Lil Nas X could teach a master class on how to effectively navigate social media.
March has already kicked off in a way that gives a double-meaning to the term “March Madness”—and the 21-year-old hit sensation is adding to the shenanigans. However, a rapper who looks like a Lisa Frank sticker-pack-reject started it.
Earlier this week, in a now-deleted social media post, Tekashi69 (also known as 6ix9ine, colloquially) uploaded a screenshot of an article headline that read, “China Makes COVID-19 Anal Swabs Mandatory for Foreigners” and added the caption, “Lil Nas X has entered the chat.” This was clearly a homophobic swipe at the “Old Town Road” artist, implying that Lil Nas X would be thrilled to engage in the anal swab test because it would be similar to the act of anal sex.
Yikes. The homophobia jumped out! Well, so did Lil Nas X’s mic-drop-level comeback.
On Thursday, Lil Nas X took to his TikTok page to post a video with a series of vignettes recapping Tekashi69’s feeble attempt at “trying it” and then proceeded to present a screenshot of the “Trollz” rapper reaching out in the DMs with the message, “Gonna be in your city soon, what ya doing lol?”, with an upside-down smiley face emoji and a heart emoji at the end. Lil Nas X posted the video on his Twitter as well, with the caption, “This you?”
Oop!
For those who don’t know the context and power of the phrase, “This you?” on Twitter, I’m here to help! The phenomenon of “This you?” typically happens when someone tweets something usually perceived as high-and-mighty or holier-than-thou, which opens up the opportunity to call out hypocrisy. For example, if someone tweets something preachy about misogyny, someone else can dig into the Twitter archives, find a super-misogynistic tweet the preacher wrote, then quote them with the hypocritical receipts, all: “This you?” Basically, it’s akin to when Black folks gather around roasting somebody and then one person in the group laughs a little too loud—let’s call them Laughing Larry—and one roaster turns to Laughing Larry all, “Oh, I know you ain’t laughin’!” and proceeds to roast them...sometimes even harder than the original roastee.
Normally, I would not condone nor advocate outing people (as it can be harmful to the targeted person and doing so as revenge can add to the harmful overarching message that someone’s sexual identity outside of heteronormative standards should be a source of shame). But it’s hard not to revel in the callout of someone as vile as the convicted sex offender and informant (who apparently has a docuseries on Showtime called, Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine). Plus, it’s not my place to dictate how someone in the LGBTQ community decides to handle blatant homophobic attacks against them.
In the wittiest moment of the day, Jackée Harry continued to be a highlight of the Twitter timeline and simply tweeted, “Not Tekashi lookin’ for 6-9 inches.” Prime comedy.
Lil Nas X has actually been on a roll with this callout energy as he’s been constantly targeted by homophobes, some of whom are accusing him of being an “industry plant” just because he’s decided to express himself outside of cis-heteronormativity.
Basically, Lil Nas X ain’t with the homophobic shits. Period!