Is Checking In on Foursquare a Primal Need?

May 19, 2010 | By Matt Rogers

I was in Los Angeles for a wedding a last weekend for a friend of mine from high school.  I had lived with this friend post-college for a few years and there had been a Vegas bachelor party, so I had gotten to know many of his college friends and others who had become a part of the scene.  Between them and other fellow high-schoolers everyone was familiar and congenial.  And we were all using Foursquare.

Check-in at the rehearsal dinner.  Check-in at the bar after.  Check-in at the hotel bar.  Check-in at Starbuck’s the next morning.  It was a little weird because we were just checking in with each other, for the most part, even though we were standing next to each other.  It made for some light irony — “Did you check in yet?” — while standing around waiting for the wedding to start.  So we checked in at the wedding venue.  Checked in at the bar after, at the hotel, at the airport the next day.

It wasn’t until after I was home walking our English Cocker named Barnes that I remembered a comment somebody had thrown out.  A guy named Rob was arguing that girls don’t use Foursquare (though Foursquare demographic info suggests otherwise), that it’s primarily a way for men to mark their territory.  I tried to think of some other reason why it was so integral to the weekend — none of us were going to become or be able to keep a mayorship in Los Angeles, after all.  Maybe it was the camaraderie, or just something to do.

Then I watched Barnes interact with some of his neighborhood friends on his stroll and leave his scent on a hasta near our building, and suddenly it made sense.  It was all of those things — for men, anyway.