Note: No material connection or financial stake in any of the brands, companies or individuals mentioned here. There was a time when the Internet was anonymous. It's not now. The protective facelessness of the online world is a myth -- largely of our own doing. And the world is paying attention. You can lead an otherwise virtuous life and still have your orientation, and any number of personal facts true or not , found out with a little research; just Google my name and you'll figure out where my predilections lay in a flash.
This becomes a real issue when LGBTQs venture out of the safety of the progressive West for destinations further afield. And he's changed the entire nature of his app accordingly. What is the world coming to, you may think, when a hook-up app goes socially responsible?
The answer is "deadly. Most of us aren't stupid; we tone the gaiety down the second we step off the plane in such a destination, a phenomenon known as the travel closet. And for the most part, we play it extremely safe or at least, we should. But gosh darn it, some of us, we just can't help from, ahem, "sampling the local fare. It's all about subterfuge. Or so we think. SCRUFF may have started as a bear equivalent to Grindr, but Silverberg recognizes that apps are in a unique position to insure the safety of its members in hostile territory.
It is not a pleasant thought, but how much do we really know about the guy behind the photo? If you think that you can fly under the radar using hook-up apps in Russia , Saudi Arabia , or some other Orwellian society that has made it illegal to be gay, think again. It took Big Brother, and a few particularly venomous individuals, all of two nanoseconds to figure out for what SCRUFF and similar apps were being used, and promptly began using them to spy on the local gay population with the goal of arresting them, blackmailing them, killing them, or all of the above.
Separate from the main SCRUFF grid-site, and not restricted to members of the app, the openly-available GTA is constructed along the same lines as the invaluable CIA World Factbook , listing what gays and lesbians can expect, socially and legally, upon entering a particular country. Then we started thinking how we could really do this in a bigger way. The list may seem oddly lapdash; popular destinations like India and Morocco are on it, but equally popular South Africa and Japan aren't.
