ONTD

How a Photo of Adam 'The Ferosh Hulk' Lambert Ignited a Gokey-Hating Revolution
Written by Seth Abramovitch

There’s an interesting struggle for the top spots of the Twitter Top 40 going on. #nicerfilmtitles refuses to give up, even climbing a notch or two to third place (it’s gotta run out of steam pretty soon, as it got old kind of quick). But the new trending topic of #gokeyisadouche has shot up the ranks, even surpassing for a while #iranelection — the global political movement that has inspired many users to tint their avatars green in support of Iranian democracy — to take the top spot. Why the sudden surge of collective animus against the Aerosmith-butchering American Idol finalist? It’s an interesting story, actually, and it also involves something tinted green.

It begins, as so many things do, in the hallowed halls of ohnotheydidnt: an online community of like-minded, Chris Pine-pining Kathy Griffin addicts at the forefront of all GIF-animation sciences. In a post titled “douchebag danny strikes again” and authored by user “petit_tresor” (who years from now will be referred to in American Idol History courses as the Betsy Ross of the Gokeyisadouche movement), it’s revealed that the Facebook account of a female cousin of Gokey’s had been hacked into. A series of photographs were then posted, all taken at a dinner attended by the Idol finalists. As the cousin describes it, Gokey had printed out the photo of Lambert decked out in a Froggy Stardust and the Tadpoles from Mars-type outfit. The commentary that accompanied it:

Adam was supper P.O.ed when he saw it his voice went all high pitched and he said “What the F***!” “where did you get this” Danny is all like just sign it. Adam said “You owe me for this!” LOL! My dad and I just laugh all night long about it, I thought he would be proud of the picture… i guess not…

What follows is a long list of comments from friends of the “OK, I just puked!!!” and “UH? SICK!!!!!”-variety. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to have available to the rabid Lambert fanbase — or, for that matter, among anyone with a low tolerance for overt homophobia.

Still, that in itself might not have been enough to rouse the Twitter masses. But it just so happens that Gokey said the following in a live chat with Comcast yesterday:

“Yes. I accept gay people, but people have to accept my beliefs. We have to accept their beliefs, but they have to accept my beliefs. We agree to disagree. I don’t judge people, but at the same time, if they believe in what they believe, they have to accept me and what I believe. But I accept anybody as they come. That’s my character and my personality.”

And voila! A Douche-o-lution is born.

In other Idol news, David Archuleta’s stage dad was busted back in January at a happy-ending-friendly massage parlor.

UPDATE: Twitter has removed #gokeyisadouche from the Trending Topics list, inspiring a new trending topic from the outraged, Gokey-loathing masses: #twitterisadouche.

The revolution will not be tweeterized.

Livejournal Community Briefly Hijacks Twitter To Hate on Danny Gokey: #gokeyisadouche
Posted by Steve Huff, Jun 18, 2009

In the early morning hours of June 18, 2009, a mysterious new hashtag appeared among the top trending topics on Twitter: #gokeyisadouche. As the screencap on the left demonstrates, at 1 a.m. ET, the tag was even more prevalent on the microblogging site than Iran-related hashtags.

Of course it was a reference to American Idol finalist Danny Gokey, a bespectacled, eternally hoarse evangelical Christian songleader who finished 3rd in the songfest, behind runner-up Adam Lambert and winner (and fellow evangelical) Kris Allen. Gokey had been criticized in the past: tongues wagged cruelly on the Web about how the tragic death of Gokey’s wife was used to ’sell’ him to the audience; people even got torqued about the fact that the dude wore glasses. It’s American Fucking Idol - people act pretty nutty about the show and its contestants.

But why did #gokeyisadouche suddenly pop up on Twitter over a month after the season finale? Most Idol contestants are usually pretty much forgotten at that point, until they release an album, or carjack a senior citizen or something (that’s never happened, as far as I know, but how crazy would it be if it did?). It had to do with Gokey and teh gheys. Specifically one very famous, very gay dude, Gokey’s fellow Idol, Adam Lambert.

