They are so gay!

Some would say you can't have fun reading an encyclopedia. Yet I laughed a lot reading the description of the word "gay" on Wikipedia. I share it with you, not only to laugh but to provide munition against the "fun ppl". So Wikipedia says:

The term was originally used to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637. The term's use as a reference to homosexuality may date as early as the late 19th century, but its use gradually increased in the 20th century... At about the same time, a new, pejorative use became prevalent in some parts of the world. In the Anglosphere, this connotation, among younger speakers, has a derisive meaning equivalent to rubbish or stupid (as in "That's so gay.")... When used in this way, the extent to which it still retains connotations of homosexuality has been debated and harshly criticized.

For most of its life in English, the word's primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy", and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties... The word had started to acquire associations of immorality by 1637 and was used in the late 17th century with the meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations." This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel.

The use of gay to mean "homosexual" was in origin merely an extension of the word's sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited", which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s, and there is evidence for it before the 20th century, although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles... this usage could apply to women too. ... Through the mid 20th century, the term "gay" commonly referred to "carefree", as illustrated in the Astaire and Rogers film The Gay Divorcee.

By the mid-20th century, gay was well established in reference to hedonistic and uninhibited lifestyles and its antonym straight, which had long had connotations of seriousness, respectability, and conventionality, had now acquired specific connotations of heterosexuality. In the case of gay, other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay apparel") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures.


Whoa! Just whoa! The term "gay" orignially meant "fun peep" and turned to describe homosexuals as the bigots believed that homosexuals are just deviants who ignore proper conduct for fun. When something is called "it's so gay" it's not an insult in the sense as "it is as bad as the homosexuals" but in the sense of "it is as bad as the fun ppl" and this insult was used on homosexuals so often that it became their name.

When you meet someone (usually in LFR/BG/LFD) who claims playing terribly is OK since he plays for fun, remind him that he is so bad that the bigots insult the homosexuals with him and reference en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay. Since among lolkids homosexuality is a serious insult (losers are usually bigots as they need some fixed, non-merit based group to look down), this will definitely hit.