ABSTRACT
Gaydar took its name from the colloquial term to describe the reported ability to identify people who are gay through visual signifiers and other semiotic codes. The rolling images that greeted users throughout the 2000s at both Gaydar's home page and sign-out screen, for instance, were highly sexualised, with models rarely wearing many clothes and often pictured engaging in sexual acts. Gaydar then has always had an unmistakable interest in the continuation of traditional forms of gay male subculture associated with the 'metropolitan model' of homosexuality and in the existence of 'gay' men as a specific marketing demographic. The material reality of late capitalism has been central to this process, expediting the transformation Foucault speaks of, by creating, as J. D'Emilio argued, the conditions during the 1990s "for homosexual desire to express itself as a central component of some individual's lives".
