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Facebook, for me, or my feed or whatever, it’s not overtly queer. I don’t see a lot of, like, queer content unless it’s around Pride and they’re trying to, like, get our money or some shit like that. But for me, I would say the apps that are mostly queer, that are, like, centered for queer people are the ones where I feel like people are being more comfortable to be themselves.

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Have you ever had an experience online with other LGBTQ+ people that made you feel uncomfortable?

 

Um, I would just say that a lot of queer spaces are just white, and so it’s not always the most welcoming or most safe space for people of color. Just because it’s tailored and super super white and people have their ideas of, like, what queer is and what queer isn’t and it’s such — it’s so weird that even within, like, our community, a lot of people act within the binary or they make us try to, like, fit us in certain categories, which is very... it’s beyond me. It’s just, it makes little to no sense.

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Even within the queer community I see, like, on social media and also in real life, that it’s almost embodying some of the heteronormativity shit that we see within, like, straight people. And they just kinda, like, put that into the queer community. So if we’re trying to break off of that, it’s almost like a problem, you’re almost kind of, like, ostracized or like ‘you’re not queer enough’ and, like, I’ve witnessed that, not with me personally, but, like, different hateful comments or whatever. Or if it’s like ‘stud for stud’ or something like that, you know what I mean, or like a stud who’s pregnant and they want it to be the femme that’s pregnant, there’s, like, even within queer people, saying, like, ‘oh that’s backward, that’s not right.’ And so that’s been very troublesome and weird to me.

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Have you ever followed or interacted with any LGBTQ+ famous people?

 

Personally for me, like, I don’t follow celebrities on my Instagram. Our lives are so completely different and a lot of time, like, a lot of people only portray the best versions of themselves, you know what I mean? 

 

And a lot of times, like, if you’re scrolling through social media and all you see is someone, I don’t know, wearing, like, Chanel and all those name brands going, I don’t know, to Paris or to Ghana or to the U.K. or – it just feels like it’s so out of touch with the demographic of people I think they’re trying to represent or, like, reach that I don’t follow them. So I more so follow people for their message. I’m really into yoga as of lately so this person who’s, like, been doing hip flexor stretches and they post a lot about that and of course post, like, a lot of informational things, or I’m really into, like, crystals and so I more select pages that I feel like, if I see, add value to my life, or I can learn something from it.

 

A lot of the queer celebrities — it’s just they’re just so out of touch with their community. Like, they’re queer, yes, and they kind of chose to take on a different persona once they reached a certain elevation, and they may use their queerness to kind of keep some, I guess to pull in some fans who are also queer who may also be looking up to them. I’m just not gonna follow you just because you’re queer and you’re a celebrity because it does nothing for me.