On Dallas clubs and Tiktok

12/21/2024 4:21:06 PM

The whole damn thing used to be a private affair. A gritty, seedy slice of American life, where the beer was cold, the lights were low, and the women—those beautiful, tragic, electric creatures—offered up their bodies for a few dirty bills and a dozen quick glares from the leering crowd. It was sacred, in a way. But somewhere between the constant feed of Instagram thirst traps and the viral TikTok grind, the raw, visceral thrill of stepping into a strip club has been sucked dry like a leech on a dry desert vein.

To understand this grim evolution, let's take a little tour of Dallas, Texas—the only city in the world where strip clubs and 24-hour tacos are part of the same breath. Dallas, where neon lights flicker in rhythm with the heartbeat of the city's feverish appetite for entertainment. From the iconic "Clubhouse" to the vulgar siren song of “The Lodge,” the strip clubs here were once the last bastion of what could be called a truly decadent experience. But now? Well, it’s like ordering a steak at a nice restaurant and getting a bag of beef jerky. No sizzle, no glory, just dry, hard disappointment.

Let’s be real: the magic of a strip club, in its essence, lies in the intimacy of it all. You step inside a joint like The Ritz, and suddenly you’re in a world where time loses its meaning. There's no Instagram, no TikTok to distract you—just the sweltering heat of a woman’s body, her movement, her touch, the quick exchange of glances, the low murmur of a dollar bill fluttering from hand to hand. And that—that—was the rush. A rush born of physical proximity, of sweat and lust and the raw, unfiltered nature of human desire. The experience was lived; it wasn't filtered through the sterile lens of a phone camera or strategically staged for likes.

But somewhere between the launch of TikTok in 2016 and the rise of influencer culture, things changed. It wasn’t enough to see a dancer on a stage anymore. No. Now, the strip club has become the backdrop for a content creator’s hustle. There’s a clear line between the women you see performing on a stage in places like The Lodge, where the stench of desperation is masked by expensive perfume, and the TikTok stars who live for the performance of it all—be it in a club or on a stripper pole in their living room. The phone’s camera has replaced the live audience, and in the process, the gritty soul of the strip club has been auctioned off to the highest bidder in the court of online validation.

Take a glance at Instagram’s endless stream of “Behind the Scenes” stories, and you’ll see what I mean. The women of The Spearmint Rhino in Dallas, once hidden behind veils of secrecy and smoke, are now flaunting their private lives like royalty—posting seductive selfies from the back room, sharing clips of their routines, all while wearing some insufferable filter that makes them look like a hyper-real version of themselves. The glamour is gone. The struggle is gone. What used to be a delicate balancing act between performance and exploitation is now just another photo op, another slice of curated “reality” for the mass consumption of the social media world. A woman isn’t just a dancer anymore—she’s a brand, a commodity to be consumed at the swipe of a finger.

The real kick in the teeth, though, is how the TikTok generation has shifted the very nature of desire. Remember when you used to walk into a joint like Palomino’s Club, your senses assaulted by flashing lights, the pulse of bass thumping like an angry heartbeat, and the overwhelming scent of perfume and sweat? There was a certain energy—a raw, primal energy. You didn't come to stare at a screen, you came to see, to feel, to live the experience in a way that was tangible.

But now? Jesus. TikTok has turned every stripper into a potential viral sensation, and no one’s interested in sitting through an actual striptease anymore. No, what people want is the "TikTok dance"—and if you're not doing a routine with a catchy song and perfectly coordinated moves, you might as well be invisible. The art of the dance has been bastardized into a 15-second snippet, recorded in front of a mirror, set to some asinine remix of a pop song. The slow seduction is out, and the instant gratification of a viral video is in. It's all for the views. The thirst for likes has overtaken the raw, human need for connection. The moment you step into a club these days, you can almost hear the gears turning in everyone’s heads: Should I be dancing for attention, or should I be dancing for the ‘Gram?’

Hell, it’s not even about what happens in the back rooms anymore. In Dallas, every girl at places like Big Daddy’s or The Gold Club has a TikTok account, and those accounts are quickly becoming more valuable than their stage time. Customers now sit at the bar, not talking to each other, not chatting up a dancer—they’re swiping away, looking at the latest viral clip from some girl they've seen grinding on stage, but who they now know through a phone screen. The club is no longer the venue for personal connection; it’s the backdrop for an influencer’s hustle. The dancer becomes the content. The moment becomes the algorithm.

What once was a refuge from the world of pixelated perfection is now just another part of the digital ecosystem. There’s no escape from the constant surveillance, the omnipresent filters, the calculating influence of social media. It’s an exhausting, unrelenting cycle of validation, all designed to make you feel less than while endlessly scrolling. TikTok has killed the fantasy of the strip club, replacing it with a never-ending quest for engagement and viewership.

And as for Instagram? Well, Instagram has turned the entire damn thing into a hyperreal version of itself—a world where a perfect hourglass figure is no longer a dream but an attainable goal through enough editing, posing, and body modification. Women are no longer allowed to just be women. They must perform, and perform well enough to get the sponsorship deals, the big brand partnerships, the influencer checks. But in the process, they've become invisible to us, the audience. There’s no mystery anymore. No sweat, no rawness—just the perfectly manufactured illusion of reality.

It’s all too much. Too fake. The strip club—once a hallowed, human space of unfiltered, raw sexuality—is now just another cog in the capitalist wheel of exploitation, constantly reshaped and molded by the content-hungry, like-chasing masses.

I left The Lodge last night, drunk, disillusioned, and surrounded by a swarm of teens filming everything. One girl was recording herself doing some asinine twerk routine for her TikTok followers, wearing a dollar store wig and grinning into the camera. I wanted to scream at the screen. "You’re in The Lodge, for Christ’s sake, not in a basement somewhere in the ‘burbs. Have some damn dignity!"

But in the end, what’s left to do? The world moves faster than a viral meme, and the very thing that once made a trip to a strip club an unforgettable thrill—the mystery, the sweat, the human element—is now drowned in a sea of likes, shares, and hashtags.

I’ll be damned if I ever get that experience back. But there’s always hope in the broken things, even if it’s only found in the quiet corners of the club, when the lights go down and the phones go away. And in the strange haze of the night, maybe, just maybe, the soul of the strip club can still be found—if you’re willing to look past the pixels and the filters.

2 comments

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IWantHerOnMe

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2 days ago

The dayshift at Onyx in Atlanta is similar to this with the reckless posts on social media and it’s annoying as hell. Management is the ones doing it and even the dancers hate it and think its stupid