PlanetOut: On the Queer Internet’s Uneven Development
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 4:45 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 5:45 PM
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Abstract
Although many of the websites founded in the 1990s dot-com boom collapsed when the bubble burst in 2000, the techno-capitalist logics cohering in this period substantially influenced the subsequent development of digitally networked human relations. One such dot-com company, PlanetOut, was launched in 1995 as an online “worldwide community” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, with this community to be formed in large part by interpersonal communication via chat, message boards, and personal ads. PlanetOut survived the dot-com crash and made acquisitions including rival website Gay.com and The Advocate magazine to form a queer multimedia conglomerate, but ultimately the company was purchased and stripped for parts in 2008. In this paper, I draw upon media industry studies, queer Internet/Web studies, and Marxist critique of political economy to consider PlanetOut’s historic trajectory as one of uneven and combined development. My analysis emphasizes what PlanetOut produced rather than the circumstances of its failure by framing the company’s commodification of mediated social activity—through advertising targeted by digital surveillance, paywalling interpersonal communication, and horizontal corporate integration—as a strategy of capitalist accumulation marked by uncertainty, partiality, and the combining of the economic/cultural forces driving the dot-com bubble with the then-burgeoning “Web 2.0” means of production. PlanetOut was not the only company developing these practices, nor were they particularly successful, but their demonstration of the lucrative possibilities of soliciting queer relational desires—for romance or sex, friendship, and/or a networked community—presaged not just later queer networks like Grindr or Tumblr but also sites of “straight” mediated sociality such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tinder. By showing the value to be extracted from shifting human relationality to a digital platform, PlanetOut exemplified the potential for digital capital accumulation more fully exploited by later companies into the present day.
Recommended Citation
Hunter, Sam, "PlanetOut: On the Queer Internet’s Uneven Development" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 8.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/8
PlanetOut: On the Queer Internet’s Uneven Development
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Although many of the websites founded in the 1990s dot-com boom collapsed when the bubble burst in 2000, the techno-capitalist logics cohering in this period substantially influenced the subsequent development of digitally networked human relations. One such dot-com company, PlanetOut, was launched in 1995 as an online “worldwide community” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, with this community to be formed in large part by interpersonal communication via chat, message boards, and personal ads. PlanetOut survived the dot-com crash and made acquisitions including rival website Gay.com and The Advocate magazine to form a queer multimedia conglomerate, but ultimately the company was purchased and stripped for parts in 2008. In this paper, I draw upon media industry studies, queer Internet/Web studies, and Marxist critique of political economy to consider PlanetOut’s historic trajectory as one of uneven and combined development. My analysis emphasizes what PlanetOut produced rather than the circumstances of its failure by framing the company’s commodification of mediated social activity—through advertising targeted by digital surveillance, paywalling interpersonal communication, and horizontal corporate integration—as a strategy of capitalist accumulation marked by uncertainty, partiality, and the combining of the economic/cultural forces driving the dot-com bubble with the then-burgeoning “Web 2.0” means of production. PlanetOut was not the only company developing these practices, nor were they particularly successful, but their demonstration of the lucrative possibilities of soliciting queer relational desires—for romance or sex, friendship, and/or a networked community—presaged not just later queer networks like Grindr or Tumblr but also sites of “straight” mediated sociality such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tinder. By showing the value to be extracted from shifting human relationality to a digital platform, PlanetOut exemplified the potential for digital capital accumulation more fully exploited by later companies into the present day.
Bio
Sam Hunter is a PhD candidate in UCLA’s Department of Film, Television and Digital Media. His current research mobilizes the historical-philosophical genealogy of queer Marxism to consider queer Internet use during the 1990s and 2000s as a utopian phenomenon leading to contradictory outcomes. He is also co-chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’s Precarious Labor Organization.