New York Celebrity Gossip “Examiner,” Maxine Wu recently noted that there was some kind of “beef” between openly gay AI contestant Adam Lambert and Danny Gokey. Lambert only alluded to it in his Rolling Stone interview. Someone asked Gokey about it recently, and he said “It was mostly religion.” Then Gokey specifically addressed homosexuality:

I accept gay people, but people have to accept my beliefs. We have to accept their beliefs, but they have to accept my beliefs. We agree to disagree. I don’t judge people, but at the same time, if they believe in what they believe, they have to accept me and what I believe. But I accept anybody as they come. That’s my character and my personality.

If that was enough, perhaps, to paint Gokey a douche, the fuel for the #gokeyisadouche fire was that repository of a whole lot of Internet mischief, the Livejournal Community ONTD, or “Oh No They Didn’t!”

In a post titled “douchebag danny strikes again,” ONTD member petit_tresor passed along the fruits of a Facebook account owned by Danny Gokey’s cousin Talea, which the Livejournaler stated was “hacked.”</b> There were photos on Talea’s account from a dinner attended by Adam Lambert and Danny Gokey as well as friends and family of the singers, and the comments and captions under the photos really pissed off the members of ONTD, who seemed to almost universally be fans of Adam Lambert.

According to ONTD the caption for the following pic was written by Gokey’s relative:



“‘Sigh’ dad took pics of me with Adam and its sooo funny cause he told me he is going to use it for black mail! Adam I have to say was nice, but to me it felt kind of fake but that just MHO. He did like to tell me how good he thought he looked in one of the photos I had him sign lol!!”

Comments from friends below various photos of Lambert with Gokey’s cousin were more offensive than Talea’s caption:

Jessica Delarosa Bzdawka at 11:01am April 14
i think there is something wrong with his medulla oblongata!!

Talea A Gokey at 3:41pm April 14
lol! If you have any doubts about which side of the street he walks on and this doesn’t confirm it. There is a video out there where he is singing at a club with male dancers and they are not afraid to show you some things lol!!

John Negron at 3:48pm April 14
UH? SICK!!!!! I know I saw the one where he was dancing with some chicks. Or at least I hope it was chicks. :( Anyways, I cant stand him. He is just annoying. His scream in EVERY song is just getting real old real fast!

Michelle Haasch at 6:06pm April 14
*OK, I just puked!!!
He’s absolutely ridiculous!!

Dannielle Hamilton at 6:15pm April 14
ooooooooooooooooh HELL NO!!! R U SERIOUS!??!!??

Jessica Delarosa Bzdawka at 10:54pm April 14
so this is what..i mean who…we want our kids voting for and possibly looking up too????????

Michelle Haasch at 11:03pm April 14
HECK NO!!!!!!
By the looks of all the photos flying around the internet of Adam…he’s not sure AT ALL who his “True self” is…… sad…….

Jessica Delarosa Bzdawka at 11:05pm April 14
or WHAT he is!!!!!…ok..thats mean. I have to remember that God loves everyone….even those that dress like that!!!!!!

The truth here is that Danny Gokey’s relative and her friends said unkind things about Adam Lambert in what they thought was a relatively private setting, therefore, as far a particular Internet community was concerned, Danny Gokey was a douche is as well.

Nevertheless, ONTD managed to, at least for a moment, perform a kind of Twitterjacking aimed at the singer, giving out both his and his cousin’s Twitter URLs as well as links for some other commenters from the Facebook account whom ONTD members found particularly offensive.

#Gokeyisadouche was less about Twitter and more about the power of communities with a certain set of interests to take over the public dialogue on Twitter and promote a certain point-of-view.

The kerfuffle was really just about what someone who knows someone said about someone else. The Internet basically works that way. You enter it wearing a pith helmet, thinking you’re on a fine, jolly new adventure, tally-ho, and you exit battered and bruised, wearing a busted football helmet and mismatched body armor and pads, clutching your cyberclub studded with nails.

Twitter powers-that-be may have caught wind of the hijack, in the end - less than an hour after #gokeyisadouche was the top-trending topic, is was completely gone - even though tweets containing that hashtag were being posted at roughly the same rate as before.

MTV ARTICLE: http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/36359565.html

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/36343258.html

first article

second article

I only bolded the mentions of ONTD. The first article is short enough to read the whole thing and the second one kind of sucks tbh.