“Dear PoPville,
I wanted to write to share an experience I had this past Friday evening (of Pride weekend, no less), on 18th St NW around 10pm while walking home. I was crossing 18th Street by the McDonalds when I was approached by a young (low-mid 20s) white guy with floppy brown hair live streaming on his phone. While recording me,
he says “Happy pride month, dude.” I responded by saying “Thanks! Happy pride!” to which he goes “Yeah, I can fucking tell” and starts laughing, waiting for me to react live on his feed. I smiled and told him to have a good night and kept walking. While this may seem like a very minor incident, something similar happened to a friend of mine on 18th St recently in front of Pitchers, when a young man live streamed an interaction that started off by seeming to be supportive of the LGBTQ community and then quickly changed into baiting my gay friend to react negatively (by calling him a faggot). I just wanted to share this as a warning to the community to watch out. I assume had I reacted negatively he would’ve tried to use the footage for some sort of anti-gay social media post on a toxic MAGA bro forum or something. It’s incredibly sad that things like this continue to happen in our city.”