I’m going to turn back the clock 30 years, bear with me:

I’m listening to a playlist of 275 ’90s hits. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aeeosmith is a really fucking gay song.

Obviously it’s 2026 and this statement is no longer acceptable. “Gay” here means that it sucks, but it’s a certainkind of suck if you remember how it was used in our childhood. (As far as I know smear the queer is still played under that name. Makes sense, since kids that age don’t even know what “queer” means and besides, the goal of the game is to get the ball and thus become the queer).

Is there an acceptable way to express this thought, this combination of cheese, earnestness, and lameness; or is it as a distinct entity now impossible to transmit (as it takes more than one person to convey shades of meaning, the thought cannot survive without wide use), like the proverbial in-the-woodpile? Let’s respect the ones we have abd not make any more offensive ones.