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“Faggot” Was Tweeted 23,000 Times Today, Along With Other Gay Slurs

Posted by on Sep 26, 2012 in Tech Geek | 2 comments

If you ever felt like people were hurling gay slurs behind your back online, you were absolutely right.

OK, so they might not be talking about you, but if you heard someone in real life yell “faggot” at someone else, you’d probably want to say something.

And thanks to our genius and tolerant neighbors up North, you can. A group at the University of Alberta developed a tool to see what the haters are saying on Twitter as they say it. Shit. Just. Got. Real-time.

NoHomophobes.com tracks tweets that mention “faggot,” “so gay,” “dyke,” and my favortie backhanded slur-ish remark, “no homo.” As in, “Your biceps are lookin’ nice, bro. No homo.”

Maybe a little bit homo?

“We never imagined the scale of casual homophobia that actually exists on social media,” says Dr. Kristopher Wells… “The use of homophobic language remains one of the few socially acceptable forms of discrimination in our society and make no mistake, leads to isolation, bullying, beatings, and tragically youth suicide,” says Wells.

Wells is the assistant director at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the group behind the site.

Guys. Seriously. The best/worst part about this thing is that you can seethe tweets as they happen and who is tweeting them! It’s like playing the slots at a casino… minus winning money and with lots of homophobia. Click on the tweet to get taken to the Twitter.com link of it. Reply? Quote and retweet? Yes, please!

In all honesty, though, NoHomophobes is a sobering reminder of the “casual homophobia” that’s so deeply rooted and tolerated (dare I say encouraged?) in our society.

Try the hashtag #nohomophobes to bring the issue to light, Booty Readers! And visit NoHomophobes.com now. Now!

*Booty Note: “Faggot” was tweeted at least 23,000 times on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012 as of 8:50 p.m. PST.

 

(Via FrontiersLA, Reddit)