 You just watched a viral clip from the New York City Drag March and the Twitter user who posted that video pointed out that the crowd was chanting, we're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children and ads, they're not even hiding it anymore. Now the video was quickly picked up by Timcast and prompted outrage by conservatives like Charlie Kirk who chimed in saying, when they tell you who they are, believe them. Now when I saw the video for the first time, after being primed to think that the entire crowd was actually chanting, we're coming for your children, I assumed that they were being sarcastic and trying to mock conservatives who call drag queens groomers, but at the same time admittedly I did kind of roll my eyes at it because I felt irritated that there was ostensibly nobody there with enough self-awareness to realize that the optics of that are bad and it is going to be used to demonize the entire community regardless if they're just being sarcastic. The context doesn't matter, joke or no joke, it's going to be weaponized against everyone and this isn't something that I'm usually hypersensitive to like I personally like edgy jokes myself, but in the middle of an anti LGBTQ plus hate crusade where conservative propagandists are specifically smearing queer people as groomers and pedophiles, regular folks who watch that aren't going to automatically assume that they're joking, right? So the video was frustrating to me and probably to a lot of other people who just felt really why are you doing this? Why are you giving them ammunition, right? And I just want to emphasize here that I'm not usually one to engage in respectability politics and scold every single queer person who's not always on their best behavior in public because we're not monolithic, right? But maybe don't go out of our way to give the right ammunition especially when this smear in particular is being used to justify legislation that takes away the rights of drag queens, for example. The problem, however, with everything that I'm saying and everything that conservatives thought that they were saying is that the crowd was not actually chanting we're coming for your children. What we actually heard was just a couple of people very close to the camera's microphone who were chanting it, but in actuality the crowd itself was chanting we're not going shopping. Now this was explained by Marla Alpert in a TikTok who gave us the additional context and re-showed us the video and once you see what she says you view the video in an entirely different light so let's watch. Debunking bullshit from bed it's not even 8 a.m. stick around for this one. So this guy came to my comment section to tell me about this video. Conservatives are passing that around as some kind of proof that queer people are coming for their children. Go watch that clip again the person saying we're coming for your children is the person behind the camera the person who posted it who's an agitator. Everyone else is shouting we're here we're queer we're not going shopping. And this person asks very rudely why would they be saying shopping get your head out of your... First of all I think the question that any actually critically thinking person would ask themselves is why would they be shouting we're coming for your children if this is some devious plot to get your children. Everyone knows groomers like to announce themselves rather than hiding in your churches. They're saying we're not going shopping because the message is anti rainbow capitalism and corporate pride. Especially this year where brands like Bud Light and Target have shown that they are not allies and then it's all just for profit. That's why they're saying we're not going shopping. Stay sharp buddy. Mind blown honestly. Now let's watch it again because now that we haven't been primed to assume that the entire crowd is chanting that they're coming for your children you can now see that most of the crowd in actuality is clearly chanting we're not going shopping. And you can only see about three people the guy behind the camera not included because you can't see what he's saying but you can hear two people one of them was the woman who screamed at the camera and another was the woman whose chest I had to blur out. I don't know if YouTube is going to be hypersensitive about that but she was in topless she had things covering her nipples but just to be safe you know I I blurred that out but the point is that she was one of the people who temporarily chanted we're coming for your children but if you look at the mouths of every other person and you listen closely they're saying we're not going shopping so let's watch it again now that we have the proper context. So up until this point it's obvious that the entire crowd is chanting we're not going shopping but right now is when the provocateur who is presumably the cameraman chimes in and chants we're coming for your children and I'm assuming this is so he can bait others into saying it. So now you just heard two other people say it one was the lady who yelled at the camera and the other was the lady with the brown hair who I blurred out so in total we have three people who are very close to the camera and given their proximity to the camera they give you the impression this is the whole crowd since they're so close and thus the loudest when in actuality this isn't what the entire crowd was chanting it's just a couple of people in actuality but at first glance you might think this is the entire crowd because these very loud people next to the camera are the ones who we see the most. I'll admit I didn't even hear anyone say we're not going shopping until I saw that TikTok which tells you how powerful priming is in fact I think that that video that tweeted in particular from the conservative who tweeted this is really giving us a master class in how priming works when somebody tells you to expect something from a clip that's the only thing that your brain is going to see because you've been primed to think about it in a particular way it's a psychological trick to get us to not observe the material that we're watching more critically we kind of shut off our brains temporarily and just accept what someone is saying and not necessarily watch it as critically or skeptically as we should but when you start to listen more critically you see that your first interpretation was completely tainted by the commentary of the person who shared this and that's not the only account who does this libs of tiktok does this too or strips away the context or makes it seem more nefarious than it is in actuality I mean visually if I told you that this dress was white and gold you'd probably be primed to look for those colors in particular if you hadn't already seen this image a million fucking times or if I told you that you're hearing yanny before playing the audio that we're about to listen to you'd probably hear that instead of Laurel see what I mean so because this person explicitly told us that they were chanting they're coming for your children they painted a picture for us that we might not have actually seen had we just watched the video without that commentary without them kind of I guess leading the witness with us being the witness in this instance if you will now we're not going shopping makes a lot more sense because it actually does date back to queer protests from decades ago when they were in shopping malls the problem is the context doesn't really make things better now because it's too late the video got millions of views on twitter and it even got picked up by mainstream media who seemingly made matters a lot worse for example in a write-up about the viral video by Tyler Kincaid of NBC News they tweeted out a quote from the article which reads the coming for your children chant has been used for years at pride events according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists who said it's one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against lgbtq people now a lot of us who saw that tweet we're kind of scratching our heads because even though they're trying to provide readers with additional context and say no they're not actually trying to say that they're going to come after your children this is a warning there's a lot of questions that that quote leaves that aren't answered first and foremost who are the longtime march attendees and gay rights activists who told you that this is a chant that's been common at pride events for years because i've never heard that second of all what evidence do you have that that chant in particular has been used before because having people tell you that this is common is one thing but actually finding evidence that it is indeed the case is something that you would expect a journalist to seek out before making that statement in this climate where the riot is trying to portray all queer people as threats to children now to make matters worse the author knows that the crowd isn't actually chanting that so he actually wrote about this saying in the 21 second clip circulated by right wing web streamer channel dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting we're here we're queer we're not going shopping but one voice that is louder than the crowd it's not clear who's or whether the speaker was a member of the lgbtq community is heard saying at least twice we're here we're queer we're coming for your children but wait a second were the people in the crowd who were chanting that just outliers or is this a common chant that has been said at pride for years perhaps the author misunderstood the people that he talked to because he does interview brian griffin who's the original organizer of the nyc drag march and brian griffin told him that you know sure more provocative chants are used not that one in particular but you know maybe the author just took that as okay so this one must be common too i'm not sure honestly furthermore the author spoke to an organizer of this year's march who like most of us assumed that the crowd was chanting that but didn't know the context and just assumed that it was a joke and they denounced it he continues an organizer for this year's drag march known as huckle fairy ken who also performs in drag as sister ladi da declined an interview request similarly citing fears for his safety in light of the backlash over the video clip but he said in an email that coming for your children chant was a bad joke that is being used to serve the interests of parasitic predatory political propaganda and policy we won't tolerate harm towards any child and advocate for the protection and encouragement of every child to be able to live their true authentic lives free from fear and persecution huckle fairy ken said and that's the sentiment that i saw online from a lot of queer people in response to this they just said not a good joke not a good time for that right because we all assumed it was real and that whole crowd was chanting that right until we found out the truth about this and got proper context but further down in the article we presumably get to one of kincaid sources but you can kind of see how maybe he misinterpreted what they said here because he writes again according to multiple drag march regulars the coming for your children variation has been used before and then his evidence in the next sentence is a different slogan quote last year gothamist reported people at the drag march chanted 10% is not enough groom groom groom then he says carla j the first female chair of the new york scale liberation front and a professor at pace university said it's a strategy to take the sting out of accusations lobbied against the lgbtq community but again this still doesn't really clear anything up because is she referring to the we're coming for your children line or the 10% is not enough line because both of these phrases believe it or not do have discernible differences saying that 10% is not enough is a joke that i've heard at least the variation of from queer people and their allies in response to new polls showing that more young people than ever identifies lgbtq plus so they might say in response to that man those are rookie numbers we've got to pump up those numbers and what they're doing is they are joking about this idea that gay people are recruiting kids and trying to turn them gay right and that is different than the we're coming from your kids because you can't turn kids gay that's not possible the recruiting line is very clearly satirical it's mocking conservative stupidity but in the gothamist article that he cited that provides additional context that is really important so for example they wrote the chance of drag march have always been cheeky and defiant and this year the traditional 10% is not enough recruit recruit recruit was updated as groom groom groom now it's still not a great joke to make in this environment to be fair to them they made that joke last year when the grooming discourse started to pop up but it's very different than we're coming for your children with no additional context right because if you just hear we're coming for your children well then that might sound more nefarious it's more nefarious for sure seemingly than recruit recruit recruit because queer people can't actually recruit kids and make them gay but the fear from conservatives is that queer people are going to sexually prey on your kids which is why we're coming for your children is actually a lot more nefarious and you might say that i'm grasping grasping at straws here looking for semantical differences but when every single thing that queer people do is hyperanalyzed and scrutinized to the highest extent by right wing propagandists these little details matter and understand that if conservatives actually had evidence that queer people and drag queens were a threat to your children they wouldn't have to try to find these obscure examples of one queer person saying something edgy or sassy they would just show the stats that demonstrate how much of a danger queer people are to children in the same way that we could provide you with evidence that priests are a danger to children but since queer people aren't actually a danger to children and they don't have those statistics well they do have to stoop to things like this and propaganda fills the void that is left by a dearth of statistics on their side about this but still the details are really important and this nbc author needs to clarify right so when people like benjamin dixon among others press the author of this article to be a little bit more clear and give us additional details perhaps about his sources or where he got this information rather than answering the questions he decided to just private his twitter account yeah so i understand this instinct to retreat if you feel like you're being attacked but the problem is that people were reaching out to kin kade in good faith trying to get him to be clear because if it is the case if he can prove that there's evidence that we're coming for your kids is a chant that's common at pride then we need to know about it so that way we can find out the proper context because this community is currently being smeared as pedophiles but if it is the case that he's misunderstanding these activists and that's really not something that's common at pride then we need to know that too so we can shoot down this myth we just need as much information as possible given the current climate where any and everything is being used against queer people but instead of actually answering questions he retreated which is not good so there's that now trying to be extra charitable to this author others online speculated that maybe he was referring to not necessarily pride chants but other jokes that queer people have made about corrupting the youth for example in 2021 the san francisco gay men's choir went viral because they played on this very trope with a song where they sing about we're coming for your children you think that we'll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked funny just this once you're correct we'll convert your children happens bit by bit quietly and subtly and you will barely notice it you can keep them from disco warn about san francisco making wear pleated pants we don't care we'll convert your children we'll make them tolerant and fair at first i didn't get why you'd be so scared of us turning your children into accepting caring people but i see now why you'd have a problem we'll convert your children someone's gotta teach them not to hate so that line within the proper context changes the entire meaning of it right they're saying we're coming for your kids and we're going to teach them to be accepting and loving and tolerant whereas when you just see queer people who are being accused of being groomers and pedophiles without the context saying we're coming for your children you can see how that is going to be used more nefariously by these right wing actors but i mean even within the proper context even though that song is very obviously about queer people trying to teach children to be accepting and tolerant conservatives were still outraged about that so even within the proper context that doesn't necessarily stop these bad actors from trying to lie and demonize the entire community the difference however was that the proper context existed and that does matter for example the top comment from a year ago reads i'm sorry folks i'm a straight 70 year old man that heard the uproar about the song and decided to listen for myself pretty damned obvious this is a statement that they will seek the better angels of human nature and find understanding it seems all the uproar is coming from the narrow minded in their dark caves looking to lash out it's just sad yeah so my overall point is that even when something is obviously satirical and you have the full context for it conservatives are still going to weaponize it for propagandistic purposes but when we don't have the proper context for suspicious comments or edgy jokes that's when the propaganda is the most powerful because conservatives will capitalize on people's ignorance or concern which is why so many people asked for more clarity from that nbc writer because simply saying that queer people have been chanting that they're coming for your children for years creates this context void that can be filled by bad faith actors who want to demonize the community so if matt walsh for example tweets that that chant is confirmation that gays want to molest children or that the lgbtq plus community is expanding to include pedophiles as they've argued before normal people will likely take that at face value if they don't have the additional context i mean look at the way that we all just thought that that video was them chanting we're coming for your children we all took what the uploader said at face value when he told us that the crowd was chanting they're coming for your kids so if even we people who are a little bit more savvy when it comes to the media that we consume can be duped by right wing propaganda it's not unreasonable to think that regular people could get tricked into believing the worst lies about this community using singular anecdotes to extrapolate and make broader inferences about the entire lgbtq plus community is by far the most powerful tool for anti lgbtq plus propagandists because they work they're effective right but right wing propagandists can only weaponize ignorance so long as people are still ignorant i adore the lgbtq plus community and feel genuinely privileged to be a part of it but like all people there are bad queer people the goal isn't to sanitize the actions of every single queer person ever because bad queer people exist and they will always exist the goal ultimately is to get people to see our humanity at an individual level yes we're part of a group but if you zoom in a little bit you'll see that we're all unique individuals with different personalities different set of moral standards and ideological views and we're not monolithic so people if they see us as individuals part of a broader community and they're less likely to believe generalizations then they're less likely to believe terrible things about the entire community based on the actions of like one or a few of us but until we reach that level of societal understanding which we're not yet at all of us especially journalists should be a lot more vigilant so that way we don't inadvertently get duped by right wing provocateurs or play into their hands as they work overtime to demonize all of us