STFU I'm Not Taking The Gay Stairs

About

STFU I'm Not Taking the Gay Stairs is a viral video and image macro meme showing a man deliberately climbing up unevenly spaced, beige stairs, as though he was intentionally avoiding a more sensible, rainbow-painted staircase also in the frame. The caption implies he is avoiding the rainbow-painted staircase because it's a "gay" staircase, referencing the LGBTQ+ community pride flag. The image later became infamous online as a thumbnail in YouTube "Offensive Memes" compilations.

Origin

On September 30th, 2019, YouTuber HtThe posted a video in which a man deliberately avoids walking up a rainbow-colored staircase and climbs the large, cumbersome concrete stairs next to it. The video gained over 1.1 million views in roughly four years (shown below). It's unclear if this is the original video, as HtThe wrote that they'd "found" the video in the description.

Spread

A screenshot of the video turned into an image macro was first posted to the subreddit /r/okbuddyretard^[1] on January 9th, 2020, by Redditor IMyPPSmall. There, it gained over 11,000 points in three and a half years (shown below).

Over the following years, the image was widely reposted to other social media hubs, including Facebook's "Dense Memes For Tense Kids"^[2] group, Reddit's /r/AreTheStraightsOK^[3] and Tumblr, where on December 1st, 2020, user tvguts^[4] posted an anti-meme edit, gaining over 2,300 notes in nearly three years (shown below).

The image and video's virality made it a staple of "offensive memes," and it particularly saw use as a thumbnail for YouTube "offensive meme" compilations. For example, it was the thumbnail of a compilation posted on June 12th, 2022, by the YouTube channel sssleepymemes. The video gained over 9.6 million views in one year (shown below).

On November 7th, 2022, Twitter user @LubbaSMG2^[4] commented on the ubiquity of the image by asking, "Why does every single 'offensive memez!!!' compilation on YouTube have this as its thumbnail," gaining over 1,300 retweets and 28,000 likes in nearly one year (shown below).

Search Interest

External References