#ProudToBe

Overview

#ProudToBe is an online video campaign launched by YouTube in support of the LGBTQ community and celebration of LGBT Pride Month in June 2016. Upon its launch with an official YouTube Spotlight video featuring a rotation of popular vloggers, the campaign drew an influx of coming out videos from closeted members of the LGBTQ community on YouTube, as well as a raid operation by anonymous trolls on 4chan.

Background

On June 26th, 2015, YouTuber Jeremy Judkins uploaded a coming out video titled “#Proudtobe My Coming Out and Same Sex Marriage Story,” in which he discussed his experience with marrying another man and encouraged others to “do what makes you happy” (shown below, left). On May 25th, 2016, YouTuber NyeDav uploaded a coming out video titled “My Coming Out Story #ProudToBe,” in which he discussed his early childhood experiences with gender identity and sexual orientation (shown below).

Developments

YouTube Spotlight Video

On June 21st, 2016, the YouTube Spotlight uploaded a video titled "#ProudToBe: Coming Together to Celebrate Identity," featuring a montage of LGBTQA people discussing their gender identities (shown below).

Meanwhile, the YouTube Official Blog^[1] published an article about the video and hashtag campaign, noting that the video-sharing site was "a place where anyone can belong no matter who they are or who they love." Within 24 hours, the video gained over 5.5. million views and 238,000 comments, many of which were engaged in arguments regarding the video's message.

4chan Raid

That day, the video was submitted to several threads on 4chan's /b/ (random) board, where viewers were invited to raid the comments section for the purpose of intentionally angering LGBTQA activists and mocking gender identity politics.^[2]

Online Reaction

On June 21st, Twitter user @CalumMcSwiggan^[5] posted a photograph of himself holding an arrow sign with #ProudToBe written on the front (shown below).

The same day, the WOWPresents YouTube channel uploaded a #ProudToBe video featuring various contestants from the reality television show Ru Paul's Drag Race (shown below, left). Meanwhile, YouTuber This Is A Commentary uploaded a video titled "Who I'm #ProudToBe," in which he discusses coming out as bisexual (shown below, right).

Also on June 21st, Redditor fabslabs submitted the video to /r/CringeAnarchy.^[6] The next day, Redditor AttilaTheSean submitted a post about the YouTube videos comment section to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[3] to which Redditor tacutamon cited the 4chan threads as the primary cause of the negative comments. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the hashtag, including Tubefilter,^[7] The Daily Dot^[9] and The Huffington Post.^[8]

Search Interest

External References