Poly / Polycule / Polyamory

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About

Polyamory, sometimes described with the slang term Poly, is a term generally used to refer to non-monogamous relationships between multiple partners. Polyamorous relationships are ones where one or more participants engage in romantic or sexual relationships with more than one person. Polyamory is sometimes understood in the terms of an "open relationship," or in the terms of a "polycule," which is where multiple partners are in a closed relationship with each other.

Origin

Polyamory entered popular cultural discourse on the internet in the 2010s, due to increased representation in popular media. An American reality television series named Polyamory: Married & Dating was broadcast on Showtime between 2012 and 2013.^[1] Other popular media like American Horror Story, Steven Universe, and BoJack Horseman depicted polyamorous people in consecutive years.

The terms "poly" and "polyamory" were added to Urban Dictionary on July 14, 2005, and May 17th, 2004 respectively (seen below).

On March 2nd, 2009, the subreddit /r/polyamory was created. It now has over 290,000 members.^[6]

The earliest known viral post to use the phrase poly/polyamory was a Tumblr thread posted on April 11th, 2015 by user sleightofpencil,^[2] which gathered over 200,000 notes and was reposted to Facebook,^[3] where it gathered over 50,000 likes in seven years. The first tweet to use the phrase poly/polyamory was posted on August 5th, 2018 by @celineorelse,^[4] where it gathered over 20,000 likes in over four years (seen below, left).

Spread

On April 28th, Willow Smith came out as polyamorous on "Red Table Talk,"^[10] leading to a spike in Google search interest in the term polyamory and polyamorous.^[11]

As polyamory became a concept better recognized by the general public, various stereotypes about poly couples and "polycules" began to grow popular on the internet. The earliest known tweet about a "poly couple" was posted to Twitter^[5] on May 18th, 2018 by Twitter user @AliceAvizandum, gathering nearly 10,000 likes in over four years (seen below, left). On December 15th, 2019, Instagram^[7] page @freud.instensifies posted a meme about polyamory, gathering nearly 8,000 likes in over three years (seen below, right).

On June 4th, 2021, Instagram^[8] page @the_political_compass posted a meme that placed "join my polycule!" in the left-libertarian quadrant. The post gathered over 17,000 likes in over a year (seen below, left). On June 13th, 2021, Twitter^[9] user @darius_roberti quote-tweeted a meme about poly relationships and cheating, gathering over 112,000 likes in over a year (seen below, right).

In the Fall of 2022, the term "polycule" and the concept of polyamory was brought under more scrutiny after news about Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison's reported Bahamas polycule emerged.