You Have to Be a Whole Other Level of Gay and Religiously Traumatized to Recognize This Location

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About

You Have to Be a Whole Other Level of Gay and Religiously Traumatized to Recognize This Location is a catchphrase used to caption location-based image macros that evoke a sense of dread for LGBTQ+ people. The locations are often pop culture references specific to queer knowledge and spaces. The trend started on Twitter in early 2023.

Origin

On March 4th, 2023, Twitter^[1] user @sunbleachflies_ tweeted a photo of a chair, a table and a portrait of Jesus Christ which was the location for the album cover of Ethel Cain's Preacher's Daughter.^[2] Twitter^[1] user @sunbleachflies_ captioned the photo, "you have to be a whole other level of gay and religiously traumatized to recognize this location," and over the course of five days, the tweet received roughly 19,600 likes (shown below).

Spread

On March 6th, 2023, Twitter^[3] user @B1ORK uploaded the first variant usage of the catchphrase, using it to caption the album cover for Lady Gaga's Chromatica. Over the course of three days, the tweet received roughly 4,500 likes (shown below, left). On March 7th, 2023, Twitter^[4] user @kornbIuth tweeted a photo of fast food restaurants located beneath the Myrtle Ave subway station in Bushwick, Brooklyn (a location known for being close to the music venue Market Hotel). Twitter user @kornbIuth captioned the image with the phrase, earning roughly 5,900 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Going into March 2023, the phrase received more usage on Twitter as some creators took out the word "religiously," simplifying the phrase to read, "You have to be a whole other level of gay and traumatized to recognize this location." Twitter^[5] user @sueincouture was the first known to do so on March 8th, 2023, captioning a photo taken at the "Venice scene" in the Harry Styles movie My Policeman. The tweet received roughly 3,000 likes in one day (shown below).

More iterations surfaced, including tweets^[6] that replaced the word "traumatized" with "insane," among other adjectives.