For queer people, 2025 was a rocky year. There were a number of celebrities who felt emboldened to come out this year and share pieces of themselves with their fans, sharing their partners, etc., which was a bright spot in an otherwise relatively bleak year. 2025 started off with President Donald Trump's second term, and since then, chaos has been the theme. From ICE raids to the villainization of queer people, the administration has made it its mission to attack anyone who doesn't submit to fascism.
No matter what social media platform you use, it's impossible to escape the horrors of government officials turning back the clock on progress. The internet used to be a place for people to escape what's going on in the world. And in some ways, there's still the possibility of that being true with some of the most viral queer moments of the year. The picks for this year's list are a collection of moments that took over everyone's feed in one way or another in 2025.
This year's list includes things like Karla Sofía Gascón's unearthed racist tweets (because yes, that was this year, even though it feels like it happened last year) and "Funeral Stud" becoming a viral sensation with her song "I Wish That Heaven Had a Phone."
Here's our list of the top viral moments in queer culture in 2025.
2025 was the year of 'cruising' discourse
Queer culture never stays contained within the community. Those on the outskirts of queerness have always had a morbid curiosity for how the LGBTQ+ folk engage in different activities, including things like "cruising," and queer people argue about whether or not these insular secrets should be made public and what harm that could cause.
The start of this discourse came in July, when The New Yorker published an article about Sniffies, detailing its features, how it's used, and what it's used for. The piece was written by a woman named Emily Witt, which caused another wave of outrage by the app's mostly queer male user base, who felt that the publication should "stay out of gay people's business."
In August, The Cut published a story titled "We've Reached Peak Gay Sluttiness," in which the author writes about gay hookup culture and Sniffies. Not too soon after the two publications published their stories, news broke of an Amtrak Police Department operation targeting a Penn Station bathroom that is listed on Sniffies as a cruising hotspot.
On social media platforms like X and Instagram, users debated whether or not this newfound attention to an app like Sniffies, which digitized cruising culture, has put the community in harm's way. But the internet was fed with even more fuel after The Cut published yet another story on the topic titled "Can Cruising Survive Influencers?" and it looked at how the once obscure activity is being broadcast far and wide on the internet.
Karla Sofía Gascón's fiery descent from awards show darling to disgraced doll
Karla Sofía Gascón at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival
Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images
Emilia Pérez was a frontrunner this past awards season, and the movie's star, Karla Sofía Gascón, was a critics' favorite to win some of the biggest prizes. At this year's Oscar's, she made history as the first out trans woman to be nominated in the Best Actress category and things were going smoothly (or as well as things could go for a controversial movie) until a journalist named Sarah Hagi unearthed Gascón's offensive tweets about Muslim people, the killing of George Floyd, anti-Chinese and anti-Catalan statements, as well as saying the 2021 Oscars were an "Afro-Korean festival."
Her heinous tweets were spread all across social media. In case people forgot, in one of her posts, she wrote, "I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school, there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year, instead of English, we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
A month before the Oscars ceremony, in February, she apologized for the posts, saying, "I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt." She continued, "As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well, and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain."
To further stop the hemorrhaging of support, she did an "unauthorized" interview on CNN en Español with the host, in which she was very emotional and refused to drop out of the Best Actress race. Gascón still attended the ceremony this year but lost to Mikey Madison.
KATSEYE's addicting GAP ad
This video is like a Renaissance painting. You can find something you didn't notice before with every new watch. In a year when the world was forced to see Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle jeans ad take over the internet for weeks because of its alleged white-supremacist dog whistles, we can all rest a bit easier when we remember the gift that the emerging girl group KATSEYE gave us with this GAP ad.
Every single girl is an impeccable dancer, and their moves are hypnotic to watch. They ooze charisma on screen, flashing little smirks and winks throughout the video. The choreography became an internet obsession in its own right as people attempted to recreate it.
Dan and Phil admit they're boyfriends after almost two decades of dating
Dan Howell and Phil Lester have been making YouTube videos together since 2006, and after almost two years of speculation, rumors, and fan fiction, the two officially confirmed that they have been dating this whole time. In the video they posted two months ago, the two YouTubers revealed that they fell in love back in 2009 and decided to keep their relationship a secret because Howell wasn't out to his friends and family. "This is why all of the digging from people online hit a nerve, because Phil was my safe space. You were my first boyfriend... You were a literal ray of light in my life back then," Howell said.
The couple then announced a new podcast they started together called Hard Launch with Dan and Phil. In the video where they shared the news of the show, they both agreed that announcing their relationship was "a huge relief" and that they felt "a weight had been lifted."
Connor Franta feeds the 'Tronnor Truthers'
In other relationship-confirmation news, Connor Franta finally confirmed that he and Troye Sivan dated in their early YouTube days. For those who don't know, yes, Troye Sivan started out as a YouTuber before transitioning into music full-time, and back in the early 2010s, he was hanging out with all the big YouTubers — Tyler Oakley, Zoe Sugg (Zoella), and of course, Franta. At the time, Oakley and Sivan were close friends, often collaborating on videos, but people also began to notice that Sivan and Franta were hanging out more.
Their relationship was kept under wraps for years until the Aussie YouTuber/singer put out his second album, Bloom, which included a song called "Good Side" that many speculated was about Franta.
