With Pride Month kicking into high gear in June, so does the annual ubiquitous marketing tactic of brands swapping out their social media icons for rainbow-colored ones. Some companies, however, choose to remain silent on showing support for the LGBTQ+ community with the “rainbow capitalism” method. Most famously is the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, which has long been associated with anti-LGBTQ ideologies. (The company has donated millions to anti-LGBTQ organizations.)
On June 1, Chick-fil-A tweeted a seemingly innocent and positive tweet: “You’re the best part of our day.” However, the Tweet quickly backfired with most of the replies demanding Chick-fil-A to acknowledge Pride month or its past homophobic controversies. Hundreds of commenters shared articles of the company supporting hate groups while others spammed the replies with a photoshopped Chick-fil-A rainbow logo sporting the text “Chick-fil-A wants me dead.”
With the Internet being the cesspool it is, the trolling eventually crossed over to TikTok. A creator, who posts under the username @juicyload, uploaded a fake screenshot of Chick-fil-A’s Twitter account. In the screenshot, the restaurant’s Twitter icon was pride-themed.
@juicyload chickfila rly said gay rights #pride #lgbt #chickfila ♬ original sound – juicy load
“So like, am I the only one that saw this?” the TikToker says in the video. “Um, excuse me?”
“Chickfila rly said gay rights,” he added in the caption.
Despite the screenshot seemingly being fake, the TikTok has reached viral status with more than 200,000 views. The majority of the comments were from users who were shocked and confused that a historically homophobic company would change its profile picture in support of the LGBTQ community.
“They pulled an uno reverse,” a top comment read.
“ARE THEY NOT HOMOPHOBIC?” another user wrote.
“The math isn’t mathing,” a third commented.
Other users wrote that even if the screenshot were true, they would still not trust the fast-food chain.
“Definition of performative,” a user replied.
“They act like we don’t know what they did,” another commented.
Update 9:20am CT, June 8: When reached for comment, @juicyload revealed why he made the fake screenshot.
“It’s an issue i see brought up every pride month that companies change their profile pictures to rainbow yet chickfila is a notible hold out,” he said. “It’s basically a meme at this point to photoshop them celebrating pride every year. Also, I didn’t necessarily expect it to blow up but I knew it would have a chance of doing well.”
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