential encounters during their daily activities, and the whole city appears as a potential hunting ground, which turns traditional gay venues such as bars, clubs and saunas into limited places for gay sexual encounters. Many gay bars, clubs and saunas close their doors not only because of economic, political or legal problems, but, with the dissemination of gay apps, they also started to lose their political role as specific subversive spaces where gay men might express their identity and desires.