Digital Hyperconnectivity and the Queer Self

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ABSTRACT This article examines the production of the queer self within digital hyperconnectivity, focusing on how online platforms mediate objectification, visibility, and the production of the social self. Drawing on sociological literature, it explores how digital affordances—such as accessibility, selectivity, and abundance—reshape identifications with queerness by disembedding queer self‐understanding from traditional familial and spatial constraints while simultaneously subjecting it to new forms of algorithmic governance and social sorting. The article highlights the dual role of digital platforms in enabling queer practices, fostering novel networks, and facilitating sexual and social networking, while also reinforcing inequalities, stigmatization, and surveillance. Through a discussion of geosocial platforms, particularly Grindr, the study considers how queerness is objectified through profile curation, filtering mechanisms, and digital traces, transforming how race, HIV status, and desirability are negotiated. The institutionalization of queerness in digital spaces presents both liberatory and restrictive possibilities, shaping selfhood through new norms and constraints. Rather than a radical break from offline socialization, digital hyperconnectivity coexists with and reconfigures existing socio‐spatial dynamics.