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Problematic Performers and Pride Pontificating

Sorry I just love alliteration

June 02, 2023

The Internet’s Poet Laureate

This week, the internet celebrated an important date: the 32nd birthday of Azealia Banks. She is the definition of a “problematic fave” for myself and many other chronically online individuals. Depending on who you ask, she’s most known for her music or her feuds with other celebrities. I first became aware of her uniquely combative style of posting when she called Perez Hilton a “messy f*ggot” on Twitter. She wasn’t wrong, Hilton is a truly despicable person, but maybe she shouldn’t say that. 

She has a way of saying the quiet part out loud in the harshest way possible that oscillates between “we’re all thinking it; she just said it” and “well that was wildly offensive.” Sometimes she manages to do both in the same sentence. She coined the nickname “apartheid Clyde” for Elon Musk. She referred to January 6th rioters as climbing the capital as “meth behavior.” She gave us Anna Wintour and 212, two fantastic songs. Despite all of her problematic moments, I’m still enthralled by her use of language. She illuminates the messiness of the truth. She is the internet’s one true Problematic Fave Poet Laureate. 

Platform Updates

The Rest of Meta 

Reddit

Amazon

LinkedIn 

Pinterest (disclosure: I’m currently working as a contractor at Pinterest) 

Snap 

BeReal

Twitter Alts

Bluesky

Twitter

The Platform 

The Shitshow 

Culture Movers 

Pride

Creator Economy 

Gaming 

Happy Pride 

The terminally online and outspokenly bigoted wing of the American right is so funny sometimes. Like not on purpose, they are cripplingly bad at telling jokes. But sometimes, their frantic grasping at the straws of conspiratorial thinking produce content so outside the realm of normal human logic you kinda have to laugh. For instance, this image did the numbers on Twitter over the weekend after a QAnon influencer posted it. 

The top of the graphic spells out “Pride Month” in all caps and solid white. As the text moves down the image, the same words are repeated, but most of the letters fade to a grey, nearly the same color as the background. Only the word “Demon” remains in a fabulous rainbow color treatment. 

While initially posted as an act of bigotry, this graphic goes so hard that queer people instantly swooped in to reclaim it. You can get it on a t-shirt now. The image has been memed and parodied. After all, the Babadook has been a Pride icon since 2016. Call us demons, and we’ll put on a pair of heels and dance our way out of hell. 

A demon stands before a beautiful rainbow. They wear stunning pink thigh-high boots and hold a matching pink pitchfork. They look back over their shoulder at you, mysterious and seductive. They are the Pride Demon.  

I’ve written about brands failing at Pride marketing a lot recently, so I want to take a step back this week and highlight some things you can do as an individual or a brand marketing team to celebrate Pride in a meaningful way this year. 

1. Support Local LGBTQ Artists 

For brand and content marketing teams, this is one of the best things you can do to authentically celebrate Pride. Commission LGBTQ creators to build content for your channels. Bring drag artists in to MC your Pride events. Work with queer artists to design your merch or swag. 

On the individual level, go check out a local drag show (look for family-friendly events, cabaret-style performances, or drag brunches if you aren’t a big nightclub person). Pride festivals frequently host local artists and are a great opportunity to discover new art. Look out for the brands that are partnering with queer artists on merch designs and buy those products.  

2. Donate to Local LGBTQ Organizations 

National organizations like The Trevor Project or Llamda Legal are fantastic but also consider community-level organizations. Local orgs are often better equipped to best help people in your area and lobby for the most impactful local legislation. To help get you started, I pulled the top states for Kinda Brief readership and found a local organization in each one. 

3. Emphasize Your Commitment to LGBTQ (especially the T) Inclusion 

I’m not a fan of words without action, but it’s important to remember that the words are important too. Queer folks often spend a lot of time hiding aspects of ourselves because we don’t know where our family or coworkers stand on issues central to our identities. Making your support for the LGBTQ community known, even if it might not seem relevant to everyone in the room, might give someone permission to be themselves around you for the first time. 

Bigotry also festers in silence. Letting someone else’s homophobic or transmisogynist views go unchallenged might feel like avoiding a conflict to you, but will read as agreement to bigots–and any queer person who notices. The people threatening Target stores over Pride merch or making unintentionally iconic demon memes are a small minority in this country. Don’t let them assume you are on their team. That’s not cute. 

Good Creative

I love this approach to sustainability messaging in Corna’s new out-of-home campaign. They “returned” the bottle to encourage recycling. Removing the product from the ad is bold, and Corna can get away with it because they already have such strong brand awareness. But they also used merch and other branded items to keep their logo prominent even without the bottle. Smart. 

A woman walking against a clear blue sky background. One hand is held out as if holding a beer bottle, but her hand is empty, awkwardly floating around the implied object. Text around her hand reads, “We returned the bottle in this ad. Return Yours.”