Geoshagging

Geocaching is a fun nerdy outdoors hobby where you hide tupperware under boulders in the woods and publish their GPS coordinates on the web for other geeks to go look for the tupperware. Sometimes when you look for geocaches in public spaces such as parks, you get funny looks from passing non-geocachers ("muggles", in potteresque geocacher parlance). Lone guys hanging around in parks and acting as if they're looking for something are probably interpreted either as drug customers or gay cruisers. Thus, back in 2005 I came up with the ultimate gay nerd pastime: geocruising, where you publish your coordinates on-line and wait for someone to come along and sweep you off your feet.

Gender roles and sexual mores being what they are, I never thought it likely that there could be hetero geocruising. For casual sex with women in western society, you need to buy strange ladies drinks in bars into the wee hours unless you're willing to frequent prostitutes. Skulking around in parks with your GPS is fun, but let's face it, it will rarely get a straight male laid. Now though, I find (prompted by the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe) that "geoshagging" has entered the on-line vocabulary, referring to "location-aware mobile computing" when it is used to set up such brief liaisons. Most likely completely fictitious, this activity was briefly referred to in Wired Magazine back in January. Was that the first mention of the word?

Geoshagging. You may have heard it here first. Now be safe!

And congratulations to the rogues of the Skeptic's Guide on the occasion of their 200th show!

[More blog entries about sex, gps, geocaching; geocaching, sex, gps.]