So, I stumbled across this phrase, “english or spanish talk if your gay,” and honestly, it made me stop and blink a few times. Like, what’s the story there? Is it a rule for a specific chat room from way back when? Or some kind of weird inside joke I’m not privy to? It just sounds… oddly specific.
It got me thinking, though. About how we communicate, especially in little online nooks and crannies. Communities pop up, they make their own rules, their own ways of talking. Sometimes it’s great, makes you feel like you belong. Other times, well, it can be a bit of a head-scratcher. Especially when it comes to language.
My Brush with Weird Language Rules
This whole thing dragged up a memory from years ago. I was looking for a place online, a community, you know? Something for folks like me, LGBTQ+ folks, but centered around a hobby I had – collecting old sci-fi movie posters. Sounds niche, I know, but there’s a group for everything these days, right?
Anyway, I found this forum. Seemed pretty active, international members, the whole deal. I was pretty chuffed. But then I hit the “Community Guidelines” page. And there it was, in black and white: “Primary language is English. Discussions in Spanish are permitted in the ‘El Rincón Cultural’ sub-forum ONLY. For other languages, please use private messages.”
I remember just staring at that. Here’s this space, supposedly for connection, for shared interest amongst gay folks from all over, and they’re already putting up little language fences. It wasn’t like they were saying “no other languages,” but it felt like being told to go sit in the corner if your main way of chatting wasn’t English, or if your Spanish wasn’t for the “cultural corner.” What even was that? Did my Spanish chit-chat about a cool poster not count if it wasn’t “cultural” enough?
My “practice,” if you can call it that, was trying to make sense of it and just… be in the space. I mostly used English, ’cause, well, rules. But I’d see people pop up, maybe trying to ask something in French or Portuguese, and they’d get a polite but firm nudge: “Please use English or the designated sub-forum.” Sometimes, no reply at all. It felt clunky. It felt like it was missing the point of being a community, especially one that should be all about being open.
I stuck around for a bit, mostly lurking. I never did figure out the exact reason for that setup. Maybe the mods only spoke English and Spanish comfortably. Maybe it was just an old rule from when the forum started with just a handful of people and they never bothered to change it as it grew. Who knows? But it always felt a bit off, like a welcome mat with a bunch of small-print conditions attached.
It didn’t turn into some big drama for me, not like losing a job or anything so drastic. I just sort of drifted away from that forum eventually. Found other places, other ways to connect. But that experience, it stuck with me. That feeling of language being used, maybe not to be mean, but to sort people in a way that didn’t feel quite right, especially in a community that’s supposed to be about bringing folks together.
So, yeah, when I hear a phrase like “english or spanish talk if your gay,” my mind just goes right back to that old forum. It makes me wonder what tiny, specific, maybe forgotten little world that rule came from. Because these things, these weird little communication rules, they always have a story, even if it’s a dusty, half-forgotten one.
