Home Is Where the Heart Is

I've spent a lot of time over the last two days watching the #LoveWins hashtag on Twitter (where, as most of the online world knows, you get an automatic little rainbow heart easter egg on the hashtag).  It's been, mostly, great -- astonishing and glorious and vibrant, a massive shout of joy.

The first 18 hours or so were the best -- I had hoped that the whole weekend would be good, given that it's Pride weekend in many of the major cities.

But, oh, the haters gotta hate.  And they gotta hate in your face, because it's just no fun pissing on other human beings unless you can force them to watch.

So, as I leave Twitter to itself for the time, I'm going to revisit some of the really, really good memories:

- Someone posted a meme shot of Jeff Probst doing a glad hands move on Survivor, captioned "Love Wins!".  Guess who retweeted it with glee?  Jeff Probst!

- Another celeb who posted in support:  Michael Des Barres.  (Formerly known as Murdoc)

- One tweet that went viral early on also got detached from its original poster, retweeted as an orphan, and eventually circled back around to its originator:  Cole Ledford, an amazing young activist who describes himself as "the 51st President of the US".

- Buzzfeed did a slew of fun roundups, including Disasters You Can Expect Now That Marriage Equality Is Here reviews the state of the countries that preceded the US in the fight. Don't worry about the title: it's tongue-in-cheek.

- So, so many goregous images of happy people, rainbows, rainbow flags, and major buildings and landmarks lit up with rainbow lights.

- I did a graphic of my own, using (of all things) a quotation from the Old Testament.  I had vaguely hoped it might get picked up as a peace offering between the gay and Christian (which is a Venn diagram with a huge overlap!!), but it's pretty much gotten lost in the torrent.  I suspect it would be regarded as blasphemous by the inevitable vocal minority.

- An ever-growing list of companies and sites, mostly on their Twitter feeds, rainbowed up their icons and logos and/or did special posts.  Chobani did three.  Others (Facebook etc.) put up widgets to add rainbow filters or hearts to profiles and avatars.

I saw a few cynical put-downs of this (and, of course, way too many pearl-clutching shrieks that I WILL NOW BOYCOTT ALL THE BRANDS), but the cynics don't seem to realize that major corporate branding decisions aren't something that gets slapped together in a few minutes and slapped online.  Most of them, I suspect, had been prepped for Pride weekend, and were pushed out ahead of schedule -- Ravelry did this, and said so in so many words.  The site owner then publicly held his delightfully calm ground against an incredibly shrill minority of pearl-clutchers.

Maybe some of the brands were bandwagoning, but I don't care even if they were.  It was lovely and shiny and I want to remember it.  Some of the brand responses were incredible works of art, and the advertising boffins who created them should be proud.  Two of the most incredible, subtle, elegant pieces were -- of all unlikely candidates -- cheap mass-market beer brands:  Miller and Heineken!  (Look closely at each of those; it may take a minute.)  Seriously -- Miller Lite?  Subtle and elegant and progressive?  I kid you not.  I may be a beer snob, but I'll have to set aside some of my own deep prejudices there.

Which is a wonderful thing to say on any day, but this weekend especially.