BOSTON - On Sept. 29, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 778 points in the space of a few hours, slamming Wall Street for $1.2 trillion in market value and causing panic among investors. The U.S. Congress, convinced the sky was falling after it rejected a proposed $700 billion bank bailout, scurried to take some sort of immediate action in order to prevent what it saw as a looming financial crisis of monumental proportions. The stock market hadn't fallen that far that quickly since ... well, ever. Even the notorious crashes of 1929 and 1987 paled by comparison.
Gay dating and community website Manhunt, though, was not alarmed about the third coming of "Black Monday," except in a global humanitarian sense. Manhunt's fortunes actually increased on that same day: The website's membership rolls skyrocketed by a statistically significant "several thousand" people, chief marketing officer Ken Herron told GAYVN.com. In fact, the jump was far and away the largest in Manhunt's history, which is impressive considering Manhunt attracts 25,000-30,000 new members weekly.
Herron stopped just short of inferring a causal relationship between the two events - but not much short.
"When people are under stress, when times are bad, the first thing they want to do is talk to other people who are going to understand their frame of reference and their sensibilities," Herron said. "Many people seem to find more comfort in times of stress from sympathetic strangers than from friends and family who know them all too well."
Tim Feeley, Manhunt's head of product development, said statistics the company has gleaned from years of server logs back up Herron's intuition.
"Making friends is the No. 1 reason our members give for joining," he said. "Everybody likes to find a sympathetic ear."
Herron's theory also seemed supported by another, though smaller, spike in new memberships when the Dow plunged again the following Monday.
"It was definitely a spike, but not as big a spike as we saw with the first drop in the market," he told GAYVN.com. "If [the market had seen] a huge drop during an otherwise quiet month, we think we would have seen a bigger jump.
"We're now looking at the Dow Jones Index against our daily traffic," he added. "Is it a predictive indicator?"
Neither Herron nor Feeley are comfortable making that logical leap just yet, but both said there is substantial evidence to at least theorize that catastrophes cause people to want to connect. Because so many connections are made online these days, community websites just may be the electronic version of "comfort food," Herron said.
But it's more than just comfort people are seeking at Manhunt, he said. He was led to that conclusion by observing user behavior in the wake of more than one disaster. After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Manhunt experienced "a huge spike" in both free and paid memberships, Herron reported. The same anecdotal evidence followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the tsunami that wrought havoc on Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004. To a much smaller degree, Manhunt also saw a spike in new memberships after Hurricane Ike devastated the Texas Gulf Coast this fall. In all cases, paid memberships outstripped free ones by a significant margin.
After each sad episode, people joined the website "looking for housing, jobs, help, to form aid efforts," Herron said. "People were using the site to find each other. It's gratifying that we can take a small, positive role in helping people communicate like that."
But then, communicating is Manhunt's raison d'etre, he noted.
"Manhunt is all about connecting, not just sex," Herron said. "These days, we've found people are multitasking in all areas of their lives: At work, at home and even in the bedroom. So it's not that they want to have sex or [do] something else. They're looking for sex and something else."
They're also being much more open and genuine, he added. Instead of hiding behind a veil of anonymity as online denizens did in the Web's early days, people today - especially gay men - seem to be more forthcoming about who they really are. That may be most evident in the way members have embraced Manhunt's new ManCam audio-video chat feature, Herron said.
"We also saw about a 30-percent spike in the use of the ManCam service [right after the market crash]," he revealed. "People's level of comfort with their real selves is growing. There's a level of erotic integrity there: It doesn't matter who you are or what you're into. We don't judge. There's someone who's willing to connect with you.
"When you think about it, that makes sense," he continued. "For many gay people, coming out is the toughest thing they'll ever do, but it's also very liberating. After that, nothing else is very intimidating."
Judging by Manhunt's statistics, Americans aren't the only people who feel that way either. Feeley revealed that as of Oct. 1, U.S. residents make up the majority of Manhunt's members, but Brazilians and Mexicans rapidly are gaining on the Americans.
"We're quite popular in Brazil," he said. "Manhunt makes up 20 percent of the total Net traffic for Brazil during the peak hours of 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. Those numbers are from a government study, not ours. We were just stunned when we heard that."
The site has a significant base in France, Germany, Spain and Italy as well, he noted.
"Not every gay male above the age of consent is on our site," Herron chimed in, "but we'd love to be able to say that. We'd love nothing more than for Manhunt to become a rite of passage.
"It's nice to think we're contributing to this recent social change [of increased acceptance of the gay community worldwide]," he added. "Maybe we're a catalyst."
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