FAGGOT - Data Digest 0001 [Digital Download]

Derogatory language has a long history and has existed in various forms across cultures and languages for centuries. Some of the earliest recorded instances of pejorative language can be found in ancient texts and manuscripts, where words were used to insult and denigrate individuals or groups based on factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, or social status.

Reclaiming a pejorative term can chip away at its license to do harm by empowering the members of the community it aims to undermine to assert their identity around it. By reframing a word’s existing usage, people can subvert the intent of the original insult and turn it into a source of pride and resistance.

This zine examines 15,042,470 public tweets containing the word “faggot” posted to Twitter between the years of 2006 and 2022 for the word’s usage in all of its facets — the pejorative, the casual, the consensual — across religion, politics, pop culture, and everyday conversation. Machine learning models have been employed to discover the hidden semantic structures within the texts — as well as to identify the sentiment behind each individual text — to arrive at a visual narrative of the reciprocal relationship between societal attitudes and semantic drift in the direction of reclamation within the microcosm of Twitter.

Digital Download, 60 pages