Gay Silence

About

[Gay Silence] refers to a series of reaction images in which the subject[s] are staring cryptically either at the camera or someone off-screen with the aforementioned caption. In online conversations, the descriptive audio caption is typically used to convey feelings of awkwardness or discomfort in response to any presumptive question or statement about one's own sexual orientation.

Origin

One of the most popular variations of the meme features a 1979 interview with American actor, writer, and director Jodie Foster.^[1] In the interview, an interviewer asks Foster about her dating life, specifically what she looks for in a male partner. However, Foster had yet to reveal that she is a homosexual. A video of the interview uploaded on September 20th, 2016 gained over 160,000 views in almost five years (shown below).

Spread

On February 9th, 2014, Blogspot user Blueiskewl posted a series of images with subtitles from the Foster interview. At the end, Blueiskewl included a gif of Foster raising her eyebrows with the caption "[gay silence]" (shown below).

On August 21st, 2014, an anonymous 4chan user posted^[3] a gif from the Foster interview on the /g/ technology message board (shown below). Several months later, November 12th, Redditor moschle^[2] uploaded a GIF from the interview in a thread titled "MRW a man named Michel tells me that my french accent is 'very beautiful'."

On May 30th, 2017, Redditor EMGZ posted a variation of the meme by featuring YouTuber iDubbbz and the caption "when you and your friend of the same sex accidentally touch hands" in the /r/DankMemes subreddit. The post (shown below) received more than 29,000 points (84% upvoted) and 300 comments.

The initial Foster picture went viral on May 31st, 2017, when Twitter user @elanorbate tweeted "forever mood: jodie foster being asked about boys in an interview in 1979" along with the screenshots of the interview. The next day, Redditor halfdeafmusic^[4] posted a four-panel image sequence of the interview, including Foster's stare. The thread, entitled "Jodi Foster being asked about boys in 1979," received more than 37,300 points (81% upvoted) and 2,800 comments in four days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References