[youtube]https://youtu.be/7xSOuLky3n0?t=145[/youtube]

The “queering” of content refers to the appropriation and recontextualization of content produced under a patriarchal and capitalistic institution, and the construction of new, user-based content from the original content that constitutes an opposition to those forces, and is therefore “queer” material. Queering undermines the heteronormative, cisnormative society which is the primary producer of content by claiming and then contextualizing its content within the queer community and narrative.

The term queer is used here because it opposes the forces of the creation of the original content (which are decidedly unqueer). But it doesn’t do so via the creation of “original” content, but rather by “hijacking” (so to say) the original content, and rearranging it so that it is a narrative suitably situated within the queer community. Russo, in “User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence”, aptly describes the process as “engaging the source via its own images” (Russo 126). The old adage “You can’t put the fire out from inside the house” doesn’t apply in the digital house, where the exploitation of original content combined with original creatively has the ability to transform, to queer, any text, by using the text itself.

The queering of material also speaks to the queer undertones that flavor even anti-queer material. That is, the phenomena of rearranging material to queer it instead of creating entirely new material speaks to the pervasive nature of queerness, and further, the idea that queer narratives are not represented not because they do not exist, but because are actively and intentionally ignored.

What is queer cannot be queered, and so it is only content that lacks explicit queerness that is the subject and object of queerification.

The hand-in-hand nature of queer and anticapitalist practice of queering results from an institution where: “the question of what interpretations can be visible is yoked to the question of what interpretations can be profitable” (Russo 129). The lack of visibility of mainstream, corporation-grown queer narratives results from their lack of profitability, and that begs the question of whether the opposite is true: Does the prevalence of underground, user-grown queer narratives result from their lack of profitability? A refinement might result in a truer statement: Because of the lack of mainstream queer content (resulting from their lack of profitability), a prevalence of underground, user-grown queer narratives can be observed. This combines the first and second statements, resulting in a more comprehensive understanding. This also allows for a future in which capitalism appropriates queer narratives and exploits them, profiting from that which it once disdained.