A Fucking Magazine8 Images
For all the criticisms levelled at dating apps, you’ve got to hand it to them, they’re pretty savvy. As the tide continues to turn against them, the apps are having to get creative. Tinder launched a run club, Hinge tried to bring a little optimism to the party by creating an anthology of users’ successful love stories, and Bumble… well, Bumble tried and failed to empower women by telling them to, er, stop being so frigid.
And now Feeld is getting in on the action. Admittedly, Feeld doesn’t really need to do anything to court daters, given that the app nearly doubled its revenues last year. In fact, the once-niche platform for daters looking to explore kink or non-traditional relationship styles is practically mainstream now. But, determined to continue catering to its audience of “the curious”, Feeld is launching a magazine to explore, in the editors’ own words, “a material expression of what curiosity brings to life”.
Called AFM, meaning A Fucking Magazine (or, if you’re sensitive to profanity, A Feeld Magazine), the publication and its contributors will delve into the enigmatic topics at the heart of dating – relationships, romance, and desire, commitment and separation, openness and closeness – via essays, photo stories, poetry, interviews, and short stories.
The first issue, out later this month, is edited by Maria Dimitrova and features contributions from Feeld members (some of which were sourced through calls for submissions via the app), as well as big names like writer Allison P. Davis, artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, multi-disciplinary artist and musician Juliana Huxtable, novelist Sophie Mackintosh, legendary filmmaker James Ivory, novelist and cultural critic Daphne Merkin, writer and author Mimi Zhu, and many more.
Across 200 pages, Issue One of AFM explores the ‘Pursuits of Happiness’, with features tackling revolution, masculinity and bisexuality, pre-date rituals, erotic unhappiness, abortion rights, and otherness. It’s not necessarily what you’d expect from a magazine that’s essentially an offshoot of a dating app – in a good way! – but it makes sense from Feeld, which has already dabbled in publishing with Mal, a now-shuttered erotic literary journal themed around sexuality, gender, and the erotic.
And, at a time when we’re all fatigued from online dating and looking for something that won’t disappear with a flick of a finger, it’s exciting to see conversations about sex, desire, and dating not only being taken seriously, but being immortalised in print – and with nuance – as a time capsule, of sorts, of a turbulent time.
To mark the launch of AFM’s inaugural issue, Dazed sat down with Bruce LaBruce and Sophie Mackintosh to discuss the future of digital romance, how their relationships with others influence their work, and what happiness means to them.
AFM is one of many Gen Z-targeted artefacts that have launched in the past year or so. Why do you think young people are yearning for more analogue forms of media?
Sophie Mackintosh: There’s a general move towards tangibility and nostalgia. It may sound silly, but I think it’s quite grounding to have a physical object, something that feels long-term and lasting. Something more intentional than [what we read or experience] online, which can be more fleeting. It’s bringing the online offline and creating connections in person. It’s quite romantic, as well, like creating a cassette for someone you love.
Bruce LaBruce: Well, I started out as a fanzine editor back in the late 80s, early 90s – and there’s an interest in fanzines now, too – which is very hands-on, very do-it-yourself. It just seems like it gives people a tactile experience of something that’s more long-form. And there’s less distractions. I mean, during the pandemic I got away from reading a lot because I was just glued to social media. But towards the end, I made a conscious effort to get back into reading long-form stuff; to actually sit down and concentrate, without the distraction of social media, and to enter a world that’s bigger and more complex than constant flashing images or information. I think it’s actually really important for the brain.
I really think that technology has this capacity to bring us together – and maybe there’s been a sense of disconnection, but we can come back from it
We’ve built our lives, including our romantic lives, online – can we ever go back? Should we strive to?
Sophie Mackintosh: I think we romanticise a time before online. The discourse tends to focus on the negatives, but the positives outweigh them. We’d lose so much, like being able to connect with people and communities anywhere, and finding new ways to architect desires.
Bruce LaBruce: During the pandemic, I fell in love with a Mexican guy. I only saw him maybe five times over a two-year period, but we had a very strong relationship – and it was mostly virtual. And it makes me think increasingly that not only are those kinds of relationships valid, but they’re almost more desirable than in-person relationships which, let’s face it, are very time-consuming and often breed contempt. Sometimes people have strictly virtual relationships, which may not be the healthiest relationships, but it’s about fantasy, right? You’re being bombarded with romantic fantasy, and, sure, it’s distorted, but all romance is distorted. [Even at the start of a ‘traditional’ relationship], you’re presenting a version of yourself to someone that’s idealised.
