Turns out the CEO of OkCupid, Sam Yagan has quite the anti-gay past. Not only did he donate to a Utah congressional candidate who not only voted against gay marriage, but also smeared gays, but Yagan and his pals also once created an app that generated gay insults. Chris Coyne, Sam Yagan, Max Krohn and Christian Rudder founded an satire like site back in the late ’90s called TheSpark.com Basically the site was a wannabe version of The Onion. An app that TheSpark.com offered for download was and insult generator called “Deliver the Dis.” This app while generating insults at others, also seemed to be aimed at gays or perhaps at insulting people by insinuating they are gay.
|
| Sam Yagan and pals promoted app that generated gay insults |
|---|
The app is still downloadable via the internet archive and does produce an endless supply of florid insults. The rules used to generate the insults from smaller bits of speech don’t seem particularly complicated. They repeat frequently with different words in the blanks. Most of the insults could be directed at anyone but some of them are clearly aimed at gays or perhaps at insulting people by insinuating they are gay.
The simplest example is, “You are a homo.” That’s really as bland as it gets. Another “dis” reads, “You are such a viral mangled homo.” Again, this is a mix-and-match generator but “homo” and a variation “homo little brother” are clearly built in to the app. Another fragment which shows up repeatedly, “Hey Lesbo” as in “Hey Lesbo, I know you would bone a homo.”Then there are some tasteless references to HIV and AIDS such as “You have HIV.” and “Are you infected with AIDS?” Of course not everyone who has HIV or AIDS is gay but clearly it’s a very sensitive topic in the gay community and was back in 2000 when The Spark was promoting this. To be fair, the insult generator isn’t aimed primarily at gays though you only have to click through for a few minutes to see examples like these.
The Spark also wasn’t particularly sensitive to women. For instance, a humor piece by Christian Rudder mock-advising young men how to get lucky on a date contained some potentially offensive advice.