Rabiosexual

About

Rabiosexual refers to a parody sexual orientation in which people belong to the LGBT community and have Rabies, a disease attacking the central nervous system that is most often found in wild animals and usually results in death. After a Tumblr blog made a parody LGBT pride flag for the group, many of the site's users began to sarcastically champion "Rabies pride," though it was unclear if all participants were sarcastic.

Origin

In 2017, Tumblr user dirk-has-rabies created the Rabies Pride Movement with his group of friends for neurodivergent (mostly autistic) transgender people who felt as if society treated them as something less than human. The original meaning from the creator's Tumblr is as follows: "Rabies Pride is for Autistic Trans ppl. It’s for all the people that were treated like animals, treated like they were contagious or had a deadly disease by classmates/siblings/anyone just for being 'too loud' 'too hyper' 'too close' 'too much' due to having autism and being openly trans".^[1]

In July of 2018, the Tumblr blog randomaesflags, who creates parody pride flags for various identities, created a joke flag for members of the LGBT community who also have rabies (shown below). The original post has since been deleted, but a reblog of the post from July 20th, 2018, suggests the flag was created in mid-late July.^[2] The post gained over 12,000 notes. This flag has since been reclaimed by the Rabies Pride Movement.

After the parody flag's creation, an account entitled rabidrick (also known as rabidloving and rabidloving-remade) was created. The user posted (seemingly seriously) about wanting rabies. Because the flag created by randomaesflags was intentionally a joke, the creator of the rabidrick account created a new pride flag. Eventually, the creator revealed that what they posted on the account was all a scam by August 18th of 2018.

Spread

On July 21st, 2018, Tumblr user dailystims, a blog devoted to the practice of "stimming," the repetition of actions found in people with developmental disorders,^[3] posted a joke "stim board" for people with rabies using the flag. The post gained over 11,000 notes (shown below).

Other users participated in the joke by placing various characters in front of the Rabies Pride flag. For example, user arctrooper-fives made a flag with Todd Howard on it, gaining over 150 notes (shown below, left). User shadmario made examples with Mario and Luigi, gaining over 80 notes (Luigi shown below, left)

Around the same time, a Discord server for "Rabiosexual" people appeared. Screenshots from the server spread on Tumblr, often with people expressing that they couldn't tell if the people in the server were serious (examples shown below).^[4][5]

On August 3rd, Tumblr user rabidmagikarp made a GIF saying "I survived the rabiosexual epidemic of 2018," gaining over 2,900 notes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References