Sophie, in AFM, you write about the transformative power of celibacy, and refer to the fact that you don’t have to have sex to engage with your sexuality. Why do you think celibacy is having such a moment?
Sophie Mackintosh: I was really interested in [the topic] because I’ve been hearing people talk about it, reading about celebrities making this choice, and then earlier this year, Feeld introduced its celibacy desire tag. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about celibacy – I certainly did when I first heard it. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If we take sex off the table, there’s so many other ways to be intimate. It actually makes space for a lot of other kinds of intimacies; we don’t have to put sex at the forefront of everything. There’s no one way to have a relationship, and so it’s about trying to see celibacy as something expansive that can start a conversation and can be about transformation. It’s part of questioning the romantic and sexual scripts that we’re raised on.
How do you see the future of sex, desire, and romance?
Sophie Mackintosh: I’m an optimist, because I don’t want to believe that we live in this world that’s increasingly alienated and that technology is going to alienate us further. I really think that technology has this capacity to bring us together – and maybe there’s been a sense of disconnection, but we can come back from it. Online dating, for me, has opened up so many connections, and it gives people ways to articulate their desires, but also ways to understand them in the first place.
Bruce LaBruce: What’s interesting about Feeld is that it’s trying to add a romantic element to a hook-up app – something that some of the others don’t have. Though I support both models. [Digital romance] allows you to search for a kind of happiness that is elusive; that maybe can’t be fulfilled by one person or by an older model of romance. Digital is much more fluid. And because it’s about fantasy, it allows you to pursue your fantasies. I think happiness is basically about fulfilling your fantasies.
Bruce, how, if at all, has your work been influenced by digital romance in recent years?
Bruce LaBruce: I haven’t really made any work that directly addresses it, except in my new movie, The Visitor. There’s a scene with the daughter character, where she’s obsessed with selfies, and she’s taking selfies of herself with the visitor. She can only sexualise herself and him, even though he’s with her, through the third-party objectification [of the phone]. Even when they go into the bedroom together, instead of showing herself to him, she’s showing him her selfies to turn him on. So there’s this mediation that’s artificial. This has something to do with objectification, but it’s a reference to the power of the digital experience.
It may be a generational thing, but for most gay men who lived through the gay liberation movement, sex was the engine of it
How is your self-expression as an artist connected to your exploration through others via sex, dating, or platonic love?
Bruce LaBruce: My work has always been driven by sexual energy. It may be a generational thing, but for most gay men who lived through the gay liberation movement, sex was the engine of it. It was a political expression of identity; of challenging the dominant order in terms of restrictions, taboos, and what sex is supposed to be. And that’s always been a part of my work. From the very beginning, even though I was making these very pornographic films – and I was having sex myself in my early films – there was always a strong romantic sensibility about it. So even if the object of desire is the fetish object, it’s still a romantic relationship, and it’s devotional and kind of spiritual. I don’t think those things are incompatible at all.
Sophie Mackintosh: As a writer, I’m very interested in people. I’m interested in how our relationships shape our view of the world and make us see things differently. But also how we expand our own emotional topography in a way – how are we discovering new ways of being in the world? [I’m not just interested in] romantic ones, but in friendships, too. Writing about desire doesn’t have to be about sexual desire. It’s just a wanting for something; a force that’s so propulsive and pathologised but also celebrated. It’s always really exciting to write about or think about these things in detail.
AFM’s first issue explores ‘Pursuits of Happiness’ – how do you pursue happiness?
Sophie Mackintosh: Friends are really important to my happiness. That might sound sentimental, but what they add to my life is just so brilliant. That’s my main route to happiness. But also preserving a sense of alone time as well; cultivating a sort of inner quiet.
Bruce LaBruce: At this point in my life, happiness is more in the appreciation of still being alive. I never expected to live past the age of 40, so, in a way, everything after that is kind of gravy. It’s a gift. So, lately – and maybe this isn’t so good for Feeld – I’ve been enjoying my own company. I’ve been reading lots of books; I’m going through a phase of being obsessed with biographies, so I’m reading about other people’s lives. And then I’m pursuing new film projects, and just being thankful that I’m still able to make my work. Simple pleasures are my happiness.
These interviews were conducted separately and have been edited and condensed for clarity.
