One night not long ago, Jaxon Roman sat naked in front of his laptop wearing only a pup hood as he masturbated with single-minded zeal to the attention of eight other men watching onscreen.

It was a typical weekday for the 33-year-old Arlington, Virginia, program analyst. “When bros praise me and say they’re enjoying [me], I get to that edge point so fast,” Roman says. His favorite instances are “when they all come to what I’m doing.” Sometimes, when he’s feeling especially kinky, Roman, who is bisexual, likes to ask for permission before climaxing. When granted, he releases and his body, he says, shakes for 10 seconds. “Pure bliss,” he calls it.

At least a few times a month on Batemates, a social app for men who like to masturbate with other men, Roman will spend an hour online with his bros. Masturbating—or “bating” as it’s known online—has always helped him relieve stress and find his center.

He’s not the only one. Pitched as an “all-in-one platform designed to embrace bating as a lifestyle, together,” Batemates is the newest haven of queer pleasure. “It’s a community of like-minded people who are just trying to be porn for others, virtually, while watching others pleasure themselves,” Roman says. “Group play with hotties around the world. What’s not to like?”

Though Batemates technically launched in October 2024, it wasn’t until last year that it really started to catch on as a viable—and safe—alternative to other online bator platforms.

Nearly all of the bators WIRED spoke to said they were introduced to the lifestyle in 2020, during Covid, because, as one of them put it, “there was nothing else to do.” Gone were the days of the discreet sauna circle jerk. Instead, men flocked to private video channels on Skype and Zoom for digital jam sessions where they communally bated with other men from around the world via the portal of their laptop screens. During this period, virtual sessions got so popular that they would occasionally max out with more than 100 people in a single room.

Everything changed last year. Skype was shut down in May. Zoom sessions started getting reported more often. (“Sensitive content,” including porn, nudity, and “other content intended to cause sexual arousal” is prohibited according to the company’s acceptable use guidelines; Zoom did not respond to a request for comment.) Some queer bators have since decamped to Teams, Microsoft’s chat and video-conferencing app; others rely on chat forums like BateWorld—a Reddit-style platform for all things male masturbation that is arguably the most popular destination for bators—as well as Discord, Telegram, and Reddit to find bros to bond with.

Batemates emerged as an exciting replacement. “All the corporate tools were just banning us,” says Batemates founder Johan Guams. “As members of the LGBTQ+ community, we had no space. I was really upset about the hypocrisy of the situation, especially when this is something everybody does.”

Batemates wants to put an end to the corporate sanctimony around adult content. It’s an ethos the company has even woven into its branding. A recent ad posted on X makes clear: “Your friends. Your boss. Your coach. Your colleague. Everyone bates.”

Microsoft declined to comment, but according to both its digital safety policy and its terms of use, “any images, videos, audio, text, or links that depict or imply nudity, sexual acts, sexual arousal, or sexual violence” are prohibited on Teams.

Though Guams, who is 31 and from Paris, was also a regular in various Zoom bating sessions during the pandemic, he often left them wanting more. “I was like, OK, I masturbate on Zoom, but I don’t know who these people are. There’s no control. I can’t keep in touch with them. Sometimes you find crazy people. The experience just felt complicated.”