On October 5th 2011, the Twitter hashtag #HowToMakeADykeHappy trended in third place in the United States trends list, much to the amusement of some who took the opportunity to bombard Twitter with hundreds of thousands of insults and spread stereotypes and rumors about some members of the LGBT community over the social-networking site with over 30 tweets a minute.
The timing of this event isn't great. Not that something like this is ever acceptable, but this occured just two and a half weeks after teenager Jamey Rodemeyer took his own life after being bullied incessantly for being gay. Since then, the LGBT community has responded with hundreds of YouTube videos calling for an end to the bullying but, seemingly, to no avail. Despite the efforts of CNN supporting the "Stop Bullying. Speak Up" campaign, this homophobic hashtag, aimed at lesbians, managed to make it's way up to third position.
Quite a few tweeters did defend the LGBT community with around 2 tweets out of 5 pointing out the ignorance and harmfulness of the viral bullying. Some Twitter users called on the social-networking site to remove the topic that had made it's way up the trends list and by around 2pm EST Twitter listened to the requests of its users who were offended by the hashtag and took #HowToMakeADykeHappy off the website completely. They then proceeded to replace it with "BULLYING HURTS" to make up for the offence caused by thousands of Twitter users.
Depsite this major slip-up, it seems the Twitter team really do care for the well-being of their users and on behalf of the LGBT community and anyone else who was offended by the hashtag, I would like to thank them for their concern.
While some people use it as a positive thing, most still use it as a slur, so can Twitter please remove #HowToMakeADykeHappy, please?
— Marcian Tobay (@MarcianTobay) October 5, 2011
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