Last year, Franta appeared on the Obsessed with Brooke Averick podcast and shared that he and a former boyfriend were obsessed with Chappell Roan in her early days of making music. Then, internet sleuths found a throwback photo of Franta and Sivan posing with Roan, which many felt confirmed they dated.
Then, this past August, Sivan posted a photo of himself and Roan with Franta cropped out, but he insists it was just a photo he found when he googled his and Roan's names together. It seems as though Franta found it shady and then posted a picture with Sivan cropped out, captioned "my good side," a reference to the 2018 song rumored to be about him.
To finally clear things up, Franta put out a video where he went into vague details about a relationship he had for two years back in 2014. He ended his video by responding to the lyrics, "I'm sure we'll meet in the spring/And catch up on everything/I'll say I'm proud of all that you've done," by saying, "The final words I have are actually for him, so if you happen to be watching this, I just want to let you know that I’m proud of you, too. For every single thing that you’ve done."
Nicki Minaj embraces the right and stays in the wrong
Erika Kirk and Nicki Minaj high-five at Turning Point USA's annual AmericaFest conference
Caylo Seals/Getty Images
As a society, we need to leave celebrities and influencers who embrace and are embraced by right-wing pundits in 2025. One of the least surprising people to come out as a Republican this year is Nicki Minaj. Ever since she soft-launched as an anti-vaxxer back in 2021, the world kept an eye out for more troubling signs from the Queens rapper, and in 2025, she came out to the world as a Republican.
Fans saw her online interactions with her fellow female rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B as worrying signs, not politically, but just personally. Especially earlier this year, when her years-long beef with Cardi came to a head on X as the two traded jabs online and even made comments about each other's children.
Not too long after their spat on X, Minaj openly professed her support for President Donald Trump online, complimenting him on his efforts to combat the alleged persecution of Christians in Nigeria. She was then invited to speak at the United Nations by Mike Waltz, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, which she accepted.
Her descent into MAGA-dom didn't stop there. She's openly made transphobic remarks on social media and at her final nail-in-the-coffin appearance at Turning Point USA with Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika. On X, she responded to California Gov. Gavin Newsom saying that he "wants to see trans kids" exist, saying, "Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids. Haha." She continued, "Not even a trans ADULT would run on that. Normal adults wake up & think they want to see HEALTHY, SAFE, HAPPY kids. Not Gav. The Gav Nots. GavOUT. Send in the next guy, I’m bored.”
Then, at her horrendous Turning Point appearance, she said, "Boys, be boys. Be boys. It’s ok. Be boys. There’s nothing wrong with being a boy. How about that? How powerful is that? How profound is that?”
Neace 'Funeral Stud' Robinson's emotional plea for heaven to get a phone
What we won't be doing in 2026 is acting like "I Wish Heaven Had a Phone" isn't a good song. Neace Robinson, AKA "Funeral Stud," went viral earlier this year after her performance at a funeral, where she posted a video of herself singing. In it, she's singing her own original song, which she released back in 2018, and people especially loved two parts of the song. The first is when she repeats, "Lord, I got some things I need to say," and the second is when she says, "1, 2, 1, 2, 3, release" before jumping right back into the chorus of the song.
The original video garnered over 53 million views and over seven million likes on TikTok. Soon after her rise to viral fame, she became a meme that people recreated online. That newfound attention led Robinson to put out a new music video for the song and a multi-city tour stopping in Portland, Denver, Seattle, and more.
Jeffree Star has never done a good job of pretending to be anything other than a Republican
For those who don't know Jeffree Star, they might have been surprised to see him throw transgender and nonbinary people under the bus to make his shift to full-fledged right-wing influencer. The one constant thing that Star has been concerned about throughout the entirety of his career is money, and he is going to get as much of it as possible by whatever means necessary — even if that means selling out his queer fans to be embraced by the culturally relevant conservative population.
Fans started getting hints of Star's distaste for nonbinary people back in 2023 after he went on a Barstool Sports podcast called "Bussin' with the Boys," where he said that they/them pronouns were made up during the pandemic because people were "bored" and said that gender neutral pronouns were "stupid" and "extra." During his appearance, he said, "You’re not ‘they’ and ‘them.’ You’re trans ... you’re male, or you’re female."
Following Charlie Kirk's assassination in September, the world fully saw a different side of Star after he made a video lambasting people for joking about Kirk's death, saying that Kirk "encouraged everyone to speak about their beliefs, whether he believed them or not." He saw a lot of support from users online, and after that, he went full tilt.
In November, he said that he is "not gay" and "is just open and very me," right before saying that the LGBTQ+ acronym shouldn't include the "Q" or the "T."
Ice Spice's prophetic ear worm, 'SpongeBob big guy pants okay"
In many ways, Ice Spice is an oracle. She knows the correct combination of words that mobilize a large group of people. They're so distinct and singular to her style of "lackadaisical rap" that she's never been imitated. If you think about it, the idea of someone picking Ice Spice — a Bronx rapper known for explicit lyrics, many of which include "poop," "shit," and "fart" — for a Spongebob Squarepants movie is kind of ingenious.
I, as well as many other people, didn't expect to be enraptured by the lyricism on the Ice Spice SpongeBob song, especially when she raps, "SpongeBob big guy pants okay." The first time I heard it, I couldn't stop saying it because of the arrangement of words in that phrase. But I'm not the only one; the song found a life of its own online. The audio for the song was used in over 1.9 million TikTok videos, with people performing the dance that's associated with the song.
