Recon

A Look at The Original Gay Fetish and Kink Platform

I don’t know how I found out about this platform or what a “Recon Man” is, but it was the first place I went once my marriage became open. I’ve referenced a few times now that I live in a part of the United States that is not all that advanced in offering diverse ways to experience gay culture. We have two gay bars where all types of any gays that there are can meet—gays who dance, gays who like painting their nails, sports gays, leather gays, old gays, drag queens… we all meet in one of two places. Welcome to Middle America.

It may be obvious, then, why Recon made sense as a place for me to seek the existence of men who appreciated leather, kink, and/or BDSM. Like Christmas morning or a birthday, making my profile was like unwrapping a present. I took my time and effortful thought to articulate who I was and what I wanted on this platform. It was exciting. Almost instantly it became apparent to me that labeling myself as a Dom, or majority “Active” in Recon terms, would get me a lot of unwanted attention. Doms are apparently in short supply where I live. Mind you, my profile photo is a basic photo of my red lit Wesco boots in Chicago’s Jackhammer bar. That is to say, I don’t have a dick pic displayed or a face photo or anything. It’s just my boots and a detailed profile bio. In any case, I like the platform overall. And that’s what this post is generally about: the platform.

But before I go further, I think an admonishment is in order.

Fetish or not, this app has users on it that are no different than all the other ones. You need not expect a magical concentration of men into kink ready to have polite, mature, or at times consensual interactions. There will be men who choose not to read your profile; men who flake; men who talk a big game but have no intention of meeting; men who handle rejection with the emotional capacity of a three year old… And to be clear, this is not a Recon app problem. This is just another tragic symptom of the 21st century human condition. I just wanted to hedge any expectations of escaping some of the glib, horny immaturity that’s floating out there on the silver screens we all live in. It will take effort to find your people, whoever they are. Hard stop.

With that admonishment out of the way, I’ll talk about Pros and Cons of the actual platform as I see them.

Pros

• Gay

  • It’s a gay app. And while I’m all for inclusion, it’s nice to have a space where you don’t have to sift through hundreds of profiles to find people (men) who are theoretically attracted to. There are other apps out there that cater more to straight folks in the kink/fetish world, often with no ability to filter between who is and who isn’t. Recon takes the sleuthing out of the equation.

• Fetish/kink-specific

  • Everyone on the app is here for some type of fetish/kink. You can create your profile to demonstrate up to five of those fetishes at the top of your profile. For what you can’t fit, put it in the long form box to describe yourself and what you seek in another person.

• Geography based

  • Unlike Sniffies, it is not map based and I love that. Rather, it just gives you a distance from people based on the location you that you declare you’re in. That location can be as specific (a neighborhood) or as broad (a state) as you want.

• Filtering

  • You can filter who you’re looking for based on fetish interests, body type, age, and how people identify on a 0-100% scale of passive to active, with “passive” being submissive, “active” being dominant.

• Paywall Affordability

  • Among all the common gay apps, it’s the cheapest. I think I paid $90 for the whole year.

Cons

• Clunky

  • You can theoretically see if someone reads your message but it doesn’t always work. That is to say, someone may have read your message but you won’t have any indication that it has happened.

  • When this platform came out 1999, it was computer based. Recon has certainly adjusted to even offer an app. However, the look and user experience will underperform even what you’d expect of something as commonplace as PayPal. Frankly, Recon’s best functionality is on a computer. It could use a full facelift but more than anything, just better app responsiveness and functionality would go a long way.

  • NSFW Restrictions on iPhone. I don’t fully understand the reason, but if you have an iPhone, you can’t view NSFW photos in a user’s album. You have to use a computer OR the photo must be sent to you privately in the chat function of the app.

I can’t control how men communicate on this app. This will always be an uphill battle. And as a married man who is not at all polyamorous, I’m not looking for full on relationship with anyone. So even with my social gripes and dissatisfaction with the flow of the app and website, I continue to use Recon because it’s the only place to find gay kinky men easily in one place. I acknowledge that I have less on the line than someone looking for the love of their life, making it easier for me to brush aside the bullshit of app culture. As far as what is in my purview, my in-person experiences from Recon have been good.

At the end of the day, you can walk into any clothing store in the world but not everything in it is going to fit.

Thanks for reading.