DataLounge

DataLounge (also styled as Datalounge and The Data Lounge) was an internet forum. Its core community, predominantly composed of anonymous posters, shared news, opinions, gossip, personal stories, and political views from a gay perspective. A key focus of the forum was discussing and speculating about the sexuality of celebrities. While the forum guidelines nominally required posters to be respectful of others, much of the site's appeal lay in its appreciation of wit, satire, and "pointless bitchery." This was complemented by a shared history spanning over 25 years, which gave rise to numerous in-jokes among its community. According to its webmaster (as of June 2006), DataLounge received approximately 6.5 million page views each month. The site was created in May 1995 by Mediapolis, a New York City-based interactive media company. In June 2026, the website announced it would close permanently on July 31, 2026; it closed a day earlier, July 30, 2026.

DataLounge (also styled as Datalounge and The Data Lounge) was an internet forum. Its core community, predominantly composed of anonymous posters, shared news, opinions, gossip, personal stories, and political views from a gay perspective. A key focus of the forum was discussing and speculating about the sexuality of celebrities. While the forum guidelines nominally required posters to be respectful of others, much of the site's appeal lay in its appreciation of wit, satire, and "pointless bitchery." This was complemented by a shared history spanning over 25 years, which gave rise to numerous in-jokes among its community. According to its webmaster (as of June 2006), DataLounge received approximately 6.5 million page views each month. The site was created in May 1995 by Mediapolis, a New York City-based interactive media company. In June 2026, the website announced it would close permanently on July 31, 2026; it closed a day earlier, July 30, 2026.

History

DataLounge was launched by Mediapolis in May 1995. In its early years, the site served as a gay web portal, featuring gay-oriented news, gossip, links to other sites and services, as well as editorial content. Notable contributors included New York drag queen Trudy and journalist Chris Barillas. DataLounge also established affiliations through the DataLounge Network with other gay-and-lesbian-oriented websites, such as the dating site Edwina.com, the web guide Homorama, and Gay Health. Additionally, a weekly email subscription was offered to users. By 2000, the site had expanded to include several discussion forums covering topics such as lesbian issues, religion, and sexuality. It also introduced a "Flames and Freaks" forum to contain threads deemed disruptive to general discussions by site administrators. Special-interest subforums were briefly created for fans of The Lord of the Rings and U.S. daytime dramas but were eventually closed. The most popular section by far was the Gossip Forum, which outpaced all other forums in both traffic and the number of discussion threads created. A portion of DataLounge's content, as well as content from the DataLounge Network, originated from the integration of material from Out magazine's website. Out.com ceased operations in March 1997 (later reactivated) to concentrate on its print edition. Following its closure, Out.com users were redirected to DataLounge, which adopted Out.com's discussion forums, dating service, and weekly survey.

References

External links

DataLounge front page Mediapolis press website

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1376125478 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.