seeking a specific comment

September 12, 2018 1:06 PM

I recall reading a comment here on metafilter a long time ago with a proposal for a ridiculous reality TV show. I would like to find that comment. Googling has proven extremely difficult.

As presented in the comment, to the best of my memory:

The conceit of the reality show would be that there's one straight man in a group of gay men, and every week they vote on which guy they think is the straight one. If the straight guy makes it to the end of the show without being voted off, he wins a million bucks. Except oh wait, they're all straight. (Or maybe it was the other way around, they're all gay, I don't know.)


(I've recently been made aware of a real actual show called Playing It Straight and want to find this comment again.)

Thanks!

posted by phunniemee to MetaFilter-Related at 1:06 PM (12 comments total)

can I say that I worked at Fox in the era of Playing It Straight and this brings up a lot of depressing memories
posted by roger ackroyd at 1:24 PM on September 12, 2018 [6 favorites]

There's always my idea for a parkour/weight loss show, "The Largest Traceur"
posted by thelonius at 1:39 PM on September 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

Are you sure this was metafilter, because I am pretty certain I saw this on tumblr in its original format, and maybe even facebook as a screenshot. I will look now, but yea, viral posts like this are hard to find
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:51 PM on September 12, 2018

It's definitely possible it's not an idea original to metafilter, but since my internet consumption is 90% metafilter based I would be very surprised if I read it somewhere else.
posted by phunniemee at 1:59 PM on September 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sorry to double post, but could it have been part of the "Queer Eye, but ..." fad that was not that long ago?
posted by FirstMateKate at 2:01 PM on September 12, 2018

Found it, on reddit, which tumblr stole apparently.
posted by FirstMateKate at 2:03 PM on September 12, 2018

I'm still pretty confident I read this on metafilter and would like to find that comment if anyone else remembers this.
posted by phunniemee at 2:13 PM on September 12, 2018

Found it, on reddit, which tumblr stole apparently.
A reddit user posted that a tumblr user posted it and did not source it back to reddit. Tumblr itself did not steal anything. Reddit itself did not post anything. This may seem pedantic, but if you are going to use a term like stealing for posting without a source, please be clear about who did the stealing. I agree with that usage for the most part.
posted by soelo at 3:11 PM on September 12, 2018

Hmm, rings a bell but not sure how to look other than general searches and a lot of scrolling or spinning up an expensive AI vm.
posted by sammyo at 3:15 PM on September 12, 2018

Isn't the tumblr post a screenshot of a facebook post :psyduck:
posted by fleacircus at 6:35 PM on September 12, 2018

I get this using Google to search Metafilter.

"No results found for "11 gay men" site:metafilter.com."
posted by COD at 5:52 AM on September 13, 2018

Yeah I've already searched the exact text of the reddit/tumblr post. When it was posted here it wasn't a direct lift.

For instance, I think I probably would remember the specific word "outvote," which is not the term anyone would really use for reality tv.
posted by phunniemee at 7:14 AM on September 13, 2018