How to use Close Friends like a gay guy

A world in which posting a sexy Story is a game and the winner gets a kiss (or more)

Peyton Dix is a writer and the co-host of the pop culture podcast Lemme Say This.

One of the greatest burdens of my life is my approachable face. Despite my best efforts (living in New York City for almost a decade), my charmingly round cheeks and friendly disposition make me the kind of person you would choose to sit next to on the bus. This has brought me some of my greatest friendships, many secrets I should not know, and access to a lot of Close Friends Instagram Stories.

Give me the length of a shared cigarette and it might just feel like we went to primary school together. I have that effect on people, but especially on gay men (when I get better at charming lesbians, I’ll let you know). I like to ask questions and even better follow-ups, and since many of the gay men I meet are not in therapy, this seems to strengthen our tether. (A lot of lesbians have acted as a gateway drug for gay men to find professional help.)

Let me be clear, I have many gay guy friends and I would die for every single one of them. I watched Heated Rivalry! I’m an incredible hag! But the more gay guy Close Friends I’ve been added to, the more my mornings have been spent waking up to straight hole on the cell phone I pay Verizon Wireless for every month. I was hitting my capacity for twinks contorted in jockstraps, happy trails wrapped in low-hanging towels, and thigh meat as far as the eye could see. I am an ally, but we did not throw that brick for this. I was inadvertently a fly on the wall in the men’s steam room of an Equinox gym.

I’ve given many hours — even if by accident — to the ground floor of gay men’s social media strategy. They weren’t just posting for attention; they were working toward love…or at least casual sex. I was not the target audience, but I was taking notes. I was changing my tune. It started to click that these men did not just have gall, they had a plan in place. A curated Close Friends story wasn’t trapping, but a call to action. My doom scrolling had transformed into an anthropological study of the upper echelon of dating culture.

The rest of us are doing Close Friends wrong. There are layers to this and rules to abide by. Instagram has become the new Hinge and the Close Friends feature is the new Grindr. Let’s all act accordingly.

Hear me when I say, Close Friends is not the place to post a photo of your cat. Whiskers can make it on main, I promise you. That meal you cooked? Congratulations! But it is not private. There are tiers to secrecy online: Close Friends is a place for crushes first. Burner accounts are for stalking and stupidity. Then you have groupchats for talking the kind of shit that would get you cancelled. Finally, there is the diary (or “journal” if that makes you feel more butch about it), for everything else.

You might be wondering why you should even be taking dating advice from a clearly disgruntled lesbian learning about love through gay men online. But you can trust me because 1. I was a digital media strategist for almost a decade, working for some of the biggest brands in the world and 2. I have never been wrong — except for that one time.

The first step to trapping your crush online is by recognizing that a recurring Instagram Story “like” is not enough to call it reciprocal. This is both the grief and acceptance stage at once. I lived in this prison and participated in the traditional mating ritual of posting some sort of thirst trap —approved by a group chat of women with significant Virgo placements — all for the attention of a hopeful hookup. I’d post and close out and pray hard. I would reopen Instagram hours later, searching desperately for my crush’s name. Sometimes, just being witnessed felt like enough to call it flirting. 23 hours later, with the Story set to expire, my shot at love had come and gone.

Don’t be this girl. Be your gay best friend.

At the bare minimum, it is an algorithmic advantage to add your crush to your Close Friends. Instagram favors proximity on Instagram Stories (grid is a different beast), so the more you engage or the closer you seem to the algorithm, the more likely it is your crush will see your stories (or content?). Gone are the days of will they, won’t they see your sexy mirror selfie. The onlyfansification of Close Friends has made this all a game and there is a way to win (kiss).

But here is where Gay Guy™ goes wrong. While I am pro hoe, my WLW instinct is to emotionally manipulate — I mean yearn! — first. Lust fulfilled is always more fun with a little lead-up, I like to think. It is your body and therefore your choice, but there is a stronger ROI if you build toward a tasteful nude with a couple weeks’ worth of friendly shitposting.

“The rest of us are doing Close Friends wrong. There are layers to this and rules to abide by. Instagram has become the new Hinge and the Close Friends feature is the new Grindr. Let’s all act accordingly.”

Below are some examples of things to post after adding your crush to your Close Friends but before you methodically thirst trap:

• A hot take about a beloved celebrity (nuanced point of view)

• Racy texts from your group chat (popular)

• A reductress meme (funny, feminist)

• The afters (cool)

• Book you’re “randomly loving right now” (smart, curious)

• Any picture of Sean Penn (startling)

These are all things you simply cannot scroll by without saying something. They won’t just “heart” your Story, they will start a rapport. Fun fact: I once posted a gun on Close Friends and landed myself a date. It was not a real gun of course, but I did get a real lesbian to reply to my Story saying, “Why is this kinda hot?” It was not hot and she turned out to be insane, but we kissed on the lips twice.

Once you’ve firmly planted the seed that you’re more interesting than everyone else, you can turn up the heat. There are a few ways to approach this next phase. You could post a hot pic with an accompanying caption that has nothing to do with you very clearly posting because you think you look good. Try something about “looking for recs for a new show to get into (dramedy ideally).” You could post a hot pic under the guise of self-love. Try something about feeling “really embodied right now.” Or, you could confidently post the aforementioned hot pic with reckless abandon. No caption. No context. No gym you’re pretending to go to when really you’re wearing leggings to run errands. The last approach is most utilized by the gay men in my life — and most respected by me. No bells or whistles, just Skims or Hanes.

The same way you can tell when someone silently goes through a breakup online (they post more or way less, quote bell hooks, and share their workouts), you can always tell when someone is posting for a specific person (they have random new interests, take a ton of selfies, and share their workouts). Why not be more brazen about it? Adding a crush to your Close Friends says VIP, it says this is a post, and this post is for you. “It must be so freeing to be that direct,” Sarah Hagi, host of the podcast Scamfluencers and friend of gay guys, tells me over FaceTime as we unpack their posting prowess.

This approach to building a Close Friends community of crushes is the best strategy for flirting, second only to just being straightforward about your feelings. I owe an apology to the gay community for once calling their behavior “whorish” and “exhausting.” I also probably owe an apology for saying a few things earlier in this essay right now. Gay guy Close Friends has not only taught me more about male anatomy than my brief tenure as a straight girl, it has also educated me on alternative approaches to dating. I didn’t see the sweaty abdomens in HD for what they were: an act of love, an offering, an invitation to connect on a deeper and likely only physical level. Who am I to cast judgment when I could hardly muster up the bravery to be a reply guy?

Close Friends Only Fans™ is tested and proven to work. It has brought me four hook-ups, two really good makeouts, countless flirty DMs, and one ex-girlfriend. I can say it has boded well for me up until recently, when I learned my new crush is… offline.