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#SignsYoSonIsGay: LGBT community reclaims trending topic

What started as a hurtful hashtag turning into an inspirational cause for the LGBT community. 

 

Lauren Rae Orsini

IRL

Posted on Oct 19, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 9:06 am CDT

A hurtful attempt by homophobes to deride gay people on Twitter backfired when the LGBT community commandeered the topic as their own.

Late Thursday night, #SignsYoSonIsGay began trending with hurtful jokes and comments about gay people. But over the course of a few hours, more and more people used the hashtag to celebrate LGBT people and their accomplishments.

The hashtag has been used more than 19,000 tweets, according to social analytics tool Topsy, and all of the most retweeted tweets on the topic are gay-positive. Check out how it happened in our Storify.

Photo by Lauren Orsini

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*First Published: Oct 19, 2012, 2:19 pm CDT