A Recap Of 2022's Fun, Weird And Newsworthy Pride Month

June is pride month. Some members of the queer community and allies alike love to celebrate pride month with parades and social statements, and big corporations love it too, because they predictably find a way to profit off of this somehow. Ever since gay marriage became legalized in the United States, pride month has been a lot more widely celebrated, especially by brands who redesign their logos as rainbow, try to sell pride merch, and then do basically nothing else to show their support. Now, we’re nearing the end of June, and pride month is coming to a close, so that means we’re about to see all the brands change their logos back and remove all the rainbow emojis in their Instagram bios the second July 1st starts.

If you’re distracted by all the companies trying to blend in with the gay community despite literally being brands, it’s always a strange time of year. but there’s always some good in it, too, especially for those who appreciate it for far more reasons than feeding the capitalist machine. Pride month also is a great time for wholesome memes and shows of respect online, and if you’ve ever been online, you know that anything remotely respectful is not easy to find, so it’s a pleasant change. This pride month had some particularly memorable events, both positive and negative, so before the month is up, let’s take a look at some of the most notable.

Anniversary of the Oreo Pride Cookie

Back in 2012, the Oreo company posted an image of a rainbow-filled oreo cookie on social media. It was one of the first public demonstrations of solidarity with the gay community done by a brand, and people were absolutely furious. Now, when a brand does it, it's so commonplace that it's almost annoying. Clearly, times have changed. If they'd done this now, you'd never hear about it in the news. In a way, this demonstration from the Oreo company was far more influential than what most companies have done during Pride month because they knew they weren't in a particularly safe political environment to do it, and they did it anyway, so now they're officially except from being branded cringeworthy when they post about pride month nowadays. The famous post's tenth anniversary was this week, and we're happy to say there's a lot less online violence towards people who post rainbow cookies nowadays.

Celebrities That Came Out During Pride Month

Every year, a handful of queer celebrities come out during pride month, since the environment tends to be more accepting at the time. This year has been no exception, and quite a few of them have publicly come out. Willow Sheilds from The Hunger Games Aunjanue Ellis from King Richard and Rebel Wilson, to name a few. Rebel Wilson's announcement of her relationship with designer Ramona Agruma has especially come as a surprise to some, and the many social media posts containing the different announcements have gone viral too. While the celebrities who do this do tend to get some hate, there’s a lot more positivity toward them this time of year when the homophobic portion of the population is too distracted by what Christina Aguilera wore at her pride performance to care about anything else.

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The Patriot Front U-Haul

31 men who were part of a white nationalist group climbed into a U-Haul to be carted to a pride parade in Idaho, all with riot gear and unknown (but clearly terrible) intentions. This one is a bit of a touchy subject, because if the patriot front U-Haul was not discovered and stopped before it reached the parade, some pretty bad things could have happened. But since they were arrested before getting to pride, we have tons of memes about it instead, like their mugshots looking completely idiotic, the fact that they were wearing Deadpool-style masks, and their ability to make the average IQ of any location plummet the moment they parked their U-Haul there. They're also frequently compared to Scooby-Doo villains in memes, but frankly that's the worst insult to any Scooby-Doo villain ever.

What Pride Flag Is That?

"What pride flag is that?" is a format that started trending in late May and throughout June. In a way, it's not really a pride-themed meme. It's not not a pride meme, though. It involves one person hanging up a flag on a dorm room wall, originally an Italian flag, to which a roommate asks "what pride flag is that?" It's typically a two-panel meme, and since queer pride has obviously been trending lately, it's gotten a lot of attention online and become a popular format in the past few weeks.

Partnering with X for Pride

This trend involves different members of the queer community saying they’re partnering with certain brands for pride (ironically, of course). It’s particularly common on Twitter, where people start off with a joke or more profound thought about being a part of the LGBT community, and then ending it with a punch line about how they’re working with a certain brand or company in order to solve this problem. Partnerships range from Lockheed Martin to Arby’s, and always for a witty reason that’s definitely a bit of a reach. For example, one woman whose wife is frequently confused for a relative said she was partnering with 23andMe, and a bisexual woman who said she was disliked by both straight and gay people alike said she was partnering with James Corden. The trend has been around since last year, but it’s grown in popularity this time around, and it’s a perfect way to mock the absurdity of this month becoming a corporate event while also sharing some memorable jokes about what it’s like to be queer in the modern day.

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