What’s more “gay” than a symbol for love, eh? A little heart. The unofficial global online shortcut to expressing your affection and appreciation for something since the Myspace days <3 and beyond. A way to show you value that person and what they have to say. A cartoon icon for the muscular organ which pumps blood through each of our circulatory systems. But apparently a heart is so blatantly, outrageously homosexual that the thought of “hearting” someone’s tweet is repulsive to some.
Yesterday, Twitter changed the way we favourite tweets from a star icon to a heart, something that actually no-one really liked. But it was the small-minded homophobes who crawled out of the woodwork who expressed their distain so loudly. Comments ranged from the heart being straight up “gay” to the act of using the heart automatically branding you a “faggot”.