On the hunt

I was reading Joe My God - awesome blog - and there's a raging forum over an article in Out magazine about Manhunt destroying the scene.
Sorry - gay culture.

I wrote the column below four years ago. It almost seems quaint (the number of men online in particular):

At 7.20 a.m. yesterday, 300 Sydney men were logged onto Gaydar. At 3.15 a.m. on April 1, there were 233. The most I’ve ever seen is almost 800 on a recent Friday night, which brings us to the question:
Is typing the new cruising?
I’ve had a Gaydar profile for a while now, which I access out of sheer boredom and voyeuristic urges. I scan the pages, checking ages first (oooh, 52!) and looking for little red dots. For the uninitiated, a red dot designates a racy photo, usually a disembodied penis, as opposed to a blue dot, which usually means someone smiling on a windswept beach. Very laxative commercial.
I don’t have a pic on my profile, which is considered poor form and does nothing for my strike rate. Still, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of friends and acquaintances – most of whom visit the site – perusing my peccadilloes and I do not, under any circumstances, want to know theirs. While I’m open-minded about most things, discovering your best mate is into extreme nipple play and Lycra is unsettling to say the least.
When I tire of seeing the same names (will 8inches4asians ever find true love?), I’ll venture outside, so to speak, and check the profiles from around the globe. This can be both depressing and heartening. Although it’s sad to imagine the solitary queen in Tadjikistan sitting in front of his computer, waiting for that elusive pop-up message, it’s good to know the language of audition and rejection is universal, even in the world’s trouble spots.
OK, so you’re a gay Afghani. Your options are limited, right? Nevertheless, you have your standards: “must be white skin not indian pls”. Because if you’re going to “suck and give buttom” the least they can do is conform to your racial profile.
Similarly, “TYPICAL TERRIFIED ZIMBABWEAN GUYS NEEDN’T BOTHER!” contacting the couple in Harare, and if you’re in the Maldives, I hope you’re into “hicking” and “rufting”. Oh, and “a Top would do nicely”, although given the number of apparently greedy bottoms in this world, good luck finding one, skinperv.
So where does this all end? Is there a tipping point at which every gay man with online access gets sucked into the system? Will the scene eventually be like The Matrix, only with less clothing and marginally better dialogue? And will I become addicted like so many others?
Rather not say.

Update: I just checked. 8inches4asians has either found his one and only or changed his handle.

Bizarre footnote: I typed 'manhunt' into Google image search and got a series of stills from some gory computer game.
Strangely, no dick pics: