It was a quiet Friday afternoon on Twitter. There had been no celebrity deaths, no juicy political scandals and no natural disasters. People were just tweeting the minutiae of their lives, driving Twitter lovers across the globe into catatonic states.

Then, around 3 p.m. CST 9/4/09, the subject #uknowhowiknowuregay showed up as a Twitter trending topic. When something like that pops up at a women’s rugby match, it’s likely good fun. When it shows up in a forum that is primarily hetero, it fills you with dread. Despite my better judgment, I clicked on it, and so did a lot of other same-sex lovin’ folk. We all found the same thing – ignorance and homophobia. To put it less politely – a whole lotta WTF! Then AfterEllen blogger thelinster fired off a return volley:

With that little tweet, the battle cry was sounded and The #YAYGAY Army rose up and retweeted and hashtagged like there was no tomorrow. Twitter exploded with pride and tiny, joyful rainbows fell down upon The Homophobes who were no match for our wit and exceptional spelling and grammar. The allies joined the battle, including one Ana Marie Cox who retweeted to her 1,000,000 + followers.

Then, just before 7 p.m. CST, #yaygay became a trending topic and #uknowhowiknowuregay was banished completely! By 7:15 p.m. CST, #yaygay had hit the Top 5 in the trending topics and, around 8 p.m. CST, The #YAYGAY Army vanquished all other topics and hit #1:

href="http://tweetpaste.thingamaweb.com/embed/80422/" target="_blank">View
gracethespot’s tweet

As Margaret Cho once said, “As if you could win a war without lesbians.” We all began to celebrate! Champagne corks flew through the air and…well, okay, that probably didn’t happen but I know I opened a beer and composed a few hundred haiku in its honor. The moon shone brighter, the air smelled sweeter and everyone felt the inexplicable urge to dot their “i”‘s with hearts. Our collective joy was short lived, however. By 9 p.m. #yaygay had disappeared from the trending topics and not because our enthusiasm and dedication had waned. The prevailing belief is that #yaygay was yanked. It’s possible that there was never a victory in the first place.

But it wasn’t a dream…and Grace Chu and Grace Rooney and Grace Underfire and Grace Yip and Grace Maxwell were there. Oh, internet, there are no peeps (or, in this case, tweeps) like homos!