• SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    Ehh, I know we’re in the shitpost community, but if I can be serious for a moment, this “Homophobes are actually secretly gay” schtick always rubs me the wrong way.

    It’s not actually that common of a phenomenon, and the idea absolves straight people of their own culpability in the oppression of queer people, by pinning it on an imagined “Gay on Gay violence”, as opposed to actual systemic factors

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      It’s not actually that common of a phenomenon

      I actually thought this was specifically referring to recent data showing that grindr has a huge uptick in activity whenever RNC conventions come to an area.

      • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml
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        2 hours ago

        The “Recent Data” in question was largely a piece of satire which claimed that the Grindr CEO called the 2024 RNC, “Grindr’s Super Bowl” this never actually happened.

        There were also claims that Grindr crashed during the 2024 RNC:

        Over 1,000 users reported a Grindr outage in the Milwaukee area around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Downdetector, a website that collects online service status information.

        The Grindr app also allegedly experienced problems in the Cream City on Thursday— the fourth and final day of the RNC — as well as in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. However, Grindr’s official status updates show there hasn’t been an outage since May.

        According to Newsweek, those appear to be unsubstantiated.

        Further, the majority of the spike in Grindr traffic during the RNC was due to journalists, curious locals, and law enforcement, all of whom got on the app with the intent to monitor the goings on.

        And why would all those people want to do that? Because we’ve created this largely fake “gay on gay violence” trope wherein all of the people most opposed to queer rights are secretly queer themselves.

        People believe this trope, everyone flocks to Grindr during the RNC to watch. Then the inflated Grindr numbers, of people there to see the supposed flood of secret Gay conservatives, are cited as proof that the flood of secret Gay conservatives is real.

        It’s like if I claimed a Rhino was ice skating downtown. The fact that people showed up to see if there was actually an ice skating rhino, is not proof that such a thing ever existed. It’s pointing at shadows cast on the wall, and mistaking them for reality.