KNOWING QUEER CULTURE NOW

We’ve seen pop culture, gay and otherwise, go through many changes over the years. Remember America Online?! Of course you do! AOL, it was better known as, started it all. Getting in those chat rooms was nearly impossible! I would keep my stapler sitting on top of the enter key in hopes I would be able to get in one of the many M4M rooms they had running. I think they held 24 people at a time, with L.A. and major cities having four to five chat rooms each. And those horrid templates you could use for your Hometown pages. Just simple and blah. Man, times have changed.

Then came Friendster, which I never joined. I held off as long as I could until My Space beckoned me to commit through the awful pages with their loud noises and eye-gouging graphics. I soon found the “yearbook that you control,” Facebook. You can’t run too far from you past when you have a wall that people can post and tag you on, be it new friends in your current life or old friends who “knew you when.” I take FaceCrack, err, FacePlace, err, FaceKilling, umm, Facebook for what it is. Check your privacy settings because they are shady with those and hope for the best. Don’t give away too much information or it could come back to bite you in the ass.

I’m on many sites because of social networking for my blog and promotion but find Twitter and, of course, Facebook works best for me. It’s a great way to keep in contact with friends and get a general consensus about people’s feelings about this or that. Gay pop culture has only benefitted from social media because it keeps us in touch with what’s going on and the people’s opinion, in real time. Plus, it has the power to do great things even bringing justice to bad situations that once were accepted and tolerated.

For instance Tracy Morgan from 30 Rock went off on a negative tirade and derogatory verbal spell about gays and whatnot in Nashville last year during his standup act. People were not pleased and took to the social platforms releasing their anger and frustration. He naturally apologized and people soon moved on. But if this had been back in the 70s with Richard Pryor telling the off-color humor the incident would be more contained and accepted. With the help of forums like Facebook and Twitter, the subject and horrible act was brought to light and handled by the public.

As frustrating as the media realms can become: the stupid censorship rules, questionable privacy issues and never-ending “pokes,” without having access to them, knowing queer culture now would be nearly impossible. Think about it. And again, thanks for reading.