"Words are the strongest things we put out in the universe and they live forever online—and in life. This site makes you think before you speak or tweet." —juror Perry Fair
"A powerful and effective way to convey a very important message." —juror Scott Prindle
Overview: Many of today's youth believe it's OK to use homophobic language as long as they don't intend for it to be mean-spirited or offensive. This project holds up a social mirror to show how frequently and casually this audience uses hurtful language. Using Twitter's API, tweets featuring "so gay," "no homo," "faggot" and "dyke" were pulled, tracked and displayed in real time on nohomophobes.com. Visitors can pause the real-time stream and click on any of the tweets to be directed to the originating Twitter profile and interact with the tweeter, if they chose to do so.
• The hashtag was trending on Twitter within a few hours of launch and the site had over 100,000 unique visits within 24 hours.
• The site displays daily, weekly and all-time stats.
• The site made the front page of Reddit and was covered online by the Economist, the Huffington Post and the Guardian.
Comments by Pierre Chan:
How is this website different from other anti-homophobia projects that have preceded it? "NoHomophobes shows the reality of the situation and not simply as an advertisement. Anti-homophobia campaigns that have preceded this one simply tell people to think before speaking; conversely, this project shows them what they actually say before thinking. It allows the audience to see exactly how, and how often, their peers are using this specific language and judge for themselves whether or not it should be acceptable."
Did you meet with any obstacles during development? "We couldn't simply pull every tweet that featured homophobic terms; we had to filter out positive tweets, as well as those that used the words in a way that had nothing to do with our subject matter. A lot of research and testing was conducted to determine which words and phrases to capture, as well as what parameters the tweets had to follow in order to be funneled onto the site."
