The no homo debate

My bad about bringing up old shit, but, given that this site is somewhat more popular than it was a year ago, it's likely that a lot of people reading this don't really know at all about the history of the no homo movement on the Internets.

According to djxplicit, who did a little investigating, it was about a year ago that the term no homo actually popped up on this site. And even though that's probably not 100% accurate, just because he found it by doing a search of my monthly archives pages, which only contain brief excerpts of posts, it's at least more or less true. The term, of course, came from Cam'ron and his Dipset weed carriers, but I'm pretty sure I picked it up from other hip-hop bloggers. At first, I would just drop it every now and again (no homo), but, as time went on, I couldn't help myself (no homo) and began to use it more frequently and in more seemingly inappopriate situations.

Then, a few weeks later, came the incident that led to some of the all-time great moments in hip-hop blogging. I was minding my own business, sipping the Champagne like I always do, when I ran across this: O-Dub, the George Takei of hip-hop journalism (seriously, try listening to one of his podcasts), had decided that hip-hop bloggers would no longer be allowed to use the term no homo. Reading the actual post again a year after the fact and merely hung over rather than drunk, it sounds even worse and even more bizarre than it did back in the day. Something must have really been stuck in his craw that particular week. No homo?

Sez the chinaman:

I know I'm not the first to say this but it needs repeating until people actually start to listen. Can people please, please, PLEASE stop using this ridiculous "no homo" tag on everything they post these days? I don't know who started it, but really, the shit needs to stop. Yesterday. It's getting to the point where people are throwing up "no homo" after everything, not just puns that sound vaguely "gay" (and seriously, gay is now so mainstream, it's like the new straight) but even simple expressions of affection or admiration between men. For example, it's not at all uncommon to see some DUMB SHIT like this: "I love that new Ghostface album. I'm really into him (no homo)". Seriously, what the hell is that about? Have we become such a homophobic society think that because a man professes a positive opinion about another man's work that it means they want to drop to their knees and start smoking pole?

If you click over to the now-defunct Poop Life site, you can see how the debate continues in the comments section to that post. Yours truly pops up about halfway down page and explains that his little PC laws don't really apply to me. A few days later, my site would magically disappear from Clyde Smith's shitty blogroll, which really kick-started the chain of events which led to this.