He showed me his Instagram Explore page during a session. Every square was the same man. Different faces, same man. Mid-twenties. Chiselled jawline and well-lit shirtless torso. Caption on one of the images was about “living my truth.” The photo most likely went through four editing apps.
“This is what the algorithm thinks gay looks like,” he said.
He’s forty-six and lives outside Manchester. He runs an accountancy firm and loves going to the cinema on Wednesdays because it’s cheaper. He’s been with the same man for nine years in what is a stable relationship. But the algorithm shows him zero images of people who resemble his actual life.
I asked what he felt, looking at that grid. He paused for longer than I expected.
“Tired,” he said. “I’ve felt tired of it for years.”
That tiredness is worth paying attention to. It’s the exhaustion of being visible to a community that seems to have already decided what its members should look like. A community that draws its visibility from a narrow